Over the past few weeks, there’s been a huge crack down on blog networks. Everyone is thinking it, is this the end of link building as we know it? Well no, but yes and yes, but no. So what’s been happening?
Google has been de-indexing blog networks and even forcing some of them to shut down. Like many online marketers, I use blog networks on a daily basis. Why? Simply because they work. Blog networks have been around for a long time and they’ve consistenly been a sure fire way to top search engine rankings.
As Google is de-indexing them, many of their users are now losing their rankings. Before I address exactly what this means for SEO’s and webmasters, let me explain the situation.
First What Are Blog Networks?
In a nutshell, they are networks of blogs all hosted on separate IP addresses and used to manipulate search engine rankings. People use blog networks to artifically build links to their own sites. Blog networks make it seem like other relevant blogs are linking to your own. Normally to access a network you pay a subscription fee of anywhere between $25/month to $200/month.
Once subscribed, you can submit spun articles into the system which slowly get distributed to X amount of blogs in the network. It’s an incredibly simple concept. You submit spun articles and the network distributes them slowly to dozens or even hundreds of blogs in their network. And of course, in every article that gets distributed is a link to your own website/s.
What’s Wrong With Blog Networks?
They easily manipulate search engine rankings. Google has been fighting networks for years. Originally SEO companies would have their own private blog networks they’d use to boost their client’s rankings. It’s a smart idea and using them is possibly the best way to gain top search engine rankings. But… They are easily discovered. That’s the problem.
The problem is most blogs in blog networks are all very similar. They all have a wide set of categories, badly written content and a high number of out bound links. Even worse, many blog networks allow their members to export their backlinks. That means if Matt Cutts wanted to shut down a blog network, all he’d have to do is join, submit a few articles, export his backlinks and then de-index all the sites.
The point is, blog networks do a terrible job at hiding their “footprint”.
Why Do We Use Blog Networks Then?
Greed, laziness, profit, excitement… Take your pick. People use blog networks because they’re a pretty much guaranteed way of ranking high on Google and other search engines. You practically can’t fail with them. Want higher rankings, just submit more articles – it’s as simple as that.
People use them because they can and most users don’t even consider the fact that they may one day be de-indexed. That’s why a lot of people are complaining right now, they’re losing their rankings. And you wanna know why?
It’s mainly because they’re exclusively using blog networks to get their rankings. That’s the biggest problem.
Who’s Been Affected?
Many blog networks actually, more than we know of. The big shocker of the lot was Build My Rank. The blog network I recommended over any other. Over the past week Build My Rank announced they were shutting down. The news of Build My Rank’s shut down completely shocked the industry and put fear into every black hatter out there.
People just didn’t expect it. It’s the one network that prided themselves on the fact they didn’t accept spun content. If you wanted to use their network, you would have to write and submit an article of 150+ words of unique content. Each article you’d submit would be published on just one of the Build My Rank network’s blogs.
It’s actually why their network was so successful, and the reason it was so effective was because their blogs were high Page Rank.
One hundred percent unique content only being published on one domain, yet they still got screwed? Unfortunately yes. BMR was the blog network that seemed untouchable, yet Google was onto them. Over the past week a great percentage of their blogs have been de-indexed from the search results and I’m sure it’s just the beginning.
Build My Rank was just one of many networks to be affected, but they are the first to shut down because of it. Other networks like Authority Link Network, Link Vana and others have been said to be greatly affected. In fact, Authority Link Network lost several thousand blogs overnight.
So What Does This Mean?
It means Google is on a rampage again trying to clean up the search results. In reality getting rid of a few blog networks isn’t going to have a global impact on the search results. A tiny percentage of webmasters use blog networks. However, many blog network users are using them to push crappy websites to the top of Google.
All Google wants to do is clean up the SERPS and provide its users with better, more relevant results. The majority of Google users think that for some reason the top search results are always the best. It’s some weird human instinct that dates back hundreds of years. Probably the same instinct that makes people buy the most expensive items when shopping even if they’re the same as the less expensive items.
So if webmasters are using blog networks to push their crappy websites to the top of the SERPS, Google is going to do something about it. It also makes them look good. Every time they clean up the search results they get a ton of praise from other websites and companies.
What Do You Do?
First, if you’ve been heavily using blog networks that have been affected, you may want to consider removing your links. Google has actually been sending out notifications via Google Webmaster Tools telling webmasters to remove “unnatural” backlinks.
Myself and others have come to the conclusion that the Google Webmaster Tools notification is nothing to worry about. People were seriously freaking out about it. Shitting themselves thinking their sites were going to be de-indexed unless they remove all unnatural backlinks.
You have to remember, even if you do get penalized for unnatural links (which is difficult by the way), you’ll always recover. Remember JC Penny got penalized for “manipulating” rankings by using black hat link building tactics. I mean shit, the news were all over that story and their site still recovered within a few weeks or months.
The point is don’t crap yourself when Google warns you about unnatural link building you’ve already done. Back to removing links, it’s totally up for debate. If you’ve only used blog networks, you’re in trouble.
You could just leave your backlinks and hope they don’t get de-indexed. That’s probably the best thing you can do right now. As for those exclusively using blog networks, your rankings will most likely take a sudden fall when your links get de-indexed.
So you definitely should remove your backlinks on any de-indexed blogs, but keep the links on the blogs that are indexed. That’s my view anyway. What you need to take from this article is that Google will keep screwing us over. Panda and other updates will continue to roll out.
