Is Your Site OVER Searched Engine Optimized?

 Is over-optimization bad for a website?

The tricks on you Jack! Google is rolling out an over search engine optimization penalty.

SEO tricks don’t seem to be so tricky lately. Over optimization for search engines is the next target.

Google is relaying more and more on Social traffic and signals, yet people are taking advantage of this as well by paying for “fans” or “followers” (Even Pins!).

If you like searching the web and seeing how worthy a website actually is, Google might have a job for you. Word on the SEO Street is that they are using more and more human reviews. There bots and computers can only determine so much.

Corporate Safety & Security

Image by rustybrick via Flick

 

“Click here” seems to be a great SEO strategy now. SEO experts are turning into “stock experts”, where they don’t know anymore then the rest of the world. They trick there customers into thinking they do. Or do they?

It might seem that way but if you have a honest, classy SEO company or person working on your site, you should be fine. Quality links, nothing unnatural, website speed, quality design, and great content will always be the cornerstone of SEO and search rankings.

I’ve found some wonderful content across the web from SEO experts.

Check this out –>>

For the past few months, the SEO world has been buzzing about two major developments. First there is the comment that Matt Cutts made at South by Southwest about a new over-optimization penalty. While that potential hammer is looming over the heads of many sites, Google Webmaster Tools’ warnings are already taking the SEO world by storm. Barry Schwartz wrote a post about this on March 5 at Search Engine Land. He started out by saying

“At SMX West last week Tiffany Oberoi from Google shared that Google has sent over 700,000 messages to webmasters via Google Webmaster Tools in January and February 2012. That is more than the total number of messages Google sent in 2011.”

This influx of messages seems to indicate that Google found some way to scale their messaging system, but there is no indication as to what percentage of these messages is manual vs. automatic. One of the notifications that seems to be getting sent out the most frequently is Google’s unnatural link warning:

“We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. 

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.”

So now that an “unnatural links” warning has been issued what is a webmaster to do? For the first time, webmasters and SEOs are getting warned before a penalty or a drop in ranking occurs. In the situation where a warning has been sent out but rankings have not dropped, there are a few basic strategies a webmaster might employ:

  • Change the way you are link building moving forward to avoid getting penalized
  • Identify potentially bad links and send a reconsideration letter to Google to show you are trying to remove them
  • Ignore the warning, continue poor link building practices, and know you’re working against Google’s next algorithm update

As the last option is one that few people would ever consider, I want to go into greater detail on the first two strategies and compare potential thoughts on the pros and cons of each. If you had the same resources to dedicate to each of these two solutions, which would give you a better outcome?

Whether or not you’re innocent of the links that got the warning sent, there are reasons for choosing both options. Here are some questions you might be asking yourself along with potential answers for each strategy:

What is the best use of time moving forward after receiving this warning?

Send a reconsideration letter
Continue link building
“I will set about to repair these bad backlinks and send a reconsideration letter because I don’t want a penalty.”“I am going to continue link building because I can find links that can potentially drive traffic to my site, regardless of whether a penalty comes or not.”

What should I do if I feel this is a manual warning?

Send a reconsideration letter
Continue link building
 “With a manual review I want to be sure I jump in, create a spreadsheet of all the potentially bad links, and send a reconsideration letter to Google. If I don’t, I am sure I will get a penalty.”“Hopefully this is not manual warning, but if it is, they noticed some bad backlinks in the past and are letting me know. I will continue to build good links to show I am trying to operate within Google’s guidelines.”

What should I do if I feel this is an automatic warning?

Send a reconsideration letter
Continue link building
 “If this is an automated warning, I risk triggering a penalization and a manual review if I don’t send a reconsideration letter.”“Google can’t manually send out 700,000 messages, so sending a reconsideration letter will likely put me under manual review with a penalty. Manual reviews take time so my rankings will suffer for a longer period of time.”

What should I do if I was guilty of the links?

