10 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
10 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Enough of this google nonsense!!

by lanfear63
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
As little as 3 weeks ago I was making great little micro niche blogs, all with original content, useful content, all well seo'd (though not to the extreme). I had 13 up over time. sites. Was making about 150.00 a month in adsense and so was going to build more. Had learned the seo ropes and had a nice little system going. Nice diverse range of backlinks. Then the sea bird that walks upright layed his egg. Sites, all but the latest 3 all but dissapeared or dropped in rankings. Adsense now pennies a day.

Conclusion. What the hell was I thinking!!! Relying on google at all. Never was a stable model to make a living anyway. (or at least move towards it) Anyone who continues down this path is mad or doomed to failure eventually. You could never keep up.

So for the last 3 weeks all site building and promoting has stopped. Worked out out a whole new plan to drive traffic to new sites I put up. Video marketing. It was a wakeup call but if you can drive traffic directly to a site by some other way than relying on the search engines, go for it. You can drive traffic to autoblogs, new sites or directly to offers. How powerfull is that!!!

So on a new path now. Would suggest you abandon those get on page one of google WSO's now. Old news, old times.

AS the Starwars Joke goes 3 days ago. May the 4th be with you.
#google #nonsense
  • Profile picture of the author jackpot9
    Good that you learnt this lesson early. Alot of people only found out the hard way after making a full-time income by building a business around relying on Google's search traffic and then seeing everything fall overnight.

    Not the best way to live.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6197634].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author cooler1
    This Penguin update seems to be the most drastic so far. After Panda I saw a decrease in traffic, but then it stabilized a week or two later but with Penguin it's like Google have taken a sledge hammer to the SERPs and the pieces aren't going to be put back together unless we spend ages trying to fix them ourselves by optimizing and figure what the heck is going on.

    I guess if you've got a few hundered sites and you make sure you're SEO is incredibly diverse then you can rely fully on Google because even if 100 sites are affected by an algo change then you'd have all the others. Obviously you'd need an organized outsourcing team to handle that many sites.
    Signature

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6199483].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author bokidarkness
    Google is my biggest fear. Why? Because you can never rely on them. You should start using PPC, Media buying and other methods. Never put all your egs in one basket.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6199540].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi lanfear63,

    Sorry to hear about your loss in rankings.

    I agree with your decision to not rely on a single source for your business model.

    Having said that, I would not classify Google as an unstable nor unreliable model. They are the single largest source of traffic, so it would be unwise to give up on them. Instead, consider learning what you did that caused your decline in rankings, and adjust.

    Google's latest update targeted web spam, if you were relying on web spam to promote your website then you would have been hit hard this update. I suggest that instead of thinking of Google Search as being unreliable, think of web spam as an unreliable method of promoting your websites.

    Sure, it takes more time and money to use white hat methods, but the results can be effective and far more reliable.
    Signature

    * Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
    *     Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6199755].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
      Originally Posted by dburk View Post

      Sure, it takes more time and money to use white hat methods, but the results can be effective and far more reliable.
      As long as competitors can send spam links to your site AND damage your rankings in the process... your point is meh at best.

      Either become/build a large brand, build a massive community, introduce alternative traffic sources (not Google) or... be scared of every new algo update and/or your competitors. That's just how it is at the moment. Hopefully things will change in the future.
      Signature


      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6199868].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author dburk
        Originally Posted by bnetwork View Post

        As long as competitors can send spam links to your site AND damage your rankings in the process... your point is meh at best.

        Either become/build a large brand, build a massive community, introduce alternative traffic sources (not Google) or... be scared of every new algo update and/or your competitors. That's just how it is at the moment. Hopefully things will change in the future.

        Hi bnetwork,

        I see that you bought into that myth. That's right, I call it a myth because there is no credible evidence that I have seen, or heard of, to suggest otherwise. I have never seen a case where a competitors's website was taken down simply by sending web spam links. That seems to me to be a myth.

        I know that there are methods of sabotage that are certainly effective, however those methods are somewhat dangerous to those performing them. The act of sabotage through impersonation risks serious legal action and perhaps even criminal prosecution.

        As webmasters, we have always been at risk of sabotage and I am well aware of the recent case study that outlined that sabotage. This is not a new threat, nor is it a change in how Google devalues backlinks, at least not as far as I can detect. Let's not confuse correlation with causation.
        Signature

        * Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
        *         Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6200010].message }}
        • Profile picture of the author Mantasmo
          Originally Posted by dburk View Post

          I see that you bought into that myth. That's right, I call it a myth because there is no credible evidence that I have seen, or heard of, to suggest otherwise. I have never seen a case where a competitors's website was taken down simply by sending web spam links. That seems to me to be a myth.
          Nope, I'm afraid you're wrong here. I have plenty of evidence - in fact dozens of my own sites lost top 5 rankings after I blasted them with crappy spun public blog networks links (hoping to get #1's - lesson learned). Not recovered since and it has been months. I can do the same to any average webmaster with a decent website - no difference. This is exactly what I meant.