Google just rolled out Panda 3.4 and they aren’t going to stop any time soon. All these “minor” updates aren’t as minor as most people think. This update alone is said to impact “only 1.6%” of queries which doesn’t seem like much. But when put into perspective 1.6% of 88 billion monthly queries = only 1.4 billion queries/month. To me that’s a pretty big deal.
We are very much fucked if we continue SEO with the same old mind “link builder’s mindset”. I honestly think link building won’t be dead for a very long time. Google’s current algorithm for ranking websites is very reliable and effective. Yes – it can be easily manipulated but I just can’t see any dramatic paradigm shifts in the near future.
What I can see however is many small changes that will lead to a complete alteration in the way Google evaluates and ranks websites. That’s how the government screwed us remember? Tiny changes, one at a time. Google has a monopoly on the Internet much like the governments does on the world.
They make tiny changes towards a new order. So in 100 years time we think to ourselves, “how the fuck did we let these criminals steal our money, control the money supply and dictate to us what we should and shouldn’t do?”
Now that’s something to think about and it directly relates to what Google is doing right now. These little changes are definitely pushing Google in a new direction. Who knows, maybe link building will become extinct in ten years time. Maybe social signals will become more valuable. Whatever the case, you can count on marketers figuring out a way to manipulate the system – one way or another.
The best thing for anyone to do right now is to continue to build more links. Continue to use more blog networks, but start incorporating other techniques into your link building. Start submitting to directories, start creating high quality wikis, web2.0 sites and start submitting high quality articles.
All the distribution of spun stuff works, it really does. How long for, I have no idea. But I can say this, focus on high quality spun articles. If people would take the time to manually write and spin the bullshit they submit; we wouldn’t be having these problems. We wouldn’t have Google on our asses. Why not? Just because blog networks and other black hat SEO generally promotes the distribution of bullshit content.
That’s another problem.
Nobody wants to read spun garbage, let alone a bad article. So when spun garbage gets distributed to thousands of websites and starts appearing at the top of Google; there is a problem. Google doesn’t even want webmasters doing SEO period. If you learn SEO from “white hat guys”, you’ll learn about writing great content and properly optimizing it.
If you learn from “black hat guys”, they’ll tell you its a fools game. After all, how the heck can you compete with the black hatters unless you’ve got an audience of tens of thousands of people. You can’t compete and it just makes the whole SEO industry unfair. Even if your website rocks and you write breathtaking articles, you’re not going to get enough links to compete.
This blog right here, I write good stuff on it. But still, I never get more than a few natural links to any of the posts I publish. So if anyone wanted to outrank me for a keyword, all they’d have to do is fire up a link building tool or submit 1 article into a private blog network. The system is stupid and it greatly favors black hatters. (Or extreme white hatters)
Really you have two options. Build an enormous audience, hope your stuff goes viral and gets all the links it needs. Or use black hat SEO. The latter is far easier and immensely more cost effective for most individuals. What if you’re trying to rank your site in the gardening niche? You could potentially start a white hat link bait campaign to attract natural backlinks.
You could do that, but it would be expensive and you’d probably need a few hundred natural links to get the rankings you desire. It could literally take a year and several thousand bucks to accomplish that naturally in a small niche. Or you could spend $69 on a blog network and submit two articles, which would probably take you 3 hours.
Point being, if you want to win without breaking the bank; black hat SEO is the way forward. That is if you’re in a niche that’s not white hat feasible. With all that being said, you should try and be as white hat as possible. I try to follow Google’s rules as much as I can. But if I followed them to the T it would cost me ridiculous amounts of money to get the same results I get right now.
Things To Do
Google has a monopoly on the Internet, there’s no point fighting it. Why not just give in, follow the rules and prosper? It makes sense unless you just want to be an outlaw. So here are a few things you can do in regards to link building, SEO and prospering in general:
- Write Amazing Content
- Have An Attractive Website
- Guest Blogging
- Article Marketing
- Press Releases
- Web2.0 Creation
- Build An Audience
Those are pretty much the best strategies you can use to win at SEO right now. Write amazing content, after all that is what Google ultimately wants. If webmasters spent just half as much time writing quality content as they did building backlinks; the world of SEO would be a better place – really.
If you have great content, people will stick around on your site for longer. They’ll read more articles, share your content, refer others to your website and even join your email list. The benefits are endless. Having an attractive website is the same. The uglier your site, the less time people will spend on it.
Now when it comes to link building, there are very few techniques that are OK with Google. First guest blogging, it’s a no brainer. If you’re building a blog and trying to build a real audience, guest blogging is the way to go. It provides traffic, credibility and backlinks. The problem is, in most niches guest blogging just isn’t feasible.
You could however contact random blogs and offer them a free article in return for a contextual link back to your site. Many webmasters go for that because it works. It’s a natural way of obtaining links, high quality ones too. As for article marketing, you could argue that its against the rules.
If you’re spinning bullshit content and submitting it to thousands of directories, then forget it. That defeats the object of what I’m trying to say. You should write 100% unique articles and submit them to one directory each. Yes, spinning your articles and submitting them to 1000+ directories is far more attractive.
But a single unique article on 1 high Page Rank directory like Ezine Articles does carry a lot of weight. They also drive traffic and that’s one factor I believe Google will pay close attention to very soon. Is the backlink sending you traffic? If it is, it’s probably a natural backlink and if not, it’s probably been created with some tool. Makes logical sense to me.
