Plagiarism vs. Spinning

In some respects, article spinning is more ethical than simply “scraping” a site, or even worse, plagiarizing the content without giving proper credit.  Technically speaking, spinning software does create “original content”, at least content that is usually capable of passing a “duplication test” (such as CopyScape or ArticleChecker).  Article spinning or automatic content producers operate by taking existing articles and then automatically using a thesaurus database to replace the original sentences with slightly different wording.

This approach certainly worked during the development of SEO.  Hiring a “robot” to recreate the same repetitive actions as human beings does save a bundle and can expand a business.  If you can outsource tasks to automated machines, you can use your human workers for more creative tasks—or let them go entirely!  It’s SEO downsizing and it seems like a shrewd idea.

This strategy actually does a service to the author, sort of, as it is not considered stealing, and actually flatters the original writer, suggesting that the first article was worth “reselling.”  After all, just consider how popular “rewriting” or “repackaging” is in entertainment.  Formula TV shows and movies are the norm, and often times, writers copy their own ideas.  Ideas are not copyrightable, and sentences are not copyrightable.  Why, some writers even plagiarize themselves!  (And face inevitable disappointment from their fans and critics)

There was only one problem: writing is not a mindlessly repetitive process.  Even basic writing requires some degree of problem solving, matching and conversational know-how—the sort of skills a robot does not have.  Until we can create Lieutenant Commander Data, we do not possess the ability to create a robot that writes like a human.

“Rotating Accomplish Nor Research”

(Translation: Spinning Does Not Work)

Unfortunately, when it comes to Internet writing, we have seen strong evidence that spinning just doesn’t work.  As many human viewers found out (and Google and Yahoo have since picked up on) is that these spinning bots are incapable of writing engaging, coherent content.  Articles that have been “spun” tend to read poorly, replacing commonly used words with archaic expressions and overcomplicated sentence structures.  Furthermore, even rewritten content (rewritten by advanced spinning software or perhaps even by overseas writers paid to substitute words and pass plagiarism tests) do not fare well with search engines, thanks to recent algorithm updates.

As recently as 2009, spinning actually worked, and sites that rewrote quality content did not merit any sanctions by Google.  However, starting in 2010, Google began creating advanced filtering techniques to penalize sites that featured duplicate content.  By 2011, Google’s algorithm could target not only duplicate content sites but also “content farms”, which made it a point to rewrite content, or perhaps recycle ideas in an uncreative way.

The facts show that major search engines are now disqualifying websites that use any questionable method—including all forms of content recycling.  Once you are penalized by a search engine it is difficult to repair the damage.  If you are ever banned by a search engine, for blatant plagiarism or unauthorized scraping, then it is nearly impossible to earn back trust.  After all, robots never forgive…

As an SEO writing consultant, we recommend taking the high route and creating nothing but high quality original content that is of interest to human beings.  This will not only avoid penalties, but it will help you reach your targeted audience.  In the end, this is what truly matters in business.

Valerie Mellema is the owner of Words You Want and has over 6 years in the SEO writing industry. Words You Want offers SEO writing services for articles, blogs, eBooks and press releases.

Image Credit: http://xahlee.org/js/facebook_ethics.html

Imagine you spent hundreds of dollars on Facebook advertising and it resulted in only two more visitors to your website.

Does this sound familiar? It is not uncommon, especially for Peter Faulkner, chairman and owner of the small family business, Faulkner packaging.

Faulkner Packaging is a family business in the B2B industrial sector. It has been around since 1860 and passed down through generations.

Peter’s business was hit hard by the recession so he decided to start ramping up his online presence and sell his products online to reach a new set of customers. Though he knew nothing about online marketing he figured he would take the advice of the millions of people touting Facebook’s benefits and give it a try.

At nearly 60 years old, he claims he is not technologically savvy, but he jumped in anyways in response to the social media hoopla.

Peter journaled his progress while he developed his company’s online presence. He was thankful that setting up a Facebook page was not that difficult and he was up and running within days.

