SBC News Paul Reilly Founder of Media Skunk Works - New Dawn of SEO Responsibility

Paul Reilly Founder of Media Skunk Works – New Dawn of SEO Responsibility

paulreilly
Paul Reilly – Media Skunk Works

Ahead of further Google algorithm changes that will impact igaming SEO, team SBC catches up with SEO igaming industry veteran Paul Reilly Founder of Media Skunk Works. Paul discusses current SEO trends and impacts effecting igamings convoluted SEO framework, and what measures operators can take to implement best practice and stop penalization by Google.

Paul Reilly is the founder of Media Skunk Works, a Karma Neutral Innovation Laboratory based at the University of York. Paul specializes in large-scale, business critical link building for the iGaming industry and uses big data to provide near infinite scalability to link building, content marketing and outreach, as well as to algorithmically identify and avoid the many traps set by Google.

Media Skunk Works technology also help companies quickly and easily form scalable world class in-house SEO departments, which inherit competitive advantage over using an agency for their proprietary back-end technology.

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SBC: Hi Paul, great to catch up. Can you summarise the latest Google SEO changes, and how they have affected igaming SEO and marketing practices?

Paul: Hi Ted, thank you for the opportunity to participate.  As far as I’m concerned, based on the analysis of a our data which is largely iGaming focused, across thousands of search results top, in multiple territories, we’ve seen a tightening of thresholds in terms of adequacy of acceptable norms and tolerances in link patterns. For a while now it’s been less about whether the link is paid or not, but rather if  it is part of a larger online  footprint that has or could have occurred organically.

SBC News Paul Reilly Founder of Media Skunk Works - New Dawn of SEO Responsibility

Yellow peeks shown in the above visualisation (my.reach.ai – beta mode),  show the more dramatic changes, in terms of the range or variance of the change in position.

Light and dark green (daily and weekly deviation respectively) represent how widespread the impact has been.  Notice the regular period between intervals, where the green band widens. It’s not perfectly regular but this represents three quite different types of algo tweeks.

  • 18th April: Hi deviation + low volatility (wide spread minor adjustment)
  • 24th April: medium deviation + low to medium volatility (medium adjustment impacting)
  • 1st May Relatively abnormal deviation + highest volatility peak (quite a significant adjustment)

Formerly acceptable practices are coming back to haunt web businesses since the rules have changed, therefore we are seeing operators penalised for links in old redundant web directories despite the link being unpaid for.

Google treats most SERPs identically, apart from the particularly valuable phrases, where spam is so prolific, manual boosts or glass ceilings are being introduced through white and black listing these are sometime impossible to identify prior to campaign commencement.

Personally, I love algorithm updates, each update provides clues in the form of data as we isolate those common themes, as top operators know SEO is an on-going learning process, put simply “The only thing we can be certain of is change.”

Sometimes we can rely on Google’s public facing commentary, I think to a significant degree, the word of Matt Cutts, Google’s official web spam spokesperson, has certainly become more reliable since more and more data mining companies like ourselves are able to see in such detail what’s actually taking place.

Example 20th May – announcement of Panda 4.0

SBC News Paul Reilly Founder of Media Skunk Works - New Dawn of SEO Responsibility

However Google also has a habit of launching multiple algorithm updates at the same time in order to hide or confuse the big data centric SEOs. For example  Google flat lied about Vince back in 2009 and Mayday update in 2010. Plus from the evidence I have gathered, the Penguin update  is an ongoing tightening of the thresholds of the link anchor diversity detection which triggered “granular” and often seemingly random drops for isolated keywords of phrases.

Since I’ve had some comments about bashing bwin.party and perhaps their agencies let’s look at Matt’s announcement.

My.reach.ai – Latest PartyPoker.com #5 -“online poker” shows their recovery to be well on track.

SBC News Paul Reilly Founder of Media Skunk Works - New Dawn of SEO Responsibility

 

The green bands confirm something significant is taking place, more than we have seen occur in a while. Since this is literally unfolding as I write this from a hotel room in Malta (note: the volatility value is currently being calculated (hence the yellow bar drops to zero).

I’ve yet to determine what is common throughout this period of change. I won’t name any more names on this occasion, but judging by the brands (filtered by UK iGaming) which have been adversely impacted. There’s definitely been another significant introduction of a new component or perhaps it’s a simple iteration of a previous form of spam detection.

