The new google update thingy

I never bothered with link spamming and just focused on posting good quality and valuable information and it’s working well. Google will not slap you as long as you understand what your reader is looking for and you are able to give it to them. Glad to see you posting valuable info to your readers.

cheers

Good point, thanks for posting. i wasn’t what software to get, web2.0 or article submitter. i guess ill go with the article submiter to distribute my valuable stuff. :)

Hi Linus,

To quote Google, from their webmaster guidelines: “If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.”

As you say, the emphasis is on relevancy and value. I’m wondering though, provided Google’s own guidelines are followed, why would a single offer web site consisting of a main page and the usual support pages be penalised or dropped? The Internet still provides a fairly level playing field for small operations to compete with the corporations. TV, radio, the press, the corporates own that territory and nobody else can get a look-in. Do we want the same for the Internet?

It’s a bit rich for Google to suddenly get picky about affiliate marketers considering so much advertising revenue has passed into its hands from this source. Of course I agree, crappy thrown-together in two minutes auto sites don’t benefit anyone except the spammers. But I hope Google isn’t going to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut. There’s a place on the Internet for professional and thoughtful affiliate marketers or at least there ought to be.

Thumbs up for your blog, a very useful resource.
Danny

Yeah,

Knew that was going to happen sooner or later, but real and relevant content using the same LW strategy will still work.

Just have to stop spinning the same article and putting it on every site known to man.

As a matter of fact some of the Web 2.0′s are starting to reject dupe content.

Cheers

DemandMedia is doing just that. Scouring trends and producing some pretty whacky but useful content. I always wonder how they get their trends though figured they have built their own search results somehow.

Yeah, that SEO fad was rushed and crushed. Seems to be common, new link-building tactic works, SEOs mob it, overuse and abuse it, Google then starts to ignore it.

Great content makes a wonderful easy answer, but if it was that easy everyone would be doing it.

Damn, Sheeve, F*§%!!!
Content takes so much time and effort / expense!!!
Oh well it gives those outsourcers something to do.

Personally I’d take the web 2.0 thing. SEnuke is still a marketer’s dream kind of software. You wouldn’t wanna do JUST articles either – diversification is key.

What’s actually in the article is more important, and don’t overdo it.

Hey Danny, yes I agree.

I think that, one of the things that google wants, especially on the organic side of the SERP – is for people to start putting some effort into their websites.

For example, a single product affiliate site with the usual support pages… is fine. I think google also want PROOF that you are providing real value.

Such as through links. Real links. Not artificial web 2.0 profile spam links. And btw those links are fine, but as I mentioned in my previous comment – you absolutely HAVE to diversify your linking.

Ideally, and I would encourage everyone to do this – even on their small 5 page affiliate sites – have content THAT GOOD – that other people will voluntarily link to your site from their own websites, blogs and forums.

That’s what google wants to see.

So what you need to do – is to put in 5% more effort than the next guy, and you’ll win.

You need to CARE about the people that come to your website.

… and that should be enough. At least that’s what I think.

Thanks for a thoughtful comment Danny, that’s what blog owners like to see!

Linus

No – because people are lazy by nature and are always trying to find loopholes and shortcuts to things.

Great content is a wonderful answer – not necessarily easy. It requires people to actually put in effort into every single site they build.

REAL link building – is linking done to your site by other people, without incentive.

That’d actually be the definition of white hat SEO.

People will always be black-and greyhatting.

Personally I’d say I’m light grey.

What google wants is pretty damn obvious if you think about it. So if you think – you shouldn’t be getting slapped.

I think that slapping up websites in an attempt to sell is almost as common as the folks on Twitter who put nothing but affiliate links out there. As a question of your 2000 friends on Twitter and you only get more affiliate links without a single person answering your question. I put up new websites from time to time (based on my passions) which start out having very little content. As time goes by, I add to the blogs and soon have 20+ pages. Its nice when you can monetize your passion.

Well said!

To sum up your post i 4 words: Garbage in, garbage out :)

slapping sites up is always fun.
i think it’s sad when robots like google filter junk, i mean the postman never does because you never know who may like it.

and yea i prob should post valuable content, but on my sites i post junk all the time that’s valuable to me over 600 pages worth on many sites. each using it’s own crap methodology which google shouldn’t come thru and penalize. but by using the junky articles on my site, i know what niche to truly speak about on other sites, but if i was to build a new site for each key term i’d go nuts.

and to my knowledge, google has always torn down spammy type sites but it’s not in their best interest just like the postman don’t throw out junkmail. spam robots may catch my viagra spam, but it misses a whole bunch of other spam and it may just be rude to do so.

content is king, but writing logical content can be impossible with a bit of junk thrown in.

so i guess you are write, content is king, but one page of content may not be.

so what? goodbye landing pages?! yes! no more one page TIER1 sites!!!!