Here is how Peter described what happened to him:

 “I could not secure the Facebook page with the brand name until I had secured 30 likes. I sent around emails with links to the pages to my children, younger staff members and anyone else I could think of, asking them to ‘like’ my new pages. I got my likes for both and was able to secure the Facebook addresses.

Once my helpers stopped liking, I had expected the viral phenomenon of Facebook to generate more and more likes as the contagion of their likes spread to their friends and colleagues via their own Facebook pages.”

Much to Peter’s surprise he received no new likes and nothing happened.

I can hear my readers chomping at the bit with this one—but keep reading…

Peter decided to pay for Facebook ads and saw his “likes” increase, but after looking at his analytics, he realized only two of those fans actually clicked to visit his website.

Shutting Down the Facebook Campaign

What did he do in response? He gave up! He feels Facebook and its ads are a waste of time. But is that the consensus for every company?

General Motors seems to think so. The automaker recently pulled $10 million from its Facebook marketing budget. We don’t know if it was the failure of the campaign or a re-allocation of funds.

Does this spell the end to Facebook marketing strategies? I hardly think so.

What do you think Peter’s problem was? Was it Facebook in general or something he was doing wrong?

Here are my thoughts. I would also love to hear yours in the comments below.

Traditional vs. Inbound Marketing

Traditional marketers like Peter may have a hard time understanding the principles of inbound marketing vs. the quick return of traditional in-your-face advertising techniques. The two strategies are completely different and produce entirely separate outcomes.

Traditional marketing or outbound marketing involves banner ads, print ads, cold calling, junk mail, TV advertising, etc. These methods are more in-your-face and their publishers expect quick returns. Outbound marketing techniques still work especially for the large companies with multi-million and billion dollar advertising budgets. Yes, they are intrusive but they usually do the job if executed correctly.

Even though outbound marketing techniques are still alive and well, inbound marketing is becoming increasingly more important as business reputation and engagement is crucial to the modern consumer and their shopping habits.

Inbound marketers get found by their customers instead of jamming their business in customers’ faces. They build company cultures of trust and develop long-lasting relationships. They become so attractive that customers/prospects arrive at their OWN decision to work with them without being coerced.

Social media marketing is an inbound marketing technique. If you are a traditional marketer, much like good ol’ Peter, you will expect instant results, which does not happen in social media. Peter expected his Facebook page to explode with “Likes” once he published his page.

How long does it take to build a loyal following on Facebook? I will let you answer that question. We all know it doesn’t happen in a matter of days!

Looking Sexy on Facebook

Do you think Peter’s packaging company can look sexy on Facebook and attract leads? Possibly, but it’s not exactly the quintessential Facebook success story. After all, how sexy are boxes, bubble wrap, bags and tape?

B2B marketers can be successful on Facebook, especially if they are targeting the small business owner. But, I believe some B2B businesses may be better suited for sites such as LinkedIn. Although with Peter’s traditional marketing mindset, he probably won’t give the site enough time to see any return on investment.

Bottom line: If your customers are not on Facebook, you won’t find success there.

Peter concluded his article by saying he was sticking with the results he is getting from Google PPC. After reading an article entitled, “Google is the Internet”, Peter decided he would stay with the search engine indefinitely. Ninety-two percent of his traffic comes from his Adwords campaign so why fix what isn’t broken?

For Peter, that may be the best course of action. But for others, Facebook has become a solid marketing strategy to help them attract leads and build a great reputation online.

Are your customers/prospects/clients on Facebook?
Are you ready to dedicate time and resources to building a long-term reputation on Facebook?

If you answered “yes” to both of those questions, Facebook can bring you the quality leads you want and help you to grow your business.

Do you think Peter should have stayed on Facebook for the long haul? Are your website customers/clients on Facebook?

But despite the fact that they aren’t coming clean on this matter, most of us can still see fairly clearly that they’ve not done things perfectly lately and that they’ve put their foot wrong a few times. And in fact the current condition of the search engine is one of the worst it’s been in well… ever and there are plenty of bloggers currently picking up on the problems.

Think I’m just moaning? Here are just a few of the reasons that Google could do with taking a step back and having a bit of rethink.