Writing articles and submitting them to one directory is a great link building tactic. It may be expensive, but its essential even in the most limited quantities. Next Press Releases, an excellent way to build links. PR backlinks don’t seem to be as effective as they once were. But they do dramatically help. If you’re doing a load of black hat link building, press releases make your links seem natural.
If a load of news sites are talking about yours, it doesn’t seem so unnatural when you start getting hundreds of new backlinks. Web2.0 creation is similar to article marketing. Manually creating and building web2.0 properties is great for building links and driving traffic. Again, it can get expensive but it’s more than worth it.
Web2.0 sites like Hubpages, Blogger and Squidoo all provide great backlinks. Most SEO’s spin articles and publish hundreds of “unique” variations of them on web2.0′s. Because of this Google has devalued their value. Eventually web2.0′s that consist of badly spun articles are removed. So manually writing articles and using them to create high quality web2.0′s is in fact a great investment.
For one, you get high quality backlinks. Secondly you can promote the web2.0′s with other links (black hat links) and rank them on Google to drive traffic to your own site. For some of my sites, I have web2.0′s manually built each month. It costs around $2-3 per manually built web2.0, but if you target keywords and rank them – it’s totally worth it.
Conclusion
That just about covers the basics of “semi white hat” link building and what you should be doing on top of using blog networks. If you’re building a large site you should be building an audience. Again, it’s not feasible in most niches. Nobody is going to read a weekly newsletter on soap dispensers – for example.
However if you’re building a site in any niche that has a demand for information; build an audience. Your audience will keep coming back to your site, quickly decreasing its Alexa rank, sharing its articles and growing its traffic.
I 100% endorse the use of blog networks. At the end of the day SEO is corrupt, it’s a big fat lie. With that being said, we should try and be as careful as possible.
So continue to use blog networks, as one falls pick up another one. As one link building strategy fails you, use another. While at the same time incorporate some white hat SEO into your overall strategy. But most importantly, build a website that has value. Value is ultimately what the search engines want.
Build valuable assets that will genuinely help people and improve the quality of their life. Don’t piss people off, try and cheat the system and spam the web just so you can make a buck. Value Pays.
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{ 82 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post, Jamie.
I have been shifting my focus to social media for traffic. I’m getting some good results and I learned it is actually easier than seo nowadays for getting traffic. I still do SEO though!
PS: Do you use google webmaster tools for all your sites? I like to keep google in the dark about my sites as much as possible. Or do you think that the webmaster tools are a good tool to use?
Hey Belgian Guy…
Yeah, social media is cool and while it works; I prefer SEO. Saying that I’m getting sick of fighting Google with black hat SEO and shifting my focus to more long term “natural” SEO like I talked about in this post.
As far as using webmaster tools goes… I like to keep Google in the dark too. I can imagine Google uses Analytics and Webmaster Tools to spy on us. There are other private (paid) tools that can help us do what they do.
Oh, it would be great if you added a search function to your blog. I wanted to read one of your older blogs but had to go back to google search to find it. Just a thought
Yeah, tried one before and it wasn’t very accurate. Will look for a better alternative.
” At the end of the day SEO is corrupt, it’s a big fat lie. ”
I love it.
I think a lot of people are pulling their hair out, I know I have been. Living your life by Google is a bi**ch. They are fickle bastards and only in it to see how much they can squeeze out of everyone.
I found a place where you could post articles, all unique, on other websites: http://myblogguest.com/. That said, I am not sure how many articles I want to write and how much time I want to spend on this. I’m a bit sick with the way things are going in general. I’ve spent the last 1.5 years learning this crap and now they’ve moved the goalpost.
http://gizmodo.com/5895010/the-case-against-google%29.. This is an interesting article on how Google has been muddying the waters and why.
Great article.
I know how you feel Sarah, it’s a real bitch when you think you’ve finally learnt something and then the whole game changes. It happens all the time and we must learn how to adapt and anticipate future changes. My Blog Guest is good.
With Guest Blogging there are two strategies. The build an audience strategy i.e. guest post on high traffic blogs in your niche. Then the solely SEO strategy i.e. write decent articles and publish them on as many high Page Rank blogs as possible.
Outsource it, PERIOD. You can hire someone for $1-2/hour if you look hard enough, everyone can afford a full time virtual assistant at $150-300 ish per month or even less. If you can’t shift your mindset, work a few extra hours or figure out how to make a few more sales each month.
p.s. interesting article!
Jamie,
This is exactly why I have switched to the blog model now. Just keep producing good content, make a huge blog and then sell advertising. I too am so sick of the changes, it’s time to revamp thinking.
I am doing this with several blogs now. I’m done with the small niche game!
Fantastic article Jaime, I agree with you 100%. Our network of sites is already feeling ripples from this onslaught from Google. We also had 3 blogs deindexed that were solely carrying content from ‘Blog Networks’. Looking at the content it’s no surprise that Google doesn’t want this stuff in their index, we were absolutely horrified with the amount of complete and utter shit that had been posted on our blogs. People should buck up their ideas and start producing decent quality content, that’s what Google wants.
If more people looked at things from Google’s perspective and that of the Google user we wouldn’t be having this problem. Because of the mass of ‘short cutters’ that will spew out their shit, for a quick buck we all suffer. With that being said, half the competition walked out the door this week.
Link diversity is certainly key and I believe that hard work and ‘manual’ content has allowed us to fair well since the first Panda updates.
Peace out & keep up the great work!