Send a reconsideration letter
Continue link building
“I did it. I know I can’t fool Google any longer. Here are the links that I used to game the system. I have removed them and I will not do this again in the future. Devalue the links and let’s move on.”“I did it. If I am able to remove large amounts of links quickly, it will indicate to Google that I had control of them all along and prove that I am guilty. They will see that and penalize me.”

 What should I do if I was not guilty of the links?

Send a reconsideration letter
Continue link building
“It wasn’t me! I don’t know how these got here. Did XYZ company I hired several years ago do this? Maybe it was one of my competitors. I found a few suspicious links in digging through my backlinks that were listed in webmaster tools that may have caused the penalty, here they are. If I had done it you would see a much more extensive list. I have worked to get these removed.”“It wasn’t me! I don’t know how I got bad links pointing to me. I am not currently doing any risky link building, so I will pay attention to the warning and move forward with more careful link building.”

Whether you choose to  submit a reconsideration letter or not, one of two things is going to happen: your rankings stay the same or your rankings will drop. Google will think you were gaming the system or Google will figure those links were out of your control. It could end up good or bad for you either way you go.

Google has not given this much clarity into what they are doing, so the search engine optimization marketing world is in somewhat new territory.

These warnings are just one more reason why you need to have your Google Webmaster Tools set up properly and verified. If you don’t have a verified webmaster tools account for any site you run, do so as soon as possible.

If you’ve received this warning recently, your situation is a bit like one of those “Chose Your Own Adventure” books—Which door will you choose?…More at Steps to Take After Receiving an Unnatural Links Warning from Google Webmaster Tools

Hopefully you have a better understanding of the mind frame you need to have when it comes to link building. I thought that was an awesome way to present the information. What did you think?

On March 23 Google announced via Twitter the Panda 3.4 update:

google tweet

Here’s an inside video look into Google:

As part of our continued effort to be more transparent about how search works, we’re publishing video footage from our internal weekly search meeting: “Quality Launch Review.” We hold the meeting almost every Thursday to discuss possible algorithmic improvements and make decisions about what to launch. This video is from the meeting that happened on December 1st, 2011, and includes the entire uncut discussion of a real algorithmic improvement to our spell correction system. The language can be technical, so we’ve included annotations to provide some context for the discussion (and have a little fun!)

More Reading on the latest SEO buzz:

What do you think about the latest changes?

Don’t forget to share this post on your favorite social networks (Gain Traffic now has a PIN it button).

Niche Site Adsense Earnings First Quarter 2012

This is a follow up post to my first one in December of 2011. That was the beginning of my Niche Site Experiment.

I’ve been working on some other project because I’ve learned that this amount of search volume just isn’t worth it for this type of site.

The good news is that it went from 17o local exact searches a month in December 2011 to 210 local exact searches as of today.

If it keeps going up by that much it might actually be money! Something I’m going to include in these post in the future.

So lets skip to the good part…
Google Adsense Konto gesperrt

The Adsense Earnings for the 1st Quarter 2012

Views – 330
Clicks – 4
CPC – $0.40
Page RPM - $4.90
Earnings – $1.62

 

December of 2011 – Total Earnings = $1.99 + $1.62 = $3.61

Amount to go to break even = $30.67

So far I haven’t even paid for the domain name! The way December of 2011 went, I thought for sure it would only go up from there. I must have got some early love from Google and a lucky click or two.

I have also added Amazon and had 680 clicks but no sales. I have an indeed.com job posting widget that’s earned me less then a dollar so I’m going to hold out on even including that for now.

Here’s what I’m going to do for the second quarter of 2012:

- Build some back links

- Rewrite or spin the three articles I paid for and post them on article or web 2.0 sites.

The Good News

And to think I almost forgot this one.

The site is now ranked #6 for the primary keyword, which is the exact match domain (EMD). For the longest time it was #11 but it moved up 5 spots in the past couple of days.

What YOU need to do:

Over 800 exact local searches a month. Most say 1,000 but it’s pretty hard to find a good domain name. If you have to add a suffix, go for as small as word possible on the end. That will rank the best.

Analyze the top 10 google results.

Can you make MONEY???

