ContentNow CoOp Network

Kieron & Simon are so ethical they should be running the internet. They should offer a quality stamp for websites, then it would be easy to know when content is ethical and when it is not.

George/Ernest – today you say you “largely agree” with Kieron’s response and yet yesterday you felt obliged to call content-for-links ‘black hat’ and INCORRECTLY said that it involved “a standard cooperative link exchange”.

This is NOT TRUE.

You also said that GoCompare are “back to their old link building tricks”.

Again, NOT TRUE.

Correct me if I am wrong but their “old link building tricks” involved buying pay per post links on US blogs. They may have some new link building tricks, but they are not back to their old ones.

I am all for hearing both sides of the story, however if you are going to stick your head above the parapet with what are (in your own words!) “potentially damaging allegations” against perfectly legitimate businesses then you have a responsibility to get your facts right. The last two days has brought out the worst the industry has to offer in terms of so called SEO experts who simply jump on the bandwagon rather than present a well reasoned argument that can stand up to scrutiny.

And actually I don’t care whether GoCompare have a penalty, and I don’t care whether they have slipped because they have redesigned their site, all I care about is CREDIBILITY, and some people are fast losing theirs!

As I always say, these are my opinions.

Fundamentally links are being “bought” via the Content Now method, no cash may change hands, but the content is provided, so it’s a barter system isn’t it.

Would the site providing the content receive a truly editorial link (or indeed any link at all) if they had not solicited the webmaster and provided the content?

It’s not editorial linking, it’s solicited, so it’s paid and therefore against Googles TOS. So both the linking and receiving site risk a penalty, simple as.

@George
Thanks for the response. The point is that perhaps you should have done your spot of digging before you launched straight into allegations that you have since had to correct.

In your own words there have been “potentially damaging allegations” made against two legitimate businesses. Yes I keep harking on about this but it is an important point.

No one can categorically say that what ContentNow offer is against Google’s TOS. If Google say it, fine, but until then it is down to each individual to interpret the “rules”. So, the point is, everyone is entitled to have a different understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong but what they shouldn’t do is express that opinion as if it were fact. It isn’t.

I’m quite amused that to argue your point with me you’ve twisted your original words – ‘Gocompare back to their old habits’ is very different to ‘Gocompare up to their old link building tricks’!!

But I’m glad that you agree that I have made some strong and well founded points.

Hi Chenster

I’m afraid I must strongly disagree. Following are a few key points (all based on over 10 years in SEO and from many colleagues in the industry so as close as any of us can get to “fact” in SEO):-

1) Relevant links remain essential – few arguments about that in the SEO world – and the best links for all parties including the engines are not always those that simply occur by good fortune.

2) Linking has to be about fair exchange of value. Historically this was via reciprocal linking but with heated debate as to dampening factors applied to reciprocal linking, other ethical methods to create a fair exchange of value in the process were needed. Our approach is one such method.

3) There are many other methods in use today including the provision of other services or even goods in exchange for links. We are regularly asked to engage in campaigns of this type but refuse to do so. We believe that the inherent value of the exchange in these cases is essentially financial. Perhaps not monetary but the POINT OF DELIVERY may be wrong – perhaps in some way straight into the pocket of the site owner – and that these are thus a “grey” area.

4) The provision of unique, relevant content with an appropriate link, however, should BENEFIT ALL PARTIES: the search engines (always needing more content plus a relevant link); the internet user community (again needing content); the content site owner (ranking and user experience for relevant content); and the linked-to site (ranking for relevant link). Thus we believe that with content-for-links the point to which the value is delivered is correct.

The translation of the concept of exchange of value into “paid” is therefore IMHO both deliberately emotive and an over-simplification. Monetary exchange is absolutely against search engine TOS and rightly so. It creates an uneven playing field, favouring those with the deepest pockets. Now whilst some firms will pay to outsource part or all of this approach via us or other reputable SEO firms this does not mean that you need vast financial resources. There is nothing to prevent small players and new entrants from taking exactly the same approach in attracting relevant links. Indeed we know for a fact that some webmasters are going it alone with a content-for-links approach, providing the content themselves – and I’m sure that they are seeing success as a result – they deserve it – it is very hard work. We also have some one man bands and businesses running on a wing and a prayer in our client base, as do other ethical firms.

Hope this is helpful and wish I could find a way of explaining it more briefly!

Thanks and kind regards

Simon Snelling BSc(Hons) MBCS CEng CITP
Partner and Co-Founder
Content Now LLP

@Chenster
You said:
“Google is not looking for links that have “fair exchange of value” when trying to determine the search results, they are looking for truly editorial non-solicited links.”

Again I’ll reference PR – whilst it may generate editorial links, they are certainly not non-solicited links.
So is PR in breach of the TOS?

