The Joys of SEO: It’s Over! Google has completely dropped all authorship markups (15)
The Joys of SEO: It’s Over! Google has completely dropped all authorship markups
One of the best decisions I have made was to focus on paid marketing instead of SEO.
This is a great example of why.
I remember attending SMX last last year, where multiple sessions were held on how to create authority for authorship markups and rich snippets. I imagine countless companies invested countless thousands of hours last year to to get their authorship authority in place.
Google has completely dropped all authorship functionality and rich snippets from the search results and webmaster tools.
Having removed author photos from the SERPs in June, Google has now gone the whole hog and removed authorship altogether.
https://econsultancy.com/blog/65384-...16h5xhq10kmd15
Under the authorship scheme, writers could add the rel=author markup to their bylines, linking them to Google+ pages. Indeed, this is probably the only reason why some people joined Google+, as the carrot of improved CTR and perhaps rankings was dangled in front of them.
Alas, this is now no more.
Being a full time 'Content Marketer' (Cough... SEO-er!)... I saw this happen a little time back.
I agree SEO as such is dead to an extent, but it's still possible to rank fairly well with legitimate optimisation and content marketing. Black hat is also still very much alive although it will get harder and harder.
It is also why I want to be involved in paid traffic, as I've experienced to a smaller extent than a lot of people what it can do in a short amount of time!
Google is unpredictable and can do what they like - I hate the monopoly of the company, but at the same time it's not as bad as others make out...
You heard abut the new-ish Sandbox for newly ranking sites? Worth reading about - a hindrance for local SEO businesses I imagine as it exists from 1 to 6 months on a newly registered domain!
I've been banking from SEO for 10 years now and I'm still doing.
I completely agree with you that SEO take you under a lot of pression when rules changed want you do not expect them to.
That's became an adapt fast or die market, where you do not have to play by the rules because... well their is no officials rules now !
Still, SEO is pretty stable when you do not make big mistakes and stay under the Google radar.
I've been reading fox here for months now, and every body seems to say that media buying is a game of number, that you have to create a lot of campagns to have a winner.
Nowadays, SEO is a game of numbers too, you have to create a lot of websites to have some winners and keep making new ones to replace those Google will kill.
Of course SEO has a lot of bad side, but from an SEO point of view, SEM has a lot of them too...
I'm planning to start some SEM by the end of the year, first to try something new but also because it can bring me more conversions volume (even with I just cash back) and make a leverage on my payouts for SEO.
People made money in SEO before authorship, people will make money in SEO after authorship. In fact, I made money in SEO during authorship without ever buying into the authorship craze.
SEO is there to stay. You just need to think about the changes that can take place
Authorship was a nice extra which could definitely boost your CTR. However, I've only seen it as a way to boost CTR and not so much a way to boost rankings. I wonder if connecting an author with high authority with rel=author to G+ actually improved rankings.
I don't really get what the fuss is about. Authorship in SERPs or not -- it's the same for everyone.
When it came onto the scene, webmasters rushed to add it to their sites. So did I. However, even in niches where I would be the only one with an image, I didn't _really_ see much of a difference in traffic. And yes, I split tested the pictures... Maybe it's the niches I'm in, Idk. To me, the actual title has always been what draws them in.
Back to my point: Now authorship is gone, big whoop. For me, traffic is the same. And it's not like it's going put you in a disadvantage that you jumped on the authorship bandwagon. Leave it there as is, doesn't matter. This whole thing is certainly not going to either make or break SEO in general.
Come at me, Goog.
Originally Posted by cmdeal
I can't resist to say that SEM is not bulletproof business and tend to be more and more like SEO, at least in Adwords (witch is the biggest PPC network on the planet).
Just this year :
- Google has killed all SEM campagns on porn keywords, that mean people earning millions of dollars per year back to square 0.
Just this month :
- Google has removed the ability to use the exact match keyword in all campagns. That mean that now if you target [porn movies] to get visitors that search exactly that keyword in Google, you will in fact target "porn movies" that is a completely different thing as you will have also visitors that search for "free porn movies" or "porn movies on free tubes", etc.
More info on this here : http://moz.com/blog/keyword-research...teboard-friday (if you do not know Moz.com and Randfish, click to see is beautiful mustach ^^)
SEM used to be more stable, but that's not so true...
Seo is awesome nowadays.. if you like to start from 0 every few weeks 
Nothing like that. Seo still works but you need to invest. It's not like 3 4 years ago....
Getting rid of exact match is brutal! Ouch
Originally Posted by nefig
That mean more $ for them as everybody is forced to bid on keywords they do not want :/
Damn... this is huge. There's so many signs the big G is becoming more and more evil. Not showing search queries in Analytics because of 'privacy reasons', hiding the keyword tool behind the Adwords login, reducing the results of the keyword tool and now this... Throwing away exact match is a huge deal, the success of many PPC marketers depends on it
Originally Posted by foreal
Yes, you cannot buy adult keywords anymore, unless you have 0 sexy on it and even not an hardcore domain name !
People have lost ton of money with that fucking decision.
But, their website, their rules...
At this point, I'm glad I'm doing SEO and not PPC (Adwords), because if that was the case, I will probably be in big trouble...
PS : They are starting to get more agressive on dating rules also, so it's probably the next big change in the Adwords system for MB... :/
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