Too bad I missed the ‘Black Hat/White Hat’ session at SES Chicago, held last week on December 8-12, 2008. I love a good debate! Especially when it comes to Internet marketing.

In the ‘Black search engine optimization (SEO)’ corner were Dave Naylor, director of search marketing at Bronco, and Todd Friesen, vice president of search at Position Technologies… and in the ‘White SEO’ corner were Eric Enge, president of Stone Temple Consulting and Doug Heil, owner of ihelpyou.

As reported by Kevin Newcomb in the Search Marketing News Blog, however, the session was actually quite tame. From what I can tell, there was probably more agreement than disagreement - with, in particular, agreement about Google’s current stance on paid links.

Both sides agreed that, in general, Google will not count link authority from paid links i.e. links on other sites that you pay for. They also agreed there are exceptions to this rule. For example, Google WILL tend to count links from trade organizations that typically charge a membership fee.

According to Eric Enge this is because there is a review process involved rather than being based purely on payment. Doug Heil, on the other hand, said it’s due to authority. Authoritative websites have effectively earned the right to pass on some of their authority via a link to other sites.

If that’s a correct summary of Heil’s viewpoint - and Google’s viewpoint - I don’t quite get it. If an authoritative website requires money for a link… then is that really the same thing as voluntarily linking to someone without payment?

To use a ‘real world’ analogy, a financial planner who recommends you buy a certain mutual fund without getting any kind of commission in return surely has more credibility than a financial planner who gets a commission.

Or do they?

What if the financial planner who gets paid a commission is much more skilful than the other financial planner? What if the financial planner who’s paid a commission is genuinely being objective? What if they get paid the same commission on hundreds of different mutual funds anyway and the only reason they recommend a given one to you is because they honestly consider it to be best for you?

What if the best way to judge the legitimacy of the financial planner’s referral is the experience of those referred? If tons of them are unhappy with such referrals, then presumably the financial planner wouldn’t be in business for too long.

And that, I think, lies at the heart of the argument FOR paid links.

As Dave Naylor and Todd Friesen argued at SES Chicago, paid links are still relevant, since they bring a user to the page they promise. Presumably if someone clicks on a paid link and lands on a webpage that doesn’t live up to the promise of the link (which is actually harder to imagine than in the case of clicking on a search result in Google itself) then they won’t stay on the page. If this happened a lot the webpage would experience a high bounce rate… which in turn should undermine its authority… and therefore its search engine ranking…

So what’s the problem with paid links again?

Because it favors companies with big budgets that can afford to buy lots of links? Hardly relevant since, if you have a big budget, you can spend it on all kinds of marketing advantages, not just paid links.

What’s more, by isolating paid links, Google has failed to account for all the kind of ‘payments’ that result in links to and from websites. Sure, Google is apparently cracking down on link swapping, but all kinds of ‘exchanges’ still occur and go unnoticed and unpenalized.

All of which amounts to an environment that can probably be gamed more than if paid links were allowed!

Ultimately, as I understand it, Google’s aim is to help search engine users find what is relevant to them as quickly as possible. To this end, Google has used links as indicators of relevance, which in turn contribute to a website’s search engine ranking.

But it’s not really the payment or lack thereof that indicates relevance. A much better indicator is what happens when someone arrives at a given website. So why not abandon the anti-paid link stance (especially given that many other forms of payment still occur) and focus more on the user’s experience at the website?

Google is, apparently, doing this already. It’s focusing more and more on factors such as website performance, bounce rate, RSS subscribers and content. See Google Shift Algorithm - How This Affects Internet Marketers.

I guess we can all agree on one thing though: if you want to play on Google’s turf, you play by their rules. For now, buy links at your own risk.

Source: Kevin Newcomb, “Paid Links: A Black Hat/White Hat Discussion,” Search Marketing News Blog, December 11, 2008

The word is that Digg will soon be introducing a “Recommendation Engine” to suggest new stories to users based on their interests and preferences.

TechCrunch – which has obtained access to leaked screen shots of the engine – reports that recommendations of upcoming stories will be made to you (as a user of Digg) based on diggs from other users who tend to vote in a similar way to you.

You will be able to see just how like-minded you and these other users are by having access to a chart that shows various “compatibility” percentages. By clicking on any of these other users you’ll be able to see the overlap between what they’ve voted on in the last 30 days and what you’ve voted on. You’ll also be able to sort the recommended stories based on most diggs, most matches, and most recent. And yes, you’ll also be able to remove users if you don’t want to receive recommendations based on their voting behavior.

From a user’s point of view, and assuming it matches up to its promise, I think the Recommendation Engine will be a fantastic addition to Digg. From a marketer’s point of view, I am also in favor…

On the one hand, the Recommendation Engine may limit your ability to get new marketing news stories out to Digg users who have shown no previous interest in your kind of news stories… on the other hand, you’re more likely to get your news out to exactly those people who ARE interested in what you have to say. On balance, it seems to sit well with the idea of getting your message out to your most qualified prospects.

Source: Michael Arrington, “Leaked Screen Shots Of Mythical Digg Recommendation Engine”, TechCrunch, June 30, 2008