James
Damn right James! We all need to focus on helping people by providing high quality content. I think there are two problems though, cost and knowledge. Most marketers start sites for the sake of ranking and making money. When in reality they have no clue about the niche they’re going into so they end up spending $3/article for some Indian dude to write a load of bullshit.
I think the answer is, only start sites in niches you’re truly interested in. Either that or you better be willing to spend a lot more on creating valuable assets by hiring people who know what they’re writing about.
When will the changes stop, that’s my question. In 2010 and early 11 SEO was fantastic. It seemed at the time that my niche sites were an unstoppable army of passive income producers. I should have sold them while the going was good.
As with 99% of my little sites, I know nothing about them, their niches or how I could even begin to help their visitors. Oh well, lessons learnt – It’s time to loosen the wallet and spend more time creating valuable content.
I’m waiting on my larger sites to age enough to rank. They are not 4 months old yet. One of my sites got slapped by Google. I hope it comes back.
Today, I’m thinking I will just do niche sites. 1,000 to 2,000 ewm domains. I find they rank even with no content or backlinks, after 6-9 months. I just put an adsense skyscraper on several sites last night and already got a click.
I’m looking at the ctr themes. Not sure I want to learn how to use that right this minute. Very frustrating. I’m tired of pouring money in this crap. Really.
I’ve read on forums that people are afraid to link at all right now. We never know what will happen. I hope UAW does not get hit.
As my friend in London says, Google doesn’t care about organic search. It is in their best interest to have crap at the top so people have to click on the ads. They’ve shoved natural results down in so many categories. They have made “Chinese herbs” a local result? Do you really think they think that someone is so stupid he cannot type “Dallas Chinese herbs” into Google? No, they want to control all commerce.
I have to say, remember how arrogant and evil AOL was? They started to think they could do whatever they wanted. Treated people like crap. It didn’t seem to work out so well for them. We are all subject to market forces as well as governmental ones.
It’s good to have a place to vent.
This is a hot topic. In case anyone here wants to vent, or just laugh at others venting.
http://trafficplanet.com/topic/1885-aln-lost-5297-domains-in-1-week/
And furthermore, I hate this new crap where Google is showing author’s faces next to the search results. I don’t want to see them.
This company is just filled with people who have to justify their existence by constant changes to the algo.
It is kind of like the government. The employees have to write lots of stupid, worthless reports to pretend like they are working.
Google needs to stop it. I should not have to look at all those faces looking back at me from the search results.
Well said! I hate those damn faces, but they do improve click through rates.
I’m thinking of getting a model picture to use for mine… Or, maybe a baby. I can play along too.
Yeah… A buddy of mine has been experimenting with using hot girls, he says it’s drastically improved click through rates… LOL.
LOL. I wonder how many of these pictures are real. It’s going to get bad, I think. Over time, all kinds of crazy people will be staring back at you when you perform a simple search.
I reiterate, Google has too many engineers who are trying to justify their existence by coming with new bells and whistles. We should have the option to turn the images off when we search..
Great post man, way to keep me informed with the seo world.
http://mlmbigbrother.com
No problem Brandon, good to see you on here.
Hi Jamie..
..So I’m hoping, after all I’ve read around this topic that my website, which is based on unique and interesting content but uses BMR to get up the ranking should be safer than some..Yes?
Hey Sharon, it seems the majority of Build My Rank users have been affected in some way or another. The fact that your site uses interesting unique content has no relevance. This is a link building game.
It’s more so about if your site has been using other link building tactics. The people who’ve been badly affected have been using BMR as their primary link building solution. If your link profile consists of more than BMR, you shouldn’t be too badly affected.
As I said, diversity is the key. You should be getting links from at least 10 sources, so if one goes down you have a maximum of 10% loss in rankings if that.
If you used BMR, all your links are dropped or devalued. They are toast, Sharon.
I’m not sure if people are being penalized in any other way for using those links.
I’m thinking that UAW might be OK. The reason Google penalized the others is that those “snippets” were crap and did not contribute to the internet. They were not for readers, they were for the search engines. I think the article submissions could be read for informational value. Let’s cross our fingers..
Yes, let’s cross our fingers. I still believe many blog networks will recover. The ones that “close to the public” will stay around for a while. All the networks that are open for Matt Cutts and other Google demons to demolish are screwed if they insist on closing them all down.
UAW is more of a content syndication service. There’s a huge difference between black hat link building and content syndication, the latter is 100% ok.
Great. I have had some stomach churning feelings in the last week. I wasn’t sure if UAW was really white hat.
I have so many domains and so many plans. Google has a point about BMR, those “snippets” were just too obvious to be allowed to go on.
I’ve gotten good results from UAW. However, I think I built too many links to one of my sites. It was on page two, now it is nowhere to be found. I am holding my breath. I’m also moving on to the niche sites. I only have about 100 websites to do before June, so I can have a vacation.
OK, at least 50. I might go to London. I am for sure going to Paris
Haha, sounds like a plan. What SEO are you doing for the sites exactly?
I am experimenting. I do submitedge.com directory submissions on some of them. I have some more niche sites that I am going to try to rank with UAW.
I don’t want to just depend on UAW. If they crash, hopefully by then my sites will be aged enough to be held up by the directory links. I’m paranoid about it.
However, I’m sick of forking over money for directory submissions. I will only do that on the juicy categories. I just got an Adsense click from a picture I posted of acupuncture on the leg. That site is new and is not ranking anywhere right now. I’m still adding content and submitted an article. I just put a Google ad on it so Googlebot would pay me a visit and scan all my articles.