Penguin Hasn’t Worked

Google Penguin was the most recent algorithm change that was supposed to punish sites that were using black hat techniques and over optimization in a similar way that Panda did and to this end it targeted spun content as well as large numbers of links from unworthy sources. The problem with this is that it removed a bunch of sites from the top spots that were simply trying to use SEO the way they’d been taught, and that then meant that nothing but dross was left over. Do a search for ‘make money online’ for instance and the top few results include empty blogs and cyber squatters. That’s hardly a sign of success and it’s not what Google’s visitors want to see. For this reason alone then, Google needs to rethink its algorithm.

Negative SEO

Negative SEO means that you do bad SEO for another site so that it gets penalized by Google, and so that you then have less competition for the terms you’re trying to rank for. That’s not really Google’s fault, but unfortunately Google’s recent Penguin update has only served to make these negative SEO strategies that much more effective. In other words at the moment Google is unable to differentiate between the sites that deserve penalizing and those that are victims of malicious attacks – and of course that’s not really ideal. This is something that Google is going to have to change as more and more people start cottoning on to negative SEO as an immoral yet effective way to boost their site.

Competition from Bing

I doubt right now that Google is losing sleep over the competition, but that doesn’t change the fact that Bing is gaining ground while Google is losing it. At the moment the gap is still rather large, but slips like the Penguin update could help to close that gap for Bing which means Google needs to be on its best behaviour over the next couple of years to avoid a search Engine with a company that has more resources and money.

Privacy Policy Issues

Google’s recent changes to their privacy policy saw them coming under fire from European authorities that saw them as a breach of their privacy laws. This isn’t only of course a worry in itself, but also bad publicity for Google who have been steering themselves toward some ‘market monopoly’ style strategies lately. If they want to reverse their fortunes in this regard then giving users back some of their privacy could be a good move.

Allen Beery runs an online business and has recently started branching out on an education related business by taking a Kumon Franchise. He writes about SEO, business opportunity and education.

What I mean is that by focusing on linking, sometimes we will unknowingly offer less-than-stellar content because our focus is off kilter. And I think our readers can smell it a mile away.

What Jenna’s saying here is that we, as SEOs and webmasters, have become so entrenched in metrics and measurements and charts and mega-graphs that we seem to have lost sight of the fundamentals upon which the Web was built.

Stellar content.

For a Minute There, We Lost Ourselves

Think about it. If you’ve been doing this Internet thing for a while, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Let’s take a poll, shall we?

Do you do any of the following? Select from the list below:

• Do you use any software with a title that begins with an explosive adjective (mega/massive/jet-propelled/turbo-fueled) and is immediately followed by the words “niche finder”?

• Do you devote more time to keyword research than you do to sleep?

• Have you optimized each and every page of your beloved website with your best cherry-picked “money” keywords?

• Do you watch your rankings for said keywords in the SERPs with bated breath, expecting movement… any… second… now…

• Do you own some sort of paid traffic tool?

• Do you know exactly when to expect the Googlebot to come crawling?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, then don’t panic. You are still a good person. I swear. And these traits aren’t inherently bad, even though the Big G sometimes seems to want us to think otherwise.

On the contrary, it’s GOOD to monitor your sites and traffic. It’s GOOD to do research if your ultimate objective is to rank. But the problem is that the desire to rank has outweighed the desire to produce quality content, which then becomes a chicken-and-egg argument. The true metric is whether you enjoy the subject of the site you’re creating. Is it something you’re passionate about? Enthusiastic, even? Do you like it even just a teensy little smidge? If not, you’re doing this for all the wrong reasons, and that “less-than-stellar” content Jenna was harping on will soon begin gracing your sad, over-optimized pages – if it’s not there already.

Instead, why don’t you try following the Site-Reference method?

Make the content, love the subject, get fired up, and the audience will follow. However, it is indeed true that you can create prolific content and still suffer traffic malfunctions. It happens. The Web has just as much amazing stuff as it does garbage, so it will take a whole heck of a lot of work, passion, and exposure to get your shot at the limelight.

