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>SEO rigging? That's mostly having links from other reputable sources. If this software is good, other good sites will link to it rising it up in the search res

>SEO rigging? That's mostly having links from other reputable sources. If this software is good, other good sites will link to it rising it up in the search results. This is a myth perpetrated by Google and it's entirely false. The fact is that if you aren't actively engaged in spa--err, SEO--, you will be outgamed and crushed by anyone moderately competent at spa-- err, "internet marketing". I make a point of replying to this because my established, objectively-superior-in-every-tangible-way company was creamed by a bad copycat that had a pre-existing spam apparatus, despite our one-year head start and, as already stated, every conceivable advantage (we were cheaper, more effective (their stuff basically didn't work at all), and much more attractive (they were using a crappy WordPress template; we had a beautiful custom design created by professional designers)). I was dumb enough to believe Google's statement that if you're good, you'll gain organic links and your rank will rise. Our SEO strategy was based on writing a lot of blog posts and hoping their relevance and high-quality information would facilitate a rise in the ranks (our competitor had no content at all; just a landing page promoting his bad knockoff product). This strategy had basically no effect. Making good content and/or products and crossing your fingers simply does not work if you have commercial competitors. >Lots of open source projects come up top of the results when you search for stuff because of this fact. Technical projects that are either so ubiquitous it wouldn't make any sense for Google to display anything else, so niche that there is no real commercial competition targeting non-technical people, or both. As can be clearly seen with youtube-dl, if it's a keyword that other parties are interested in monetizing, you have to either play the game or lose. The game is not what Google or Matt Cutts say it is (that's disinformation), the game is what actually gets you to a high ranking on Google.

CM30 11y ago
Did you actually approach the media, authorities in the niche, Techcrunch, etc? Because you can't just rely on 'on site' SEO to succeed. Adding a bunch of content on your own site is good, but what's really needed is to get authorities elsewhere to link to it. So you need to get good at marketing/PR, in the sense of talking to people with popular sites and social media channels. You can do a ton of stuff on your own site, but it's irrelevant if you're not being linked to or mentioned elsewhere. And one good link from say, the New York Times or BBC or some other popular site is worth a ton more than a thousand spam links from low quality domains.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  The niche was extremely specific. It's not something the NY Times or TechCrunch or other big generic media outlets would've reported on. As for niche authorities, there are only a very small handful of them. I did contact them. One of them never replied and started deleting all references to my project off of their message boards where users had been raving about it. I don't have any official reason why, I can only speculate that they saw some sort of competitive threat in it, though it wasn't competing other than providing a service to the same small niche at the time. Another niche authority I spoke with pretended that they were interested in running a story about me long enough to get into the beta and get a feel for how it worked, at which point they stopped replying to me, blocked me everywhere that has a block function, and tried to copy the idea themselves. Their copycat was so bad that it was shut down by their host for spam violations within a month. I tried to follow up after the fact here and never got a reply. I got one or two sites to link to me as a paid sponsorship thing. I don't think they put nofollow on their links, but I'm sure their PageRank was pretty small anyway. My guess would be that most domains in the niche don't have a lot of influence with Google. In a dysfunctional niche like the one I was involved in, where everyone is hyper-paranoid that any new person on the scene, even if they're not directly competing, could be their death, Google's link authority approach doesn't really work. I made extensive use of social media through the advertising options on Facebook and Twitter. I also ran AdWords. The results from the first 2 were fine and the results from AdWords were below average. However, all that was proven to be useless when compared with an organized spam campaign, which I was intentionally trying not to run. I've since accepted that you have to deploy some of these tactics that everyone complains about and pretends are so evil, whilst they do them behind their back. I wish I would've accepted that earlier instead of believing the bullshit that's put out about this.
  - CM30 11y ago
    Wow, that's pretty awful. Out of curiosity, what is this niche? Sounds like one where the major players in the field are messed up beyond belief. Last time I heard stories like that was about heavily spammed niches, like casinos or pharmacies or SEO itself. But yeah, if you're in a field where competitors are either ultra paranoid or sleazy, then you'll likely have to resort to 'dirty' tactics.

CM30 11y ago

Did you actually approach the media, authorities in the niche, Techcrunch, etc? Because you can't just rely on 'on site' SEO to succeed. Adding a bunch of content on your own site is good, but what's really needed is to get authorities elsewhere to link to it. So you need to get good at marketing/PR, in the sense of talking to people with popular sites and social media channels. You can do a ton of stuff on your own site, but it's irrelevant if you're not being linked to or mentioned elsewhere. And one good link from say, the New York Times or BBC or some other popular site is worth a ton more than a thousand spam links from low quality domains.

cookiecaper 11y ago
The niche was extremely specific. It's not something the NY Times or TechCrunch or other big generic media outlets would've reported on. As for niche authorities, there are only a very small handful of them. I did contact them. One of them never replied and started deleting all references to my project off of their message boards where users had been raving about it. I don't have any official reason why, I can only speculate that they saw some sort of competitive threat in it, though it wasn't competing other than providing a service to the same small niche at the time. Another niche authority I spoke with pretended that they were interested in running a story about me long enough to get into the beta and get a feel for how it worked, at which point they stopped replying to me, blocked me everywhere that has a block function, and tried to copy the idea themselves. Their copycat was so bad that it was shut down by their host for spam violations within a month. I tried to follow up after the fact here and never got a reply. I got one or two sites to link to me as a paid sponsorship thing. I don't think they put nofollow on their links, but I'm sure their PageRank was pretty small anyway. My guess would be that most domains in the niche don't have a lot of influence with Google. In a dysfunctional niche like the one I was involved in, where everyone is hyper-paranoid that any new person on the scene, even if they're not directly competing, could be their death, Google's link authority approach doesn't really work. I made extensive use of social media through the advertising options on Facebook and Twitter. I also ran AdWords. The results from the first 2 were fine and the results from AdWords were below average. However, all that was proven to be useless when compared with an organized spam campaign, which I was intentionally trying not to run. I've since accepted that you have to deploy some of these tactics that everyone complains about and pretends are so evil, whilst they do them behind their back. I wish I would've accepted that earlier instead of believing the bullshit that's put out about this.
- CM30 11y ago
  Wow, that's pretty awful. Out of curiosity, what is this niche? Sounds like one where the major players in the field are messed up beyond belief. Last time I heard stories like that was about heavily spammed niches, like casinos or pharmacies or SEO itself. But yeah, if you're in a field where competitors are either ultra paranoid or sleazy, then you'll likely have to resort to 'dirty' tactics.