Hi Chenster

This is probably going to be my final response on this matter for now because I need to spend the day with my wife and son.

You have just told half of today’s SEO industry – and perhaps even more damagingly – their clients — that they are acting unethically.

A very significant proportion of today’s reputable SEO firms and solo practitioners either offer directly or partner with other firms that offer link building as part of their wider SEO solution. Yet according to your comments and personal interpretation above, this is against Google TOS.

Do you honestly think we have spent a decade working hard in this fantastic industry of ours alongside some of the brightest players in it (partners, clients and advisors alike) without being deeply aware of the guidelines and indeed many other sources and interpretations surrounding Google’s position in this area?

Type in “link building” into Google and take a look at some of the 107 million results. Respected SEO advisors and commentators; reputable agencies; major players; hard working SEO independents. Are they all acting unethically and against Google TOS?

According to you they are.

Actually the exchange between you and I earlier in this thread is a perfect illustration as to some of the some of the main issues at play here, none of which I believe will be put to rest in this particular debate or indeed in the near future.

You read those guidelines and interpret them as “never participate in link building” Period. Other commentators, SEO firms and clients including ourselves interpret them as “in an ideal world we would rather you didn’t have to actively seek link partners but we realise some of you need to and if you do so, please do it properly and avoid the unethical approaches known to exist in this area.”

Why the difference in interpretation?

Well first up, you have me at an advantage. Everyone on here now knows who I am and what our firm’s interests are. I have no idea what you do in the SEO world and cannot therefore begin to imagine what your agenda might be.

There are many significant clues in the current guidelines as to Google’s wider position on the matter. Note, for example, the definition:-

“Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging”

on http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356 If reciprocal linking was against Google TOS, this would read “do not exchange links”, “do not participate in reciprocal linking” or something similar. But no – they ask that it is handled ethically and not in excessive volumes (a guideline to which we of course adhere). Another significant clue, also on the above page:-

“However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites”

This is NOT saying don’t link exchange – indeed it is recognising that people DO exchange links – and in doing so, it is asking them to do it properly and ethically in the context of “the quality of the links, the sources .. . “

Sorry – to me that’s pretty clear.

Google is in a difficult position here – as is so often the case. Per my earlier comments and those of many others, there is widespread acceptance that the search engines NEED relevant links to be established. Yet establishing them using aggressive, underhand or unfair tactics would be wrong and against TOS. Google therefore takes as neutral a position as it can on any specific approach whilst asking the industry NOT to use unethical techniques. It was only recently that Google publically endorsed the concept of working with SEO providers in any capacity and I think the axe wielding in the debate surrounding that addition to the guidelines was a perfect illustration as to why Google is likely to maintain a dignified silence on day to day SEO discussions. I know I would.

Finally, your focus on “editorial links” is fine up to a point. Of course a voluntary link from a high ranked site may be of considerable value to a site. Note the “may” here. There is a dangerous assumption that naturally elicited links will always be of better quality and relevance than those actively sought. Absolutely untrue. Many of them are hugely off-theme in the context of a given site’s line of business and, as such, of little value to site or search engine alike.

Most of us work with clients that are not necessarily going to merit much in the way of editorial. “Bob sells Calvin Klein pants” isn’t exactly going to have the same journalistic attraction as a major player announcing a new strategic partnership. Further, there are only so many BBCs to the point where the set of connections possible with editorial and social media is limited to a finite set of domains with such broad categorisation of their own that it becomes difficult for the algorithm to use them in meaningfully classifying a linked-to party. More importantly, there are a limited number of business types and events that truly merit editorial comment.

I think it is also worth emphasising at this point that the content we produce is focused on relevance to the link partner’s site – it is not advertorial or indeed editorial centred on the client’s site. Rather it is informational or advisory material that the partner would naturally have added to their own site for their own users had they had the time or resource to do so. Remember that we are driven at all times by relevance for BOTH the client and the link partner.

Ultimately, the web is a network. Networks only work if the relevant nodes connect to each other. In the context of site relevance and ranking, those connections are relevant HTML links between sites. Some will occur naturally but in properly maintaining the network it is often necessary to identify the correct points and to establish the right connections by means of a dialogue. This is what ethical link building achieves. Ethically done, this is not in huge volumes but the range and classification of the link parties is sufficient to help both link partners, users and the search engines in maintaining the integrity of the network. I’m not trying to suggest that we do this for altruistic reasons – we are a commercial firm – but I am convinced that what we do adds value to all parties because the point of delivery is correct (see earlier post).

Interpretations may vary, approaches will adapt and refine, search engine algorithms will constantly adjust to reward the ethical and penalise the unfair . . but I believe that valid linking is as important now – and will remain so in the future – as it was in 1997 when Google was Backrub and millennium hangovers were a thing of the future.