If you are doing an Adsense Site, then the best ones provide information people are looking for.

So what do you guys think? Any tips or thoughts? Should I ditch this one for a better searched keyword? Should I keep you guys updated and also start a better search keyword site?

Give Google an Article Directory and They’ll Get You De-Indexed

For those that were part of BMR or haven’t heard the news and are looking into Build My Rank, sorry to say that it’s over.

This is only the beginning as Google will keep rolling out Panda updates.

cascata de tucanos

For BMR (Build My Rank), the main point that got the de-indexed was the fact they owned all of the sites.

Google has deindexed an “overwhelming majority” of their network as of March 19, 2012.

This is part of the “It’s Been A Great Run!!” post on BuildMyRank.com:

Unfortunately, this morning, our scripts and manual checks have determined that the overwhelming majority of our network has been de-indexed (by Google), as of March 19, 2012. In our wildest dreams, there’s no way we could have imagined this happening.

Now, it might be you that’s tricking the Big G. Yes, you! You can run but you can’t hide.

There are still underground article directories that Google can’t get to. Or can they?

They might be able to get to some that overdue it but those that play it safe and differentiate link building strategies will be fine.

Watch this video for what you should do post BuildMyRank for link building:

 

 

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I found A LOT of great info over at Niche Pursuits where Spencer blogs about his niche site business (he used BMR).

Here it is:

Last week, I wrote an update on my Authority Site Project.  I revealed that my site had dropped in ranking a few spots, but didn’t go into great detail as to why.  In the comments a few users brought up potential theories about the latest Panda Update.  Its very possible that some of the drop in ranking can be attributed to the latest Panda update (but its always hard to tell).

However, the comment that really caught my attention was a link to a tweet about Private Blog Networks by Matt Cutts (head of webspam team at Google).  Matt tweeted in response to Dan Thies that essentially yes, Google is squishing Authority Link Network and other private blog networks are on their radar.

Are Private Blog Networks Dead?

First of all, its pretty rare that the head of web spam team would come out and say essentially, “We are keeping an eye on blog networks because we don’t like them”.  So, this makes it pretty clear (if you didn’t know already) that Google doesn’t like links originating from blog networks.  And of course, I have personally advocated in the past for using Unique Article Wizard, MyArticleNetwork, and BuildMyRank via my Ultimate Linkbuilding Post here. So, here is my chance to qualify that.

Other Private Blog Networks include (and there are MANY others):

  • Unique Article Wizard
  • MyArticleNetwork
  • BuildMyRank
  • BlogBlueprint
  • LinkVana
  • Article Marketing Automation
  • ArticleRanks
  • SEOLinkMonster (some claim this new service has already had massive deindexing).
  • RankJumpers (Just learned about this one from Tom’s recent post at LeavingWorkBehind.com)

This list of private blog network could go on and on.  In addition, there are a whole host of blog networks that are truly private to the owners and are not open and never will be open to other users.

My Personal Opinion and Results from Blog Networks

So, with enough chatter and commentary to scare anyone building niche websites; what’s my personal opinion on the recent events?  I personally have taken notice and will start to diversify more of my links using other methods.  However, I will continue to use blog networks in the method I will describe below.

But first, its important to not just look at all the chatter and get scared; instead, I like to base my decisions on results.  So, I’ve taken a look at my earnings and rankings over the past few weeks and here is what I have noticed.  The sites that have relied heavily on blog networks for links have seen a small decrease in earnings and/or rankings.  My sites that do not rely as heavily on blog networks have remained unchanged.

Overall, my 20 sites that I built in August of last year that I have been documenting (last post here) have seen a noticeable decrease over the past couple of weeks.  My sites as a whole may see a decrease in earnings of 10% of so this month.  I will do a more in depth analysis of earnings changes in my next income report coming at the beginning of April.

So, with that data, I can see from my own sites that some private blog networks are indeed losing some potency.  However, I can ALSO still see that even with links exclusively from UAW and MAN, my sites are still earnings money (just less than before).

So, are private blog networks dead?  No, but some are on life support.

