Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.

So there it is, no more wondering, no more endless speculation and scrabbling for evidence of whatever side of the fence one might sit.

Could this be a hint of more, clear-cut statements like this from Google?
I doubt it. The air of mystery works very much to their advantage and keeps the SEO world running rings around itself drying to second guess Google’s technology.

What it does signify is a move away from deliberately inserted page elements to a more whole-page approach, taking the real, visible content to determine page context and authority – in addition to many other factors.

The Duplicate Content Filter

Google dislikes presenting multiple search results that contain the same content. Instead, it decides which is the most authoritative original source of that content from all the duplicates it has in its index, and presents just that one. The rest are filtered into the supplementary index – all that extra content you can see when you see something like this at the end of your search results:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

An experiment to become the authority

I wanted to test the power of backlinks as an indicator of authority above all else. The outline of the experiment is straightforward:

1. Create a brand new website
2. Fill it with content that already exists on other, more established websites
3. Create back-links pointing to it
4. Do not market the site in any other way

I am not going to link to the site itself here, as I am now isolating it from normal, organic link targets to perform another experiment.

Content for the site was selected from some freely available PLR (Public Label Rights) articles which can be legally reproduced. Such articles are also generally already published elsewhere. In my case, a search for specific chunks of article texts showed most articles had already been published across 6-10 other websites, some new, some quite established.

Getting indexed

Adding a link to the footer of a very healthy blog got the brand new domain added to the Google index within 24 hours.

Building back-links

In addition to the main purpose of this test, I also used it to try out link building service Linkvana. A full review of my experience with Linkvana will be here soon, but in a nutsheell, it provides the ability to create unique backlinks from a plethora of specially managed blogs, but without the potentially damaging drawbacks of usinga link-farm.

Over a period of three weeks I used Linkvana exclusively to create just 15 back-links into the new content, both deep-linking and to the home page.

The outcome

After just a week of link-building, searching for specific chunks of my published PLR text returned my site at the top of the search results, with all the other pages containing the same PLR article, pushed into the supplemental index as duplicate content. This despite all the other sites having the advantage of greater domain age and having already published that content.

The conclusion

Duplicate content is one of the most discussed, and misunderstood, aspects of Google’s search alorhythm, but can be overcome with pure link bulding.

The number of quality links pointing at duplicate content, seems to be the primary metric for assessing that site’s authority. Of course, this assumption must be tempered against any existing authority held by other sites with the same content.

in the future it’s likely Google will use the data to at least make obvious changes. An example is if “thousands of people” were to knock a search result off a search page, they’d be likely to make a change

Just gather enough friends

I can see the blackhat SEO community already grouping together to “bump-up” each others’ sites in the search results. Though I doubt it is just blackhatters planning such activity. Watch the callout for reciprocated votes spreading like wildfire through any tech or marketing oriented social network! If Google have made buying links unacceptable behaviour, what about buying votes?

Just like any form community voting, it is open to abuse and manipulation. One might consider that Google are intelligent enough to measure such voting effectively, but it will instantly become another weapon in the SEO’s search manipulation arsenal.

Weakening SEOs power

Searchwiki itself, in my opinion, is a direct stab at the SEO industry to weaken its stronghold on the way search results are presented to the searcher. Personalised search results where the individual is in control, removes the effectiveness of SEO. One cannot determine with confidence what search results an individual might be seeing for a particular keyword, because Searchwiki allows a user to place whatever search results they wish at the top positions for a particular search.

If uptake of Searchwiki is broad enough, SEO will need to become increasingly focused on long-tail search terms – those that are searched less often and I would suggest are less likely to see the searcher feeling the need to manipulate their results. Highly competitive terms – where a searcher might be more likely to keep searching through page after page of results to find the one they want – are more likely to be clicked to the top of the list in Searchwiki.

Swings and roundabouts

There seem to be some opportunity here on all sides. Users may find their search results more acceptable for terms they regularly hunt, while pure on and off-page optimisation could become less important.

I wonder when we might begin seeing page title and description content on search results specifically designed to encourage a searcher to click their little Searchwiki icon to move that result to the top..?

They want to reward sites that do well in providing quality, unique content for their visitors. But with the growth of the web, only an automated solution is viable, and automation leads to algorithms, variables, and ultimately, attempts to circumvent and/or manipulate the technology.

Out of the Horse’s mouth

I get asked daily to give an overview of the fundamental basics of SEO. What the majority of these questioners want is the one, secret technique – because there must be one, right? – that pro SEO’ers use to get top listing in Google’s SERPs. They are usually disappointed with my answers, which allude to lots of effort creating and marketing original content.

With the release of Google’s SEO guide, I just point them at its pages. You can download here (pdf).

Who better to tell you what they want from you?

Google are in the best position to let you know what they want to see on (and off) a web page to consider it for a good ranking in search results. If you know anything about SEO, then there really are no surprises within these pages. Even SEO pros should give it a read or two to remind ourselves of the basics and most important elements in ranking well for Google.

Hurting the professional SEO business?

What could be the motive of Google releasing this document, could they be trying to hurt the professional SEO business? It’s not much of a stretch of the imagination to consider, as a friend recently suggested to me, that by openly spreading around what are the fundamental principles of Google SEO, it weakens the efforts of professional SEO’s as now anyone can run with these techniques.

But the “secrets” of SEO are no secrets at all. The knowledge of what to do is freely available across the web and though no professionals cling to the idea that professional SEOs hold the most powerful techniques close to their chests, this simply in not true.

In fact, the secret to SEO can be boiled down to two words: focused perseverance.
Success with achieving top search engine positions, and the resulting traffic if you have targeted your audience correctly, is a matter of time, effort, and slowly inching your way up the SERPs. There simply are no shortcuts.

The bottom line of this is if you follow the directions offered in the Google SEO document, you stand a very good chance of ranking well on the Google SERPs.

It’s that “hard” part that puts people off

The SEO industry can rest comfortably in their beds. My personal experience is that no matter how much information you offer people, it’s the “hard work” element that stalls their progress – not necessarily that they do not want to engage in the time investment, but that they generally simply do not have the time to invest.

It takes time to see the results of day-after-day grinding at the various on and off page techniques, and the tasks do seem worthless, particularly when ranks appear to be slipping (not uncommon at the immediate outset of strategic SEO activity).

Setting out on a strategic SEO plan, one must look six months or more ahead before seeing strong, stable results of directed effort. Now and then results appear sooner. But more often than not, rapid results fluctuate week after week; stable, predictable results take time.