Please let us all treat each other with the respect that the hard work required in this industry deserves and accept that differences in interpretation will always exist in an environment with the complexity of SEO in 2009.

I’m sure you work ethically and extremely hard, doing a great job for your clients.

Please accept the possibility that we do too.

Thanks and kind regards

Simon Snelling BSc(Hons) MBCS CEng CITP
Partner and Co-Founder
Content Now LLP

@Simon

Please don’t think I am being personal to either yourselves or to Content Now, as I am not.

I understand that there will always be companies wanting to gain links other than by natural means and there will always be companies that offer these services.

What I am concerned about is Content Now’s claim to be “ethical” and by this implying that the method of link generation is completely above board and within Google TOS.

The Google TOS clearly do not give the OK to the method employed by Content Now, so to claim that it is ethical is misleading. Google are the only people with the definitive interpretation of what they consider clean and what they consider not.

An “ethical” link builder should clearly be pointing out to both the recipient and the donor of the backlink the risks inherent in the system, which judging by whats been demonstrated so far you do not.

As for your points:

1): Reciprocal link exchanges:

Google clearly does not make an issue over these as they are so easy to spot and they can devalue them accordingly (which they do in many cases).

2): ““However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites””

Content Now encourage other sites to create pages (partner pages in effect) for the sole purpose of linking. Therefore you can be interpreted to fall within this.

As regards who I am, I do not sell SEO services, so I have no service or reputation to defend so it’s immaterial, I’m not risking anyones site traffic or income. I think it’s great you are entering the debate, and many would not have the courage to do so.

Ultimately the truth will come out no doubt as Google will have to clarify the rules on this for the protection of the customers of services such as Content Now so they can make an educated choice as to whether to use such a method.

We just need Matt Cutts or another member of the Google Search Quality team to post somewhere as to the exact reason for the gocompare.com ban, then we can put the debate to rest.

@King

I’ll try not to miss out any points!

1): Article submission :

Mass article submission is something that gives very poor backlinks as the articles are duplicated over many sites, so the majority will be dupe-filtered and will not pass any juice.

Google will no doubt be filtering and devaluing most links from article sites as they aren’t difficult to spot.

As they aren’t truly editorial then Google most likely doesn’t want to pass any value from them.

2: “Third party sites that run the story are under no obligation to provide a backlink.”

If you read content nows FAQ you will see the following:

“If a partner were to simply publish the content without the link and subsequently refused to include the link we would ask them to remove the content as they would not be fulfilling their part of the bargain.”

“Our systems regularly re-check live link partners including content-for-links to ensure that the link has remained in place. We will contact any where this is not the case and ask them to reinstate it.”

taken from http://www.contentnow.co.uk/faq.php

So that answers most of your points

3): PR teams wining and dining Journalists.

Yep, sure this does happen to some degree, and especially with very large companies, however the majority of users of PR sites are small companies who don’t wine and dine, or indeed even know, any of the journalists or bloggers who pick up and run with a story of theirs.

Hope this clarifies

@king

Yes it’s rare to see an actual debate in SEO nowadays, everyone being so into “gurus” and accepted wisdom rather than looking in more depth and trying to work out what actually is going on.

Anyway, As regards the contracts between the site that receives the content and Content Now, I haven’t been down the path of being offered “content” so I don’t have access to the actual terms and conditions you have to accept when taking content in exchange for a link.

But the FAQ is clear, they will chase people who don’t include the link and will ask for the link to be reinstated or the content to be removed, and the fact they keep an active tracking system going to ensure the links stay as long as their client pays the bills. I imagine they are unlikely to sue anyone who doesn’t comply when its only over 400 words hence why the chap on the other blog was happy to stick two fingers up at them, but 90% of people you just threaten with legal action will comply with your request.

With the PR, anything that is solicited if discovered Google would whack, its very hard for Google to spot wining and dining, theres only so far the Google all seeing eye can get.

The way I have observed Google operating the easier it is to catch someone doing something manipulative the lesser the penalty, so reciprocal linking, article sites etc which are easy to spot they just devalue the links and forget about it, let people waste their time.

The more tricky ones such as paid links where (I believe they just devalue more and more algorithmically on these) to detect the harsher the penalty when someone was detected as they wish to deter others following the path.

So if they do deem Content Now to be manipulative and hard to spot then I would expect those caught to get pretty badly spanked and a few big examples made , such as gocompare, if that was the cause of gocompares problems.

@King

“Maybe Simon can drop back and clarify the situation regards the contracts, tracking and potential use of the law. Then at least we have all the facts and can go away and make our own minds up!”

Yep, totally agree.

And then Matt Cutts to give Googles take and we’d have it all!

Morning Everyone

Dropping back in as requested.