Let’s Talk About Exposure

What defines exposure on the Web? Shh… It’s the four-letter word Google doesn’t want to hear you say. That’s right: It’s a link. And Google’s stance on backlinking is an ever-changing one. We’ll never know the true extent of the metrics used since we don’t have any way to find the Big G’s secret sauce for its algorithm.

In a post-Panda, post-Penguin world, what do we know about link building?

Well, we know negative SEO is on the rise. With all the controversy, that’s kind of a given. But it’s caused us to lose sight of something we’ve known for quite some time: That most sites have oodles of links which Google doesn’t count at all. Check out what Matt Cutts had to say about the matter ages ago.

We also know that Post-Penguin, quality links are the name of the game. That means that links from pages on sites that Google trusts are key to ranking. Trust from Google translates to PageRank (PR). Sites are ranked on a scale of zero to ten with zero being the least amount of trust and authority in Google’s eyes. Most sites have trouble breaking a two. The system’s tough, and Google employs an army of manual reviewers with the sole task of assigning PR to pages on websites (are you starting to understand why quality content is so vital yet? Hint: It’s bigger than just your traffic).

Before, the easy way to get some link juice from high-PR pages was simply to drop a few thousand blog comments on them, buy some paid guest posts, or purchase some sidebar links, right? Well, times have changed, and so must your strategy.

The New Way to Get Juice

Google’s changed. It will continue to change, and so will the Internet. It’s the nature of technology. Here’s what won’t: It will always be imperative to produce stellar content. I’m going to break the process into two steps:

1. Love your niche.

Loving your niche means being passionate about the subject of your site. It also means connecting with others in your niche and being part of the conversation, the recent events, the news. When you’re connected, you have your finger on the pulse of your industry, and by default your content will take the information and add to it in a meaningful way, which in turn will drive the conversation forward and make your voice matter.

2. Get involved with the leaders.

Once you have the first step in check, this next one should come naturally. The leaders in your niche likely have pages with decent (or great) PR already, otherwise they wouldn’t be leaders. When you connect with them, you may just end up with a presence on their site or blog – or even unprovoked mentions in their posts – after all, they’ll look to you for insight and the newest industry information, so the backlinking will come naturally.

Do you see what I did there? Once you’re hot and heavy in your niche’s ecosystem, the backlinking will grow from that involvement, and I think that’s precisely what Google is after.

Article marketing?
Directory links?
Blog Networks?
Reciprocal linking?

These strategies still exist and are there for the taking if anyone wants to jump in. Anyone? A little gunshy? I completely understand!

So how do you build links?

By trying NOT to get them!

It’s kind of like reverse psychology. People will be more apt to share and link to your content if they feel it was not created for the purpose of building links. I know it’s twisted…but bear with me.

When I need my husband to unload the dishwasher I can ask him directly, but I may not get anywhere. But if I, without asking, stroke his ego and tell him what a great “dishwashing unloader” he can be and give him the best tips on how to do it successfully and mention the benefits of unloading, he may be more inclined to do it.

Disclaimer: This does not occur in my home. My husband willingly unloads our dishwasher without asking!

There has to be a part of our content marketing strategy that does NOT directly involve trying to acquire links.

What I mean is that by focusing on linking, sometimes we will unknowingly offer less-than-stellar content because our focus is off kilter. And I think our readers can smell it a mile away.

There is a difference between great content and stellar content and users know the difference.

If you are a regular Site-Reference reader, you most likely are not the type of person who spins content until it sounds like another language just to manipulate the search engines. And I am also sure you are not the type that auto-generates thousands of articles a month that are complete trash.

Most of our readers understand that quality content is necessary to expand their businesses. But many are also uncertain how to achieve success and compete with the millions of other websites.

I have read many of your comments and I understand your frustrations. But, it may be time to look at your content through different eyes so you can shift your focus.

Ask yourself these questions:

Can I make my content any better?
Am I thinking about my audience while producing content or rather how it will help me build links?
Am I doing the necessary target audience research?
Am I solving a problem with my content?
Are my readers pleased?
Do I leave every piece satisfied or do I feel like I could have given more?

