So where's the deception?
Remember back when Google was talking about democratizing the web and how their goal was a natural search result that would not be influenced by money? Part of the deception is in that stated goal.
Those of us who work on many large sites know that there have been, up to 2008, 2 very distinct methods for pushing sites. Of course there are an infinite number of individual techniques that work. What I mean is that there are 2 category level rank pushing techniques: -1- develop links and -2- develop content. And at the highest levels, these 2 items are still the focus of development as with any small site.
Because we have seen, and continue to see large risks in link development, our clients were not big link buyers, and instead developed structural strength around well researched keyword universes. That is, building genuine relevancy into organizational structure. Large, semantically driven content sets focused on valuable targets can be extremely effective. And is very safe, with no effort to influence PR, only relevancy.
But up until very recently, link development meant link purchasing (now considered a black hat strategy), and what many assumed they were really buying was PR, sent across the purchased links. By focusing on PR the link buyers were really creating an environment that would eventually self destruct. See the link authority trainwreck.
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