Denouncing the Google Dance, Slap

by AnneE
5 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Does anyone still feel they have a winning SEO formula?

I'm not asking anyone to reveal their SEO techniques, but honestly the message I've gotten in 2013 from Google is to just give up on ranking my own websites and go to where the traffic already is. The money I'm making on online marketing is through selling on Amazon -- products or Kindle, selling on Ebay, selling on Audible, selling (a bit) on Facebook. Website revenue from product sales or Adsense is horrible this year.

In a related topic, I got an email saying:
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We wish to thank you for linking to our site http://www.xxx.com/ from http://your_six_year_old_blog_where_we_guest_posted.com. Unfortunately, it has come to our attention that this link is against Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

It is important for us to bring our site into compliance, as we have been contacted by Google.

Please add a rel="nofollow" or remove our link from this page and any other page on your site. If you have any questions, please let us know.

Thank you,
Link-Removal-Team

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Huh? Google contacted a webmaster to get the link from MY website removed? So this company which had paid someone to write a nice content-relevant guest post is now paying someone to track me down and asking me to REMOVE the link they once wanted?

I'm going to honor such requests just based on personal politeness, but I am astounded that people are basically now undoing what they did last year to try and appease the great Google god. Personally, I give up. I love Google for searching, but only because it gives me the needle in the haystack. As a website creator I denounce the Google dance, slap and other sadistic actions and no longer want to play the game.

Am I the only one?
#dance #denouncing #google #slap
  • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
    I find it interesting you got busted for selling 'guest posts.' It seems this area is coming under greater scrutiny.

    Did you sell many of these posts? Does the blog look like a regular site?
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  • Profile picture of the author oogyboogawa
    Are you 150% sure that email actually came from the website owner?
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    • Profile picture of the author AnneE
      Originally Posted by oogyboogawa View Post

      Are you 150% sure that email actually came from the website owner?
      The actual owner had emailed me at the same email address I use as contact for the guest post and asked me to change their links to nofollow. They had not explained why. Then I got this second request which looked more canned about the same post and links at what is the email address associated with the domain in the domain registration info.

      The thing is, these are NOT PAID links and NOT PAID guest posts. This was me tossing out a guest post opportunity on a private forum and having a handful of people respond, but mixed in on this blog are posts that I wrote -- totally original content -- where there is no author information.

      I guess I feel that if such a guest post activity is being flagged as a problem, then how the heck can anyone have an SEO plan that they are confident will work?
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  • Profile picture of the author nicktyler
    It is not going to be easy for Google to decide what has been paid and what has not in terms of guest posting. As you say, the post in question is not paid and how would Google know if the site owner had thrown you a couple of bills or bought you a few beers one Friday night.

    They haev probably got the 'unnatural links' e-mail on WMT and not leaving anything to chance. Maybe even going too far with removing links.
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  • Profile picture of the author oogyboogawa
    I really doubt Google told them that specific link was problematic. Like nicktyler said, it is probably just an overreaction to a WMT notification of unnatural links... I would bet that if you took a look at their backlink profile you'd find more than a guest post or two that they should be more concerned with.
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