The industry is changing and you would be smart to change with it.  I have been building niche websites exclusively for about 3 to 4 years now.  I have changed my link building strategy about 3 to 4 times as well.  So, I will take this change in stride and change with it.  Will you?

Obviously my exact plan going forward will require a detailed post on its own, but essentially I will follow these principles:

  • Use more diverse link types outside of blog networks; including, article directories, web 2.0 properties, social bookmarks, blog comments, directory submissions, and others.
  • Use blog networks sparingly pointing to my own site and more liberally pointing to other links I have built (link wheels as suggested by Pat Flynn’s epic Back linking Strategy).
  • Find more unique links used by my competitors by looking at their back links using tools such as OpenSiteExplorer.com (paid version).
  • Use guest posts, link baits, or other natural link building methods for my larger/authority sites.

Blog Networks will ALWAYS be Around

Even if Google were somehow able to go through and detect and de-index every single blog network that is out there right now, new ones would still pop back up tomorrow.  So, it will always be a game of cat and mouse. The more likely scenario is that say Google does de-index some of the BuildMyRank network.  BMR will then immediately go out and create new blogs or change strategies (which may be what they are doing now since they temporarily closed their doors).  So, the networks will continue to evolve as search engines evolve.

The question is, do you want to be involved in this game?

I am going to give myself less and less exposure to these networks directly in the future.  But like I said, I will still use them as tools as needed going forward; just not as my primary link building strategy anymore.

So, the reality is that there are probably still some excellent blog networks out there and probably always will be.  But there will always be a question mark for how long it can last.  So, perhaps its time to evolve and change your own strategies with the industry changes.

Are Niche Sites for You?

I also have to address the bigger issue of whether or not building niche websites is a good business strategy for you or not.  For me, I am used to change and expect it in the industry.  So, I am okay with the changes that come and will continually come with the niche websites business.  However, the learning curve can be too much for some people.  So, you have to decide if building lots of small websites is right for you.

Of course, the other SEO business that is a more constant one and less susceptible to changes is building 1 website based on a passion of yours and constantly work on that 1 website for years.  This is a strategy successfully implemented by Fraser Cain with his site UniverseToday.com.  He’s built this one site for over a decade and always focused on quality content.

He has never manually built a single link to his site, and yet he makes a very healthy six figure income from this one site a year (from Google Adsense I might add :) ).  Of course, he does have over a million links pointing to his site, but these have all come naturally without any effort on his part (other than providing high quality content).

I personally think its a better strategy for most people to build 1 website focused on their passion and build it into the best site possible.  My issue is that my passion IS niche websites!!  So, I have to follow my passion…I must build more niche websites!  The one website that I DO focus on and build into the best resource possible is this one: NichePursuits.com!  I have not manually built a single link to this site, just provided great content, and now have thousands of links from other websites. And of course I get more search engine traffic to this site than any other site I own.

So, I guess I do both: I build lots of niche websites because I enjoy it (and its quite profitable as well!).  But I have one high quality website that will be less susceptible to changes in Google, and that is this one.  So, I will always do both – I will build niche websites and share with you the strategies that do or do not work in hopes that you can go on and improve the bottom line of your own business.

Overall

So, Private Blog Networks are not dead, but they are in a state of change.  Some are phasing out, but new ones will always come along.  I have decided to give myself less exposure to these networks in the future, what will you decide?  I would love to hear your comments, questions, or thoughts in regards to this subject…so drop a note below!

…More at Are Private Blog Networks Dead?

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Let me know your thoughts on what Spencer had to say. I agree and disagree on the one website, one passion suggestion. That is a great way to start and keep as your business hub but you don’t want all your eggs in one basket. His one blog, one passion is NichePursuits.com and then he has a couple hundred niche blogs, mainly making money from Adsense.

This is a great business model that is really popular right now. I know a lot of people that were doing that were using Build My Rank, so if they want to stay alive they will have to adjust as the search engine rankings do.

Do you think buying links is a scam? Do you agree BMR should have closed?

More Reading Regarding Google, Links and Article Directories:

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