If you have a blog that you’re using for promoting an affiliate product, try to add at least 1 post per week. It always surprises me how much people spend time building links. I don’t build any links – I seem to rank in the top 3 with any site as long as I have at least 10-15 pages of unique content. That’s all it really takes.

Your crappy link wheels only works when each of the sites have unique quality content and well promoted.

So if someone put up quality content and did a link wheel, it wouldn’t be crappy now would it?

Hi!

From where did you get this info? You should have given a link to the original Google announcement page.

What ever it may be…nothing new about it. Google had the same attitude towards affiliate sites years ago. Please don’t send such worth less news in your mail and bring us hear to waste our precious time. — Thanks

Hey Linus,

it’s been ages since your post. Glad you are back. As for the topic that you mention. I am agree with you. As times goes on, I start to notice that no matter how much links you are doing. Always be natural and as you mention, content is the most important, but that doesn’t mean you need to constant change your pages (when talk about statics pages) it’s the linking pattern that we need to change.

Linkwheels are still effective if we learn to add in other SEO link building. From what I study, I believe by focusing 3-5 ways of link pattern and to be put use will be good enough to rank high among the niches you are going into. (Of cause, we have to do research on the keywords we are looking at)

As mention by others as well, the basic is to get links from people who value your content and do some self-builded links for own sites will able to prevent any google slap.

Thanks for always being on top of all this. What I want to know is how important are reviews and that kind of thing.- do they factor in? My website is HUGE- all relevant content, I have videos and articles with solid content pointing to them, and for no reason that I can figure out, some of my competitors who have 1-5 page junky websites with no real content, (no backlinks, no page titles, really no SEO value that I can find what-so-ever)- anyway, some of them are ranking higher than me or just under me, and I can’t figure out why or what to do about it…

Heya Spark.

Using SOLELY one method of link building has NEVER been a good idea.

I used to do it when I was promoting big launches – but I was well aware of what I was doing. I timed it so by launch day and maybe a week or two after I’d be on top of the SERPs – but after that I was gone. And I fully expected it.

ALWAYS diversify every part of your marketing strategy.

:)

Hi Sandi.

If you’re speaking of the balloon website – I think it might be in the internal site link structure.

A simple fix would be to take all the content and move it over to a wordpress installation. Do a test installation first and upload all the content there – and then copy it over to the main /public_html (or whatever) folder.

WordPress kinda has a built in link structure that’s very solid. With the right theme it’ll also look a lot more professional.

Also, as for the “crappy” websites that are outranking you… how long have they been doing this? Chances are they won’t be staying for very long.

If you don’t like my content, unsubscribe. It’s very simple.

Lol…

Again, any sort of link building is only good when combined with other forms of link building.

I wonder if this update will apply to Google putting adsense ads on parked domains? What possible benefit can a parked domain offer to the visitor?

I liked your replies about link diversity. Even just like leaving another comment like this one. It’s never a good idea to do too much of anything. But diversity gives the appearance of being organic also. I also agree with your comment about 2.0 properties, they should only be create if you plan on creating content for it on a regular basis.

Thanks for blogging again. You’ve got a great audience :)

Cool Zeus, gonna have to check them out.

Cheers Kyle! :)

Totally Martin, well said :)

None.

Those kinds of sites couldn’t possibly fit into this category, and neither should they be ranking in the search engines.

Thanks for sharing this sort of good points. Good content will definitely attract visitors.

Thanks for sharing. I still didn’t experience this on my blogs so it seems that everything is still is before me. Hope it will all end well.

Most of them copy contents from other sites. I hate it. But some have the skill of writing good things.

Yes even I feel that having a rich content helps the website to rank well in the search rankings. Optimizing meta tags can also help the ranking in the search engines. Good info provided.

Hmm .. wonder why I never noticed it before. It was a link in an email I got from google, thought it was new.

Yes, i definitely agree with you..Value is king, put a lot of original and unique content is the best way to make a value on our site. But we shouldn’t forget who the queen is isn’t? I think the queen is still Backlink and never changed.
Most of people are too busy to create backlinks because it’s a bored work to do, it’s easy to do but boring.

Most of people are too busy to create backlinks because it’s a bored work to do, it’s easy to do but boring.

what i always recommend to beginners is that they must do unique contents and i also want to agree with figurative opinion of Julia that The Queen is Backlink and if it is motivation boring will crossed after some time
keep posting and have a good luck

i am agree with you, “Value is king, and always will be.” The quote is give your visitor a quality content…if they are give u SPAM…comment will be delete…

Google will not slap you as long as you understand what your reader is looking for and you are able to give it to them.I have videos and articles with solid content pointing to them, and for no reason that I can figure out, some of my competitors who have 1-5 page junky websites with no real content

Thanks for sharing! glad to see you posting valuable info to your readers, that’s what matters the most.

man, you seem to tell the half of the truth, another one is that many people just want to eat and they have to earn :-)