Here is one tip that always helps me:

If you leave your content with a sinking feeling that you have more to offer, it is not good enough. I’m not talking about more content in terms of word count. I am referring to the quality of value you offer and the amount of research and personal investment in each piece.

It all boils down to this…

Instead of focusing solely on the need for links, dedicate some of your marketing towards becoming a thought leader.

A thought leader is someone who thinks outside of the box and doesn’t regurgitate the same old content that pervades the web on a daily basis.

What are the characteristics of a thought leader? Here are a few to get you thinking…

They GIVE AWAY Their Secrets

Some companies are afraid of giving away too much free information because they want to eventually sell it. Unless you have earned enough reputation to sell an ebook, that theory may not work for you. If you examine some of the thought leaders in your industry, you will notice a lot of them sharing their expertise in full disclosure. They offer advice, stay updated on trends and aren’t afraid to unload their experience so others can benefit.

They Specialize

Jack of all trades; master of nothing – I use this phrase often in my articles because I believe it is an easy trap to fall into. It can feel intimidating to think like an expert. We often think of ourselves as less than we are so we try to master every subject to compensate for the inner feeling of inadequacy.

Knowing a little about every subject is not as valuable as knowing a lot about one subject.

Thought leaders do not know everything. They have become leaders in specific niches and the more they focus on that niche the more experience they gain which boosts their reputation that much more.

By focusing on a more specialized niche, your content will move from good, general advice to stellar and influential.

They Celebrate Their Individuality

If you haven’t read my article on creating content, read the section on uniqueness. Being unique will help you stand out and become a thought leader.

Are you humorous? Shy? Slightly kooky? Serious and focused? Whatever your personality, start to release it throughout your brand messaging.

Mari Smith, a thought leader in the Facebook community, does a great job with being unique. She has her own personal sayings and she injects her cute, fun and light-hearted energy into every piece of content and design she publishes. She is respected by many because of it. Even if she repeats content already out there on the web, it is still unique because she puts her personal spin on it. She commands attention because there is no one else like her.

The Skinny on Link Building

I’m not advising you to abandon all of your link building. We all know how much Google loves links. I am simply referring to a perspective shift as it relates to your content marketing. A simple adjustment can make a huge difference.

And by changing your focus away from the practice of link building and paying attention to becoming a thought leader, you will inadvertently snag links in the process…but don’t do it for that reason alone!

Time to Get Honest

Do you think your content can be better? How can you start re-focusing some of your current strategies?

P.S. If anyone knows my husband, don’t tell him I mentioned him in the article. He’s a very private person!

Internet marketing is a race the turtle always wins.

So, you have a website you’re promoting? Maybe you are selling something that you make, plan to retire on the beach while affiliate marketing, want to establish your business as an expert in your sector, or just want to share your experience and insight through a blog about your life. Whatever first brings you to the world of Internet marketing, you quickly discover a cacophony of methods, data, conflicting ideas, and a lot of bluster about pandas, penguins and hat colors. Article marketing, paid link building, SEO copywriting, social media, content marketing, PPC, micro-blogging, email marketing, etc. – How do you know what works? Inevitably, you will get excited about and try one or more tricks that assure you they are “the secret to real success on the Internet”.

Making a commitment to learning as much as you can about Internet marketing through a variety of trusted and knowledgeable sources is smart  - understanding who to trust and how all the pieces fit together is the subject of many other articles (and rants). The important thing to realize is that Internet marketing is a race that the turtle always wins – lasting success takes time, patience and consistent effort, no matter what you do right. Most people don’t do well with things that require time, patience and consistent effort – most of us approach Internet marketing as the hare, with an enthusiastic burst of attention and activity that fails to sustain the effort necessary to see the results that fueled our enthusiasm in the first place. It often takes up to three months for results of to even be indexed and measured by the tools we use to gauge them – only then can we really begin to understand what works and what doesn’t. This is why it is important to keep track of a basic set of metrics that give you an overall sense of the performance of your website and the effectiveness of your marketing month to month.