Regards our handling of content partners that decline to publish content or publish it with the link removed:-

Even the very largest corporate campaigns only involve a modest number (tens not hundreds) of content partners on a monthly basis — we are careful not to fall foul of guidelines as to excessive linking — and since partners acting this way are a very small percentage this isn’t a major issue.

We never forget that we initiated the dialogue. We therefore treat all partners with courtesy regardless of their behaviour.

We have never taken, threatened or even implied legal action against a content partner. We regard litigation or indeed the threat of litigation as a last resort under extreme circumstances.

In almost all campaigns our editorial team are creating the content (a few clients in highly specialised areas write content but these are the exception rather than the rule) so the financial risk is ours, not the client’s. To remain viable as a business (our margins are not as high as people may assume), we reserve the right to re-use any content that partners state is not going to be published which I think is fair.

If a partner publishes the content without the link, we will check with them as to whether this was intentional and work to rectify it if at all possible – more often than not it is a problem with their CMS or publishing systems stripping out or breaking links. Those deliberately taking this approach tend not to respond or indeed to opt out of any further communications (which of course we respect). We reserve the right to re-allocate and re-use the content for another partner. However, we recognise the importance of uniqueness in content. Since the first partner will almost certainly be treated as the canonical instance of that content; and since content requirements are unique for each partner, in practice any re-use would involve significant re-work to ensure relevance and uniqueness.

Content partners deliberately behaving in this fashion are simply excluded from any further campaigns for which they would otherwise have been relevant (i.e. present in the search engines or other public sources for terms or classifications relevant to another client – remember we don’t raid our own databases for potential partners).

We realise that there are a few SEO firms who have taken the “fingers up” approach on behalf of their clients – you guys referred to an example quoted on one of the other blogs. I’ll let everyone form their own conclusions as to the ethics involved. From our perspective, however, this is at least an endorsement of the value of the content we produce so thank you whoever you are.

Obviously we’re not insane and our systems and procedures are fairly advanced. If we found that anyone was deliberately and systematically (on a significant scale) abusing the approach we would of course need to take steps to protect ourselves but we believe that this is in practice unlikely and it certainly doesn’t apply to isolated instances.

Ultimately, as with any area of life, we have found that most people are honest and that working with them with integrity and in a relaxed, courteous way is the right approach for everyone involved.

To follow up briefly (yes I know Simon – brief – LOL) regards Google commenting on this particular debate. Per my earlier comments in this thread, I can completely understand why they may not. To start to comment on the specifics of tactics is an open ended commitment – what about this one? That one? . . . We have seen how a debate can so easily spiral. More importantly the algorithms, as we all see, are constantly refined with the weightings of specific elements constantly changing.

Whilst Google has historically commented on tactics that are clearly and deliberately designed to manipulate rankings on a massively unfair basis without delivering value to all parties, at the very least I think the debate of the last few days has highlighted that the subject at hand is a complex area.

More importantly, as with so many elements of SEO, I suspect that there may not be a definitive answer. The algorithms are refined to act as effectively as possible on the data made available to them. The net output of a properly managed content-for-links approach is fresh content and modest numbers of relevant links. The net output of many linking schemes (including paid links) tends to be mad numbers of links, often of questionable relevance; co-operative networks and so forth.

The ultimate measure of the efficacy of a particular approach is in results. This debate started because a site alleged to be using this approach appears to have had some kind of penalty (sorry for the stiff wording – legal constraints on any comments – see our own post way above in this thread for details). There have been a number of views and suggestions as to why this may have been and we have no evidence that suggests a penalty for our client base.

Basically we take input from senior industry contacts and a large number of clients, partners and other industry sources in adopting the best approach we can. I believe the industry is destined to work this way in the long run and for the good of all of us – the results ultimately make us self-accountable.

Right – got to whizz off again – busy day ahead!

All the best – Simon

Simon Snelling
Partner and Co-Founder
Content Now LLP

@All – a massive hand to all who contributed here. A well rounded and balanced debate, thoroughly explored to no single conclusion …’tis the way with SEO. Strong points on both sides.

A point which was slightly glossed over: ‘everyone’s doing it so are Google going to punish everyone’. Well, obviously a mass penalty to all ‘offenders’ would see the quality of the SERPs decline instantly and Google’s customers wouldn’t see the brands they’d expect. So Google aren’t likely to do that – but it doesn’t mean that it is “ethically” right or wrong, inside or outside of the TOS (opinions on interpretation aside). It’s a sign of the complexities Google faces rather than anything else.

It’s going to take a little bit of thinking time to come to a conclusion on this one – for myself at least. But Simon, your answers and honesty to the questions put to you is of great value. At moment, I’m inclined to believe that your service technically falls outside of the TOS but that it is removed in some form from the link buying networks. It’s certainly a grey area, not white but perhaps not black.