Weekly Search & Social News: 04/26/2011

Hello and welcome to another edition of ‘7 Days of Search and Social‘. I hope this edition finds you well.

Lead Story

Crap Hat is Alive and Well

If there is one thing that myself and many other so-called ‘white hat’ types get irked by, is Google’s inability to deal with the crap and spam tactics that are out there in many query spaces. Of course, if you listen to some ‘black-hats’ tell it, it IS getting harder to kick ass than it used to be. So, I shall give them some credit I suppose.

Over the last while it seems Rishi (Lankin) has taken it upon himself to start outing crap tactics on his blog. Some really great stuff, I wish I had the time to play in there as well… but I’ve done my part over the years… Here’s his most recent offering;

What we learned from a pills link hacker

I especially like the term ‘link hacker’ as it is something I covered last year with; Hacking for SEO – BEWARE of the Crap Hats

It is a particularly nasty form of SEO black hat and is actually illegal in most countries. Does it work? Damn straight it does… or they’d not be doing it. Anyway, kudos to Rishi for bringing it to light. Keep up the good work mate!

On with this week’s offering shall we?

Quick Nav Links – Talk of the Town – Geek Central – Social Search – Going Vertical – Videos – Tools – Patents –

Talk of the Town

Demand Media: Panda’s Impact On eHow.com “Significantly Overstated” – damage control mode? Or hitting it on the head? I can say we know one of the SEOs from Demand, and they most certainly didn’t get whacked as hard as some folks seem to think… just sayin’.

Web Content – 6 Free Tools to Generate Great Ideas (and all from Google – I kind of enjoyed this one because it can often be a struggle to get content ideas. A few of these I hadn’t thought of, so hopefully you’ll find some value as well.

Reading About SEO & Social Media vs. Putting It Together – our very own Gabs had an interesting post over on Search Engine Journal that looks at the differences between reading/learning and actually implementing and adapting. Some solid (common sense?) advice fer sure.

Automatic Algorithms Are Fundamentally Changing The Shape of SEO – what can I say? It has ‘algorithms’ in the title, deffo some Dave bait there right? To be honest, Andy does a great job of putting things into simpler terms than I generally do. A good read… check it out.

Why Rank Checking is Still Useful – huh, nice to see some discussion of this. Far too often SEOs publicly denounce ranking reports, when in reality they still hold value and are standard issue for most in-house types. Enjoyed this one (from SEO Book)

Panda Update Panda Update Panda Update – yes, it is yet another Panda post.. But wait! It’s from Michael Martinez and isn’t the standard fare ok? He gives some great insights into not only the update, but how you should be looking at these types of changes in general.

You Can’t Grow a Blog On Negative Linkbait Alone – and in a rare appearance in the newsletter (because she doesn’t write a whole lot of SEO stuff, not because she ain’t awesome!) Lisa Barone looks at negativity for the sake of links.. old hat, but fun (a cornerstone of link bait actually).

Future Proofing Your Links – was an offering from Jennifer (Van Iderstyne) which looked at one of my favourite topics, future proofing. This is the concept that you are using tactics which will stand the test of time. Awesome stuff and a must-read for this week.