Analytics can and should have a positive impact on your productivity. Unfortunately, most people’s approach to data collection is either incomplete and inconsistent, or obsessive. Site monitoring is about collecting key data points that combine to show you the net result of your efforts on a month to month basis. It is not intended to give detailed or immediate feedback on specific campaigns. What I am suggesting should take you no more than 20-30 minutes per month to collect and will paint a useful picture of your cumulative success, trends, and the impact of your hours of hard work. Do not check them every day!

For each domain you want to track, start with a simple spreadsheet: On one axis, set up the key data points you choose to measure and on the other, set up the months.

Key Data Points to collect:

Backlink Data
Creating a free account with Majestic SEO gives you access to data points about your backlinks. Using the historic index, gather the “referring domains” and the “external backlinks” numbers for whatever domains you are tracking. You will want to see how these grow over time in relation to the other metrics you monitor.

Organic Keywords
Using the free version of semrush, enter your domain and capture the number of organic keywords your domain is ranking for using the Google US tab (or whichever country is relevant to you). There is also the option to do the same for bing. This number should increase over time as you add content and backlinks.

Alexa Rank
This number is available to you in many different SEO toolbars or by going to their website. The point of tracking this number is to see it trend down over time, not to target a specific ranking.

Web Analytics
Your web analytics program offers you the ability to track and filter specific data points, comparing them against each other with multiple views, etc. This is a great way to understand user behavior and measure/test results. While the reporting in these programs gives you the ability to see data easily from month to month, there are a few things worth gathering for your spreadsheet so that you can see how they relate to the other metrics you are tracking. These include: unique visitors, time on site, bounce rate, your top 5-10 referring keywords, and key social media metrics. For e-commerce sites, it is also important to track visitor value (revenue/unique visitors).

Google Stats
Using an SEO toolbar plug-in on my browser, I like to track the page rank of the homepage and landing pages of the site I am monitoring. In addition, I keep track of the number of pages indexed  by entering site:yourdomain.com into a Google search bar.

Email marketing
If you handle your email marketing through a service like Constant Contact or Mailchimp, you have access to extensive data about open rates, click-throughs, etc. On this monthly trends spreadsheet, it is helpful to have just the number of emails sent, number of subscribers, and the number of people who unsubscribed so that you can see how your email list is growing over time in relation to your other marketing efforts.

Content Development
Finally, I like to keep track of the content that was added to the site. With larger sites, it may be easier to compile this weekly in a separate document and add it up monthly. I like to track the total number of pages/posts added and then broken down into three categories: 50 to 400 words, 400 to 1000 words, and1000+ words. This helps keep you focused on the importance of building your site and how the size and quality affect the other trends you are monitoring.

All of these data points work together to show you the impact of your efforts and give you a sense of how they affect each other. It is important to understand this both for the positive psychological reinforcement it provides and to spot trends month to month. Site monitoring as suggested above loses its effectiveness if there are holes in the data because you don’t keep up with its collection or if you obsess with the numbers and check them constantly. Once you have 6-12 months of data collected, you will appreciate the insight and objective view it offers to your Internet marketing efforts and strategies. As with the proverbial turtle, only hard work – if it is the right work – and consistency lead to the desired outcome. Site monitoring helps you keep your energy focused and your enthusiasm from waning while it illuminates trends about your site that help you decide what advice to trust in the future – mine.

Well actually there are many reasons ‘why not’ and while WordPress is certainly useful and has its place, it is also not a replacement for a good old fashioned web design by a professional outfit and particularly for a business. Here we will look at some of the limitations of WordPress.

It’s a Blog

First of all, WordPress is designed for building blogs, not websites, and there is a significant difference here. While WordPress has grown and has a lot of new features, it is unfortunately still designed for sites that have regular posts, and that don’t need lots of

interconnected pages. All your pages will automatically have the same template and you’ll be basically quite restricted in terms of what you can do. Even with the most ambitious of templates this will still look a lot like a blog – and you won’t be able to, for instance, have separate lists of blog posts appearing on different pages, or a nice big home page that does away with all the widgets that are on the other pages.

It’s Too Well Known

Being well known is a good thing… for WordPress. For you though it communicates something very simple to your visitors and

that’s that you ‘took the easy option’ when it came to your web design. They will know that this website wasn’t made in house, and that nor was it created by a service that you paid much money for. Basically they would be able to do it themselves if they wanted which would of course make you seem a little less professional and impressive.

