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09.06.07
How Viral Marketing Could Kill Your Google Presence
 By
Brian Turner
The Dangers of Social Media manipulation. Over the past year, SEO has increasingly turned its attention to social media, looking for ways to manipulate sites like Digg in order to bring in surges of traffic.
The aim is to present content that appeals to discussion, hoping for a wave of natural links to point to the content as it is discussed.
The trouble is, this very method could be doing far more harm than good to a site.
It's not the traffic itself that's particularly damaging.
Let's face it, social media traffic, in majority, is utterly useless and only good for burning up your bandwidth and server CPU.
This is traffic that doesn't click ads or buy your products. They are information hungry visitors interested only in a fleeting visit for that information, then are gone.
However, many SEO's see viral marketing as a great way to develop natural organic links as the content provided is discussed, and so have focused on this technique - unaware of the dangers they may be creating.
Too much too quick
The Google Sandbox is a concept first reported around Easter 2004. The basic effect was that links in volume no longer impacted as quickly as expected, as if Google had applied some kind of new filter on links.
Since then the term has come to describe a range of filters, not least that newer domains will not receive full benefits from extensive link development. In fact, too many links can have the reverse effect, sinking a website so that it doesn't even rank for its own name.
The danger of unleashing a viral marketing campaign for a new site is clear - too many links from indiscriminate sources can reduce its visibility in the long term on Google.
However, it's no longer newer websites that may have that problem. After all, newer domains have little link profile.
Link Profiles
Eric Ward is the SEO industry's chief evangelical when it comes to link profiles.
In short, a website that has a reasonably natural looking profile of links sources is more likely to rank successfully for its keywords on search engines in the long term.
It's this boosted natural link profile that many SEO's are trying to deliver via viral campaigns.
While at first the idea of a viral campaign for links may sound attractive - and certainly there has been a booming industry in "viral marketing" for link development purposes - the problem is that the persons engaging in such activities are only looking at half the picture.
After all, a link profile isn't simply a snapshot of the site's links now - it's an historical record of it's links. And Google are already well ahead on that.
Temporal Link Analysis
In March 2005 Google's patent on application on historical information was released publically, which showed Google was looking at ways to leverage a huge number of pattern indicators on the web.
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
I'm a SEO & business consultant in the UK, specialising in SME's and start-ups.
I run Platinax Internet as a free resource for small business trying to get the best out of being online and offer internet management services from my main company, Britecorp.
In my spare time I'm an aspiring science fiction and fantasy writer, and currently live with my family in the Highlands of Scotland.
Contact Brian
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