Rapid Fire #2: Black Hat SEO Examples; Unheard of Google Ranking Factors

Bala Ayya fires away questions at Sameer Panjwani on SEO and covers interesting topics on various aspects of SEO.

Bala : Welcome to another great episode of this rapid fire round that we are doing with Sameer Panjwani, the CEO and founder of Mondovo. Welcome back Sameer and we have some more questions for you where, of course, you know the rules of the game.

Sameer : Yes I do.

Bala : Quick, fast and precise.

Sameer : Always short and sweet.

Bala: Fantastic, alright so are you ready for the rapid fire?

Sameer : Shoot away.

Bala : Fantastic what kind of SEO Practitioner are you – black, white, grey?

Sameer : I believe, if we say black hat borders of the illegal aspects, then I will say I am a grey hat.

Bala : Ok, alright then why don’t give us an example of grey hat tactic?

Sameer: Hmm… Ok, that’s a good one but I’m supposed to make this quick. I don’t think buying links is illegal and I think that it’s perfectly valid so I would say my links is kind of grey hat but I know it works.

Bala : Interesting then why don’t you give us an example about black hat tactics also?

Sameer : Hmm…. Now as I said, I think black hat means totally illegal out there so I know, I have seen a few people who have actually hacked someones’ site, put a link out there, I mean created a new page on their site got parasite hosting and a link from an existing page which is ranking well to that page. So ya its that hard.

Bala : That’s hard core black hat I agree with that. Ok, so another question is do you think Google should display the Page Ranks again?

Sameer : It’s a hard question. When it was there, I think its, I would love to have Page Rank back may be I know they are not going to show it again but I would love to have Page Rank back from on a scale of 0 to 100 and they would actually reveal the score in decimal formats of 95.8 versus a site which is 73 point something so I would actually know.

But I know, they are not going to and when it was there it just built that whole atmosphere of buying links based on Page Rank so I am not sure if it’s good thing to bring back but there are replacements metric like Domain Authority out there. So, I’d love to have it back why not more data the better I would say because data is a marketers’ dream on SEO guys think.

Bala : Absolutely I remember, you know, at times when Page Rank was the metric for everyone.

Sameer : Totally. When I started off, Page Rank was the only metric we looked at. So, yes.

Bala : Ok. So, ok now here is it what is important like backlink or content?

Sameer : Hmm.. Without content, you can’t build that many backlinks and without backlinks you can’t really survive. No you can, I would say because of content marketing these days you might not even need backlinks. I think content is a more solid foundation because you have social now a days to support you. Backlinks is one way to rank on Google and Bing, content first, backlink second.

Bala : True. Like, if you have real good content obviously people would start first.

Sameer : There are many ways to promote your content, backlink is just one tactic of improving your rankings.

Bala : Alright ok so is there any ranking factor google considers and many people don’t talk about?

Sameer: Hmm.. Ok this is just one theory, I have been having over the last few days. So, everyone knows that links are super important and Google measures them on quality of the site to getting the links from relevance but I’ve just been hypothesizing in my head that I think Google has, they collect a lot of data from Chrome, Google Analytics and I think, they collect lot of click stream data as well so if you are getting a link from a site and how many people are actually clicking on that link to your site so the traffic that you get from a link to your site could potentially be a factor.

Because I think I am suspecting that if Google has to really truly determine the quality of a link, if people are not clicking enough from that link then may be that link is not as worthy as it should be or not as relevant as I think. The true measurement of how high quality or highly relevant link is would be based on how many people actually click on that link so now that is just a hypothesis, they never talked about it or at least not that I know of so purely theoretical but ya my thinking.

Bala : This is interesting. I just want to add one more thing like you know if I have to kind of work upon that particular tactic, what I should be doing?

Sameer : If you want to take advantage of that of course you could possibly try to simulate clicks based on links that you already have but this is purely theoretical so I am not sure if it works but ya of course the best way is to get links for the purpose of traffic and actually those links may not be something you can get why would require actually and that’s what Hoogle will like us to say.

Bala : Fantastic, alright so what is that one skill the marketer must have?

Sameer : I think creativity over anything else

Bala : Creativity.. What I thought, even you will be talking about psychology, because behavioral psychology is the most important thing for a marketer, don’t you think?

Sameer : Of course understanding buyer psyche, what goes through a buyer’s mind, I think is necessary but now there is let’s say a marketer job is to stand out from the crowd so as much as you can understand your buyer if you don’t know how to stand out from the crowd, I think you need creativity for that because there are many people out there you may think they are marketers but if you cannot help your brand stand out from the crowd for that you need to be creative as much as you understand and if you are a boring marketer, I am not sure you will be that successful.

Bala : Perfect OK this is little bit personal to you what is that one skill, you think, you need to improve upon?

Sameer : In the digital marketing space, definitely I am low on IQ on social media. It’s not a space that I have covered that well and I have been so much into SEO that I have ignored that aspect, that’s an area that I really need improving on so but ya we are working on it. I know we are experimenting with podcast videos, Facebook and everything out there so its a learning process and I think, its an experiment but work in progress.

Bala : Tell me about irony and you have you know one of the best Facebook analytics and Twitter analytics in your software.

Sameer : Ironic I know but yes.

Bala : Alright, Fantastic thank you very much Sameer. That was a great set of rounds. We are gonna come back again with even more interesting questions. In fact, we have a business round and we will be talking to you about business.

Sameer : Looking forward to that. Thank You.

Bala : Fantastic, Thank you very much guys come back again look for this space and we have many more interesting questions coming up like this. See you soon again. Good Bye.

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Bala Ayya

Growth Hacker at Mondovo

Accomplished sales expert and a creative digital marketing strategist with a proven record of success in design and product development/lifecycle, from conception to end-user.