Note: If a web design company makes you your own template for WordPress then this requires significantly more coding skill, and the more up-to-date visitors will recognize this at least.

Security

WordPress does unfortunately come with some security issues which makes it not really suitable for sensitive information. The problem is that WordPress includes a login page where webmasters can log in and write new content/edit existing files. While this is very practical and helpful for them, it of course also means that anyone else can guess your password and then conceivably do the same. And it means that they could write scripts and bots to hack into your page as well.

Spam

Likewise the comments section on WordPress is like candy to spam, and even with some of the more advanced spam filters out there you will still get a whole load of spammy content to sort through which quite simply just takes up a lot of time.

Flexibility

WordPress is also just less flexible. Even when we’re not talking about things like layout – if you want to integrate AdSense you will probably have to use a downloadable add on which will have specific options, or  you will have to just paste the code in your blogs. Unless you can find your way around someone else’s PHP and HTML, you can’t just decide you’re going to swap the top right link for an AdSense unit and that’s just unfortunately very limiting.

Tom Koh started his journey a couple of years ago and makes his money sending online traffic to clients trying to get high pr backlinks. He writes about making money online and internet marketing on his blog.

We’ve watched the drama unfold for weeks now, right? Maybe it’s time to switch gears.

Matt Cutts swears by the mantra, “If you build it, they will come”, but if you churn out high-quality content alongside 50 of your closest rivals, 40 will be stuck on the second page or below of search results.

There just isn’t enough room for everyone.

If Google is your site’s bread and butter, you’re always one algorithm change away from losing your shirt. Depending on a search engine for the entirety of your website traffic is an unwise business move at best and a recipe for disaster at worst. We’ve been touting the “spread the love” traffic-generation technique on Site Reference for some time now, and with good reason.

As we’ve seen from Penguin, sites that relied on a healthy mix of traffic sources weathered the storm a whole heck of a lot better than those who were solely dependent on the Big G. Traffic source diversification is the name of the game, and the social web offers up some gems that could help you expand your portfolio.

Facebook’s Upcoming Highlighted Post Feature

Facebook is hard at work testing ways to generate income in the wake of next week’s highly anticipated IPO. The good news about this for webmasters is that many of the monetization techniques that the social networking giant is trying are brand new, so they have two advantages. First, they’re bound to be noticed by users, at least for a while – which translates to greater exposure for those who utilize them.

The second reason that Facebook’s new marketing features are so advantageous for webmasters? They’re still new enough to be effective because spammers don’t have their hands on them yet. That’s why it’s important to keep an eye out for social trends as soon as they emerge.

A couple of days ago, Facebook announced that it may be rolling out a spanking new pay-to-use feature in which users can pay up to $2 to “Highlight” their status updates and bump the posts to the top of friends’ news feeds. If it becomes a regular part of the Facebook experience, the Highlight post feature would look a little something like this:

Image Credit: http://mashable.com/2012/05/11/facebook-highlighted-posts/

Crazy, right? The upcoming feature was first unearthed in a post on Stuff, a blog in New Zealand. According to the post, this Facebook feature is currently in the testing phase with a small number of users. A representative from Facebook stated that people who want to do things such as sell a car or promote an event could use the feature.

This sounds great in theory, but social media blogs around the ‘net have pointed out that this new feature would move Facebook dangerously close to Craigslist’s neighborhood. This is uncharted territory for Facebook, but given the fact that the online classified business did around $2.6 billion in revenue in 2011 alone, this may be a great way for the social network to up its game. Whether users like it will be another matter altogether.

For webmasters, here’s the rub: The Highlighted Post addition is just in testing, but if it’s launched, the feature would be a great inexpensive way to generate traffic to your site or blog and expand your brand. That is, if you have a large list of friends. If you don’t, you’d better get on that – you may not have much time before the new feature goes live. Remember that Facebook users become “ad blind” very quickly – so jump on this train before it leaves the station.