I’m finding I seem to make more money on sites where I write fewer articles. It is weird. People just read all my articles and do not click much on my acupuncture site. I have a site about an herb that is only 400 searches per month that makes good money. Very weird.
Without question, the BEST article on SEO I have ever read. My rankings dropped off the face of the earth just the other day – however I was ranking #1 for “best blogs” above Time Magazine. My little humor site should probably not have been at #1. Ha.
For the time being, I resubmitted my site for consideration at GWT, and have stopped link building. I have a pretty big audience who reads my stuff, retweets it, shares on FB, etc.
In the end, content is king. Maybe not for internet marketers looking to sell affiliate products, but for those of us looking to build a long term brand.
But, maybe I’ll throw a few more bucks at a network, once the dust settles. Man did that work great for the past year.
Thanks Delfin…
Google is screwing Internet Marketers. They’re making it very difficult for us to build review sites, Adsense or any other kind of site that makes money through traditional Internet Marketing.
As let’s be honest; there is no possibility of getting the thousands of links you need naturally to rank a tiny review site for its niche keywords. Amazon for example, I know a few people who’ve had their Amazon incomes demolished.
They built up a few hundred 5-30+ page review sites. Of course they used blog networks and other tools to get their rankings, because nobody in the “canon 3600″ niche is going to link to their site. Even if they did, they would never get enough links to compete.
So the niche site business is becoming increasingly more difficult. Instead Google wants the giant authorities to rank for all those little niche keywords because they “probably” have better content.
Then there are blogs like yours. Probably the best way to go. Write amazing content, build up a following and get your readers to share/bookmark your stuff. Even then, unless your blog explodes it’s very difficult to get top rankings without the help of black hat SEO.
Fucking Balls, what else can we say?
You’re dead on – I love that guys are still selling ScrapeBox blast lists. Hilarious. Yeah IM is really in trouble. But…
If you can build up a great site with a real following, you’re on the right track. It will just take awhile. Sadly, review sites are going the way of the dinosaurs, and let’s face it, weren’t that helpful to consumers.
(although getting someone to write 1000 words for $10 was pretty awesome).
Here’s what I do. My brand is humor, and my content is good. Now, I charge for text adverts and make my own rates. Yeah, I’m not killing it, but this is a long-term strategy.
But, man, I still use blog networks and yep, they still work. Until they don’t (all will be sniffed out soon, unfortunately, based on the no-traffic Google will see eventually – plus all the random content. I don’t believe Google actually cares about the content quality, but who knows.).
I believe the next networks will be smarter and start a system sending automated bogus traffic to show up, spend time on the site and leave comments. Whoever develops this technology will be huge.
Funny and yeah – the new networks will be a lot smarter. Authority Link Network already have version 2.0 out since the “bang”. The private networks that carefully accept new customers will do better than public networks – they’ll most likely get banned.
Once Google starts something, they tend to finish it. Thanks for the input.
Great post ! you share with us. Its very helpful for me thank you so much for sharing this post.
Yes, I’ve noticed Amazon is blasting pages with products suiting certain categories to page one. I wonder how we can compete with that? I also see livestrong.com putting a bunch of articles on different topics and deeplinking those pages.
They have just made it harder. I am going niche and super niche.
I have several sites that are really good, I’m adding articles on each keyword in that category and deeplinking also. So far, UAW has helped that a lot. I’ve definitely slowed down though. I don’t want one of those dreaded notices about too much backlinking.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be too worried about link building too much with UAW. To the sites that got the notice… I was submitting multiple articles daily through:
• Unique Article Wizard ]
• My Article Network
• Authority Link Network
• Free Blog Links
• Backlinks Kingdom
• Article Marketing Robot
• Article Ranks
Also senuke.
First of all, I applaud you on being so well-versed in this business at such a young age, and secondly, I want to thank you for explaining this situation in such detail. I am not directly affected by this change, and therefore I can be cocky and say it is good that Google is trying to weed out the fake link-building methods. However, I realize that there is an inherent danger in this move for all of us, because it means Google can make a move that ruins our efforts as well, or that the companies who lost this battle will come over to the SEO techniques we use, and it might reduce our chances as well. Nevertheless, I hope quality will prevail over quantity and the hard-working business owners will only benefit from future changes.
Thanks for this long and informative article!
Best wishes,
Leonard
Thank you Leonard, appreciate the comment.
So true… Those who haven’t been affected by this change may laugh now – but who knows what may happen in the future. Google have a monopoly on the Internet much like the bankers/government do on the world.
It’s got to the point where I think it’s better to play by the rules rather than try and bend them. 2011 was a terrible year for black hat SEO’s, I believe it’s only going to get worse.
One of my sites is still in never never land. I had about 6 articles on UAW and my site was on page two. I had BOTW.org and even yahoo directory on that site.
How long does it take to recover from this?
That UAW can be dangerous stuff. It is very confusing. I’m having deep pages I linked to from my article show up very highly in one of my categories.
Are you more likely to be penalized for linking to the home page than the deep linking?
It seems that the very thing you HAD to do, is now getting you penalized. Using anchor text is the problem.
http://www.seowizz.net/2012/03/the-end-of-easy-seo.html
I’m going to start to use links just like that, no anchor text, or phrase match only. I’m seeing sites rank for pages only. I’m going to deep link to my exact word match pages with just a bare link. I just have to figure out how to do that on UAW.
I also have slowed down my articles to two per day.
Deep linking and anchor text diversity are essential, also very easy to do with unique article wizard. With UAW just submit the minimum per day so you drip feed for the longest possible time period.