SBC News Paul Reilly Founder of Media Skunk Works - New Dawn of SEO Responsibility

Please note – this update: Panda 4.0 is index wide and not just isolated to the igaming industry

SBC: Igaming operators and Google have had quite a fractured relationship, how does Google monitor the igaming industry?

Paul:  In market where Google has the opportunity to generate Adwords revenue, they have a wonderful relationship with the iGaming industry, especially on a World Cup year. There was a day when culturally, iGaming just wasn’t on their radar but with the filters becoming more sophisticated, today everyone is now a target. Even if like us you’re able to measure the trigger thresholds of a filter and what conditions triggers the various booby-traps set by Google.

There are a number of rumors circulating on the topic of changes within their departmental KPIs set by Google Search Quality, but again this is not something that I can substantiate.

SBC: We have seen some igaming heavyweights being penalized. What practices and strategies were they undertaking, that led to these penalties. What can operators do to clean up their profiles and presence?

Paul: Lucky for bwin their time in the sin bin is now over, following partypoker’s partial recovery and while they have still some way to go until a full recovery, fact is they have made it back in time for the World Cup 2014

 SBC News Paul Reilly Founder of Media Skunk Works - New Dawn of SEO Responsibility

Much of our new business at Media Skunk Works takes the form of penalty removal and the types of penalty we’ve been removing are varied. Mostly link related to some degree,  but still old sites with over optimisation of title tag’s and content generally as well as indexation issues which cause unusual symptoms. However if I were to point at one key practice that causes penalties, it has to be link related. The challenge we have also seen with relatively clean sites with and tidy profiles has questioned the security of current communications.

SBC: With Google implementing new SEO changes and exercising severe penalties, what SEO practices and competencies should operators look to optimise?

Paul: It’s business as usual, the aim is to replicate precisely what would happen organically and deliver this without any chance of being caught by the individual from the spam team who is tasked with hunting you down. This applies more to larger agencies who are known for iGaming – so the process of content delivery, security procedures and stringent business critical process management now plays a key factor. Everything from staff screening, likelihood they might become a risk should you part company on a bad note, IP leakage, client confidentiality, how and when 3rd party suppliers are used is a big problem also this list goes on. As many will know the igaming SEO industry has a tarnished reputation.

The biggest problem being to vast difference between what is agreed and what is delivered by agencies. It’s lack of transparency, combined with a low barrier to entry and  an absence of regulation  topped up with a dose of greed.

Here’s one solution to fix many of the issues damaging the industries reputation and If I may, I’ve started a little facebook group to gather input on this point

  1.  The dogmatic industry standard, non-negotiable, self-serving, contractual clause adopted by SEO agencies and consultants should only remain valid if all stipulated agreed processes and methods of delivery and security are delivered to the agreed standards.
  2. The client should right to perform an independent third party departmental audit – without prior notice.
  3. If a supplier is found to have breached any such agreed delivery or safety processes, they should be accountable for the lost revenues

** if anyone has any thoughts on how to regulate an industry where it the necessary to breach Google’s Webmaster Guidelines as a mandatory requirement in order to compete in the marketplace… here the place to go: https://www.facebook.com/SEOaccountability

That’s not to imply that bwin.party or their agencies are to blame, often history catches up with a sites, there’s always a chance of a security break on either side, as well as competitive sabotage. We do need a fairer self-regulating marketplace. Where the client’s interests and balanced with the risk of gaming Google, and ensuring execution is treated as a business critical function.

SBC: Have these changes to Google, made igaming SEO a more even playing field, can smaller operators compensate and gain SEO coverage from these changes?

Paul: Smaller player who literally go hungry if their site fails tend to be the most savvy, because they already appreciate that operating a business critical function is  the only option. Agiencies however accept they will have a churn rate. I’m pleased to be able to claim to still have our very first client

SBC: What future factors do you feel will have the biggest effect on igaming SEO relationship with Google?

Paul: They will continue to find new programmatic ways to assess what’s normal link growth and introduce more ratio differentials from which to derive normalized acceptable activity. SEO is a great business,  Darwinism is alive and well within SEO. Only the fittest survive and that includes the big NMA top 10 agencies.

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Paul Reilly Founder of Media Skunk Works

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