          I also know what you mean about sabotage and all that other stuff and yes, those things require more knowledge and carry more risk than reward in most cases. But that's not what I was trying to say.

          Fact is - start a beautiful niche website (any niche) and build lots of great, white hat backlinks. Once you start ranking for something decent - give me the domain and a couple keywords and I'll get it penalized.

          Now, and I mentioned this in my previous post, things might (hopefully) change soon and I won't be able to just kill average/small websites like that. Link devaluation - sure. But such harsh penalties are just insane...

          I track loads of sites... it's easy to spot a pattern when 10+ websites get hit on the same day and they all have nearly identical link profiles.

          I also agree that "white hat" (bull**** term IMO) backlinks are the way to go. Build high quality backlinks from sources that (hopefully) provide more than just a link (visitors).

          EDIT: Just re-read your replies and:

          Originally Posted by dburk View Post

          Google's latest update targeted web spam, if you were relying on web spam to promote your website then you would have been hit hard this update.
          Originally Posted by dburk View Post

          I have never seen a case where a competitors's website was taken down simply by sending web spam links. That seems to me to be a myth.
          These two statements directly contradict each other. I'm going to respectfully leave this thread now, thanks for your reply!
          Signature


          {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6200287].message }}
          • Profile picture of the author dburk
            Originally Posted by bnetwork View Post

            Nope, I'm afraid you're wrong here. I have plenty of evidence - in fact dozens of my own sites lost top 5 rankings after I blasted them with crappy spun public blog networks links (hoping to get #1's - lesson learned). Not recovered since and it has been months. I can do the same to any average webmaster with a decent website - no difference. This is exactly what I meant.

            I also know what you mean about sabotage and all that other stuff and yes, those things require more knowledge and carry more risk than reward in most cases. But that's not what I was trying to say.

            Fact is - start a beautiful niche website (any niche) and build lots of great, white hat backlinks. Once you start ranking for something decent - give me the domain and a couple keywords and I'll get it penalized.

            Now, and I mentioned this in my previous post, things might (hopefully) change soon and I won't be able to just kill average/small websites like that. Link devaluation - sure. But such harsh penalties are just insane...

            I track loads of sites... it's easy to spot a pattern when 10+ websites get hit on the same day and they all have nearly identical link profiles.

            I also agree that "white hat" (bull**** term IMO) backlinks are the way to go. Build high quality backlinks from sources that (hopefully) provide more than just a link (visitors).

            EDIT: Just re-read your replies and:





            These two statements directly contradict each other. I'm going to respectfully leave this thread now, thanks for your reply!
            I think you missed my point completely. If you rely on web spam for ranking, you can expect that to fail when Google devalues your web spam. If your rankings are based on backlinks from trusted and valuable sources you do not need to be concerned with the web spam myth.

            There is no contradiction in my statements, you seem to be making a leap in logic that I did not intend to imply. The two comments you parsed from my post do not contradict, but support my main point. Links that are devalued do not have impact on links that are not devalued. How can you make that connection? I certainly did not.

            I find that Google's algorithm is more granular than you seem to imply. While Google will occasionally de-index an entire website, their algorithms rank individual pages based on the elements on that page and the pages that link to and from that page. However, this does not imply that because some backlinks are devalued, all backlinks are devalued. Google is capable of more granularity than that.

            I have noticed a recent trend in discussions where it is implied that Google has abandoned this granularity, however there is no evidence that I have seen. It appears to me be just a new myth in the making.

            I do not doubt that you saw your rankings drop after you built web spam pointing to your website. I just do not buy into your broader conclusion that you can take down a website that has legitimately earned rankings by simply pointing web spam at that website. I find it far more plausible that the rankings drop you experienced was due to the devaluing of web spam that may have temporarily boosted the rankings before being discovered and devalued. It was bound to happen and it did.

            Your latest web spam blast may have accelerated the discovery, but the cause for the decline in rankings is that it was based on web spam to begin with. I do not buy the notion that the web spam has caused a devaluing of meritorious links. I have yet to see that, have you?
            Signature

            * Get Results - Outsource Your PPC Management |
            *             Don Burk Advertising & Marketing - www.donburk.com

            {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6200820].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Kevin Perry
    The problem alot of people face is over-optimizing to appease the mighty Google. Focus on appeasing your visitors instead. They are the ones that purchase your products and click on your ads.

    Kevin
    Signature
    Owner and Operator of 6StarMedia.com - A website design and marketing firm
    Marketing Consultant for AuctionAutoBidder.com - An eBay Auction Sniper service
    Check out one of my clients for Database Services - Pebble IT
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[6199986].message }}

Trending Topics