I would use three types of anchor text. Exact match, broad match and no match. Exact match being the keywords you want to rank for. Broad match being relevant keywords or sub keywords. No match being URL or “click here”, “website” or “page” etc.
I’ll write a post about it soon – I cover it in my SEO course.
UAW is very good. They won’t even allow you to have two links to the home page in the resource box.
I have started with 10 submissions per day. I tried two, but it didn’t seem to work well. I’ve had great results with them. I’ve got some authority sites I’m doing deep linking for.
I still have seen no sign of one of my sites that I put too many articles on. I’m not sure if I should keep building links to it or leave it alone. I’ve read different things. It’s not like I don’t have enough other sites to do..
The news of Build My Rank’s shut down totally shocked the business and lay cowardice into each and every black hatter out there. Every lifetime they clean up the search effects they make a ton of praise from other internet sites and companies.
Traxis´s last [type] ..Control Panic Attacks
Very true Traxis, we’re living in unprecedented times.
It looks like UAW are now carefully screening new customers. I think this is a good idea. I hope Google does not slap them. Worst case scenario, I do guest blogging..
An e-mail I just got:
Due to recent events, we find new subscribers are flocking to UAW, too
many subscribers too quickly can negatively effect our service levels and
as a result we will be limiting new subscriber enrollment and assessing the
quality of each new subscriber before acceptance into UAW.
This will not affect current subscribers or renewing subscribers. It will
only effect NEW and RETURNING subscribers.
It is likely that we will be wait listing all NEW and RETURNING
subscribers in the very near future as we do not want our services levels
to be negatively impacted by our enthusiastic new subscribers seeking a
safe haven for real, authentic and unique article marketing.
I got the email too and I’m damn glad. UAW is still a safe place to submit as they are intelligent. Still sucks that all ALN and other blog network customers have been deleted. Several blog networks removed their customers that signed up in the last 3 months..
I had to chuckle about the weekly newsletter about soap dispensers.
I do believe there is a grey hat area that’s more white than black when it comes to the link building. Aren’t articles you put out there in order to promote your site still natural? If you’re not spamming them with spun content and a tool, that’s just natural promotion.
Andrew´s last [type] ..How to filter a list in Excel to provide a list of unique values
Haha, but it’s true. Articles you put out there aren’t natural at all, they’re “against the rules”. Fucking Google…. Natural promotion like that isn’t tolerated. I believe we need to move into grey hat seo. Manually writing, manually spinning and automatically submitting is the way forward.
- Jamie
I rank so well in Bing. Where content really is king. One of my sites is on page one with them after 3 months. Lots of unique content, very good if I say so myself. On Google, cannot be found…
I wish Google did not dominate things.
It is pretty absurd to think that you could not even do article marketing. If someone at Google thinks that is bad, they need a head adjustment.
Hi Jamie,
Thanks for a great overview of the whole new Panda slap. I was totally confused as to what we could still do and what was a total no no from the Big G boys. You’ve put my mind at ease
I know you have been a great fan of SENukeX, so where does it stand now after this Panda update? Is it still of use or is it dead too ( though that would be a real shame)
Regards
Don
Hey Don, I’ve been a huge fan of Senuke for a long time. Before the panda updates, you could copy and paste any content into the best spinner, spin it with 1 click, paste it into senuke, schedule, submit and whola… You’d be on page 1 within 2 weeks.
That was the reality before the first panda updates. After them, senuke got really ineffective. So I moved from senuke to blog networks. Blog networks kicked ass and they still do.
The reason senuke became ineffective was because Google caught onto the tool. Once they figured out which sites were being abused by senuke and other software users, they paid close attention to them.
Long story short, the days where you can submit crappy content to get top rankings are long gone. Senuke is effective and is my go to tool for many things. However I do think Magic Submitter is better right now. More sites, more types of sites, more diversity full stop.
Anyway you need to manually write and spin articles for submissions. Make sure every spin reads very well.
Manual web2.0 and article directory links are rocking right now. As everyone should know Build My Rank shut down. With all my BMR snippets I’ve been building manual web2.0 and article directory links.
For web2.0′s, I’ve taken 2 bmr snippets and created 2 post web2.0 sites. Adding images to the posts, making them each 300+ posts and linking to the pages on my sites that the BMR snippets were linking to. The difference is using differnet anchor text. Mostly broad instead of exact match.
Most people had at least a few hundred BMR snippets. 100-200 manual web2.0′s like that will get you insane rankings. For every web2.0 I’ve built, I’ve stored it and its post URL’s, bookmarked them and promoted them with dripable.
For article directory links, I’ve just been combining 2 BMR snippets into 1 article and submitting to 1 high Page Rank article directory.
So that’s been working well and for senuke just manually write and spin your promo articles.
Wow. UAW are making a bunch of changes. I went to sign in and they have you accept new terms. They are basically saying that if you work for a search engine, you are not welcome and need to close your account.
It will be a sorry day if they get hit. Very sorry.
Yes it will be, only time will tell. But gotta love those terms, LOL.
Great article . Think I will concentrate my efforts on more web 2.0s! I do actually get some decent traffic with sites such as hubpages and squidoo too which is always good.
I’m a newbie to all of this so your discovering your website through BHT was great and proof that signature links do work!
