By the sounds of things, you guys are saying "If I happen to rank for that keyword, then cool, it can't hurt," and that pattern of thought is perfectly fine if you have put in no effort to rank.
Having looked at the website and followed Norri's comments over the past while, it doesn't seem as though that is the case (could be wrong) - hence my comments. It looked like the links and the website were specifically optimised for the word "website" and, should that be the case, then your thinking is a bit flawed because you would get a far higher ROI by having optimised for more targeted keywords with commercial intent.
My opinion is that you start with the long tail and then end up with the broader keywords as a matter of natural progression, not the other way around. Although in our industry, it could be said that the "long tail" keywords are the more competitive words for that same reason.
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I basically answered the reason for the drop in ranking here:
Before penguin update, Norri was ranked at No:3 After Penguin he dropped to No: 66
If G found him to have done any sort of spam SEO they would have de-indexed him. In this case they only dropped his ranking. The penguin update is reasonable clear that they want to see valuable content and not a end out sales pitch. Norri's huge pay button is the first thing the search engine see. So in short rank with an good unique content information page and link internally to your sales page. Any traffic other than organic, you can send directly to your sales page, but for the serps stay away from trying to rank your sales page.
I have been reading up and I don't think Google would de-index him. They would just make the value of all spammed links, worth absolutely nothing. Thus the huge drop.
Other wise it would be too easy to sabotage your competitors by adding them to link directories.
Mark My Words - Arbitrary thoughts on ordinary things"The way to gain a good reputation, is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear." - Socrates
Trench Life - A blog for young professionals, BY young professionals
Bafokke Shirts - South Africa's No. 1 Fan Shirt!
Correct most sites just got punished and had a drop in ranking.
G did de-index 100 of thousands of sites after penquin if they found the sites linked to link farms, and sindication blogs. Many sites that was connected to the spam sindications got de-indexed also.
This question was posted to Matt Cutts. They are looking out for any spam fast linking tactics and they ignore that. G is looking intoi adding a tool in webmasters so that site owners can remove these links and not having to contact the sites where the links was posted.
G always devalued links comming from dodgy low quality sites. They just stepped up the penaltys to be more severe. If you have too many of one type link, then they penalize your site. They want diversity.
I did do a quick look at Norries link profile on his site and he has around 1200 links, so he did not go out there and spammed. He do however have a good number pointing back from his other sites and from his article directory. It is possible that he got penalised for ip spam. I did not check up on that.
I also looked at only his top competitor and this site has for sure been spamming a little. This site has over a 6000 link profile. Most sites is not relevant and he has an enormous amount that come from blogspot and non english language. ( So Maybe G like you to spam their own link farm)
An interesting TOPIC would be: Why do goolge all of a sudden put high value on social signals.? This would be a good debate.
For those interested, that debate has been moved here.
Participation is voluntary.
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Well Norri to sum it up, it seems a good place to promote your site is to start on social networking sites
Correct thinking vieome, what do you think is he doing in the forum. This is being social. Next Norri must put up a facebook fan page. Social, is time consuming, but much targeted and easier to convert into sales.
Having his page on No:1, well much more hands free and automated.
Imagine Dave A go on a Four Week holiday stint without his laptop.. This forum will come to a stand still. Social, you must keep at it consistantly.
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