It’s worth noting that Facebook’s Brand Pages for businesses are designed to be indistinguishable from regular user pages. Facebook designed them like this on purpose. The site wants good content to rise to the top of news feeds regardless of its origin, which is good for those promoting websites – as long as the content on their sites is stellar enough for people to notice.

Gumroad – Products and Services and… Traffic?

Gumroad is a hot new startup that’s taking the tech world by storm. The way Gumroad works, in a nutshell: It enables members to sell digital items on social networks. This is a fantastically simple idea, but a brilliant one. If you’re a webmaster with a product – an eBook or an online course, for example – then you know just how hard it is to sell your masterpiece on your site.

You don’t have to worry about payment processors or secure delivery anymore – Gumroad handles all of that for you. Simply integrate your Twitter or Facebook account with Gumroad and share a link to your product with your network. That’s it. Gumroad does all the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting, and then the site handles payments and issues once-monthly payments to product creators. All you must do is fill out a short form with your product information in order to generate a link:

Image credit: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/08/gumroad-gets-1-1-million-from-chris-sacca-max-levchin-and-others-to-turn-any-link-into-a-payment-system/

This concept is so simplistic, but it’s gearing up to cause quite the stir among the big players on the ‘net. It’s not just for eBooks and courses. Think laterally: You could sell a link to a private post with great information in it about your niche, a set of exclusive photographs on your site, a preview of a program you’re designing, or pretty much any other digital product you can dream up.

Why is this important for traffic? Simple – If you are selling a link to a digital product and it is good enough to be sold and shared, and you’ve branded the product with your site, you’re creating visitors. The more people share your work, the more chance you have of attracting fresh, targeted visitors to your site.

Traffic generation is primarily about great content and returning visitors, and underhanded tactics simply don’t work anymore. Above-board activities such as forum marketing, blog commenting and guest posting are starting to come under fire now, too. They’re still effective, yes, but their effectiveness is diminishing in a hurry. That’s why making a habit of consistently trying new traffic generation techniques will help you immensely in long-run.

What is exactly the function of Google Penguin Update?

Last week on the 27th of April 2012, Google launched another algorithm called ‘Penguin’ update to avoid and eliminate the increase of web spam in the search engine result. It is use for blocking the sites which are practicing Search Engine Optimization ways prohibited by the policies that Google executed. It is a step up from the ‘Panda’ update.

Methods such as keyword stuffing, hidden text, cloaking, article spinning, and buying links are the ‘no-no’ according to Google’s policies and the reasons why a website disappears in ranking.

According to one of the brains behind the change, Matt Cutts, Google Penguin Update works better at pointing-out websites which uses “aggressive web spam tactics”. These are the ones who rebels against the rules as they push their rankings on top.

How to cope up with the change?

Like how a great leader will react on any situation, the best way is to deal with it! Accept the change and instead of whining more, find the solution to the problem. Here are some advices and solutions in coping up with the effect of Penguin update:

1. Find alternatives – getting hit by this problem doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Keep in mind that even though Google might be an enormous website, it is not the only place to boost marketing.

1. Visit and explore other websites – it won’t hurt to throw few moments of time in other sites where one can potentially promote their business later on. Study what’s going on and learn the best way to connect with these websites.

1. Network Socializing – disappointing as it can be, most especially if Google has been the wall most businesses depends on…it’s time to open new doors. There are the social networks like Facebook and Twitter where spreading the word is like a virus waiting to be unleashed.

1. Blog posts – let the power or writing work in its precious ways. Blogging is proven to be another great tool or weapon in online marketing. The more updated blogs made the more chances in reaching out to other bloggers. It’s like a chain-reaction or a pass it forward way.

1. Expand creativity – don’t just settle for what you have right now, in marketing it’s a never ending challenge of bringing creativity on the table. Find good sources of traffic and other great possibilities in reaching to and through people. Visualizations from photos or video presentations are some of the great ways to get attention from people.

Think outside the box or lose the box!

Seeing the ranking of your website vanished by Google Penguin update is not really something you’d want to see and think of for the longest of time. And even if you keep pulling your hair off wondering about the changes, it still won’t