Adam´s last [type] ..If You Ignore On Page SEO Now, Google Will Hate You Later
That’s right Adam. I am now recommended everyone hedge their bets by “hosting” a lot of their content on other websites such as web2.0′s and article directories. The problem is that you don’t control what’s on the sites. So if a web2.0 wants to capture your visitors email addresses or make money from via ads they can without your permission.
Still, spreading your content between 10+ sites is a good strategy.
I signed up to get articles delivered to a few domains that I don’t use. I figured that if everyone did that, it would help.
I have found they send me articles that have nothing to do with the topic of my site. They also send multiple articles from the same site. So, the gearbox people have two articles on my site..
I’m pretty sure the UAW is what caused one of my sites to tank. Unless someone else nuked me with negative SEO.
http://storify.com/themezoom/wp-robot-getting-sites-de-indexed
I did a search on UAW de indexed and your article is on page two. I also found the above article. Apparently, the UAW plugin caused his sites to tank. Of course, it could have been a duplicated content penalty.
I’m wondering if guest blogging is a better idea… What a nightmare.
I think UAW should have the opportunity to have 10 resource boxes to vary your anchor text. Having only 3 is not enough. Supposedly you are supposed to be able to make other boxes, but I have not figured out how.
Any suggestions on other blog networks? Is everyone feeling like a survivor after a nuclear war? Who is still alive?
This sucks. My Article network has closed to new users. I was going to join that..
I need a second blog network.
Everyone is closing to new members, they’re all terrified. I would keep blog networks to a minimum right now and start using web2.0 sites/article directories more with high quality content. About to write an update post.
I still use link building in my job. It was a huge help to me. Thanks for letting me join the conversation. Keep up the good work.
Jam´s last [type] ..Good Low Carb Diets
I don’t know what web 2.0 is. I keep reading that. Do you mean ezinearticles?
I think Google can track these article sites, because they all use the same plugins to receive articles. I would think that is a large footprint.
I’m thinking that submitting each site to some directories is good. They are an impartial link. They won’t rank you though..
Google so screwed me. I had this ginseng site and had paid a bunch of money for a yahoo directory. This was a year ago. I finally climbed to the top of the page. Now, they are putting governmental sites at the top of the page.
There was another guy who had a ginseng store also. I haven’t found him. I am now on page two.
As soon as I got to page one, they started inserting all their “shopping results” on the page. I should have been getting 3,000 to 4,000 traffic per month, it was more like 200 after that..
I’m looking forward to your article.
You only had to Google web2.0′s or what are web2.0′s to find out.
They are sites that allow their users to post their own articles/create their own blogs. Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, Hubpages, Squidoo, Wetpaint and so on.
I would far rather ask you than Google it.
OK. So, I need to set up some blogs on these platforms, write my own articles and link to all my sites?
Is that better than guest blogging on other people’s sites?
Well guest blogging is the best option, but not exactly feasible for most people. If you’re outside of Internet Marketing, business or health – it’s difficult to find enough blogs that’ll accept a guest blog post.
You can email the owners of blogs in any niche making a proposal, but I’ve tried it in the past and got very few responses.
The 1 article = 1 backlink concept:
Write a 400+ word article, create a web.2.0 with it, add images, a video and make it look nice. Link to your site in the web2.0 and link to it with an image like “get more information”. The key is to make the web2.0′s good enough so people will read the articles on them and click through to your website.
Building links this way takes much more time, but the traffic you can get makes it worth it. The same rules apply for article marketing.
You know what is funny? They sent me an e-mail offering a discount if I pre-pay for 6 months. I wonder if that is because they might not be worth much two months from now?
I’m just suspicious now. I think the fact that the blogs are low page rank makes them not so manipulative as the other high PR blogs.
Also, you are writing a complete article, not a “snippet”.
It looks like backlinks kingdom has been hit. They have been de-indexed. That means Google is going after article networks too.
“90% of our article sites have been de-indexed in Google.”
Apparently, Spencer at Niche Pursuits had his adsense account shut down.
Yeah, I had a feeling Backlinks Kingdom was next. Too bad since it offered a lot of link diversity. Article networks are being hit, the article marketing robot default list has been hit. Mass article submissions are still working, you just need a really good list.
Or otherwise submitting articles to the top tier directories only.
http://www.aaronchua.com/2012/04/niche-pursuits-just-got-banned-from.html
Google indexed this article in an hour… This guy says that Spencer made Google look stupid for making thin sites.
Spencer had it coming. He practically chuckles away in his posts about how he’s making so much money with his micro niche sites. He literally builds or built hundreds upon hundreds of 1-10 page sites with the goal of each site ultimately making $10/month.
He must be a little slow (sorry spencer), I just don’t understand why he did things the way he did. He could have backed his network up months ago and avoided his ban. Oh well… Lesson learnt.
It looks like some people are finding their backlinks de-indexed on UAW.
http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/471155-unlimited-submission-thousands-blogs-just-click-13.html
Sorry. I think I misunderstood that thread. I did a Google search and it pulled up this page. It appears that was for seo destiny, which is a private blog network. Still confused though.
Now, don’t go banning me Jamie!
Hi Jamie ! great article! I guess that blog networks is a danger thing right now, but is so powerfull ! I loose some rankings in a few webpages because i was using ALN.
SENUKE X got me very good results but its not enough so i need something more powerfull.
What do you say about mixing SENUKE with Magic submitter? I know they do the same thing but i wonder if i use both for link diversity will be a good thing. Thanks
100% use magic submitter, it’s excellent. Magic submitter submits to way more sites than senuke does. Magic submitter also submit to 2 more groups of sites; document sharing sites and wp blogs that are exclusive to magic submitter users.
Senuke may be the cooler, easier and faster tool; but it’s not as good.
I have UAW and am trying to decide if I should cancel it. I have a few days left. I have had good results, except one of my sites was penalized and dropped from the serps. I had no explanation, it just vanished after I did a bunch of articles on UAW.
Do you think I should drop the UAW? They do have legitimate article sites they submit to.
Are you familiar with submityourarticle.com???? They also submit your article to ezinearticles and have the option of not spinning your article.
I’m very confused right now on what to do. Some of the articles UAW sent me were crap and they sent me the same articles several times.
Did you see what Google did with local search? They dropped all the people who were not signed up for local search with them. If your site was not anchored to Places, it dropped several pages. I found that out Monday morning. They reversed it today.
My London friend’s sites dropped if not anchored and my local Dallas sites dropped. Google can be scary.
Please let me know what you think about these two article services. If you think their end is near, I don’t want to waste my time.
Thanks.
Well, I think right now just stay away from UAW. One of my SEO buddies tells me they are flat on their back. Others say they are completely fine to keep submitting to. Honestly I’d just stay away from any kind of public blog network until the dust settles.
Haven’t had any experience with submityourarticle so couldn’t say. The problem with UAW is that they’re moderation system isn’t quite good enough and they allow a lot bad really bad content to be submitted. That would make them a target for Google to demolish. I recommend focusing on a solid “white hat” foundation right now, especially if you don’t already have one.
A solid foundation being at least 100 white hat links. That means 100 links from either article directories, web2.0 sites or guest blogging using the 1 article = 1 backlink principle. I would do that and get some social signals running.
Clean up your site to the max and add all of your social profiles. Claim G+ authorship, get a youtube, twitter, facebook and obviously G+ account per site. Also have your domains each on their own IP address + hosting + privately registered. After you’ve got that solid foundation. Have your articles manually spun and submitted via senuke/magic submitter/article marketing robot (with a good list) and anything else that is safe at the time.
Thanks. I’m thinking they will be hit soon too. They are spinning articles pretty badly. The other article site gives you the option to not spin. I think that is a lot more white hat. If there is such a thing as white hat.
What do your SEO buddies to for links? I guess they have their own networks.
I have a general question. If I have a site about one health topic, could I link to another site of mine on the blogroll? It is not for the links, it is for the traffic.
I’ve read that it is not good to interlink your sites.
I’m still trying to get them to reconsider one of my sites. If they do not let it back into the index, I will use another advertising service such as media.net. It seems Google is really on a rampage lately.
I’m starting to wonder if all this banning Google is doing and not paying people might seep into the mainstream media at some point.
They somehow think that customer service is not necessary.
http://blog.hatchlings.com/post/20171171127/dont-be-evil-how-google-screwed-a-startup
http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/36191-lookingconfident/501151-google-cpc-drop-ultimately-means-more-for-publishers
This is really why Google is cracking down. They have paid more to their publishers than they want to. The people who were ranking were funneling money away and costing them money.
I bet it was good for them for a while, now that they are losing money on it, they are cracking down.
http://gigaom.com/2012/03/16/this-is-why-google-is-losing-the-future/
This bit is scary:
It will only get worse now that Google is about to institute there new organic search, where there goal is to give answers, instead of providing links to get the answers.
I wouldn’t be too worried about it Sarah. They’ve been talking about Google making a 360 degree shift like that for years. It’s never happened. If it does, we’ll use Bing, Yahoo or whatever other search engines gain a bigger market share.
Link building plays an important role in creating a search engine optimization strategy. Search engines like to rank credible sites that present users with relevant information..
Krizza´s last [type] ..Content Writer Devon
It’s official. Every link I built on UAW is gone now. My sites have dropped.
They must be devaluing all those links and also putting a penalty on you.
Thank God I only found out about this crap service two months ago and did not build my business on it.
I could work on a bunch more sites using other methods, wasting my time. Then, Google can come along and devalue all those links too.
Fully fed up now.
I’m sure many bloggers are affected about this. Most of them are using link building as one of their strategies. This could really have a big impact in the blogging world.
Alison Day´s last [type] ..Director of Customer Care
Some good advice be interesting how all this plays out.
Hello Jamie,
Thanks for the refreshingly frank blog. It’s interesting, as most people I know who outsource to places like India, do get great results in the SERPS, and even after panda it still works.
Another seo specialist has said that he gets more links by writing blogs everyday instead of focusing on link building (which doesn’t sound is the case with you).
As a customer I would like my brand to be treated respectfully ie. with no shite linked to it, and also to develop great content that people want to link to. However it can be more cost effective in the short term to do a typical link building campaign.
Anyway, the debate continues!
Cheers,
William
http://seabrook-associates.com
The debate will definitely continue. There are so many variables in SEO that it’s become impossible to end this debate. It really depends on your site’s situation, its niche, on-page and link building history.
In an ideal world; content would be king and we could all rank well by writing excellent content. It’s just not the case. I write pretty good stuff on here, but rarely get more than 3 natural backlinks.
Think about it, let’s say 1% of visitors link to your content (which is near impossible), you’d need at least 50,000 visitors to all of the pages on your site to compete at 500 links/page.
It’s a whole lot more cost effective to manipulate search engine rankings with artificial link building than it is to pay for white hat SEO campaigns like link baiting etc.
If you can get enough natural links to compete by writing good content then by all means do it. But the chances are you can’t – so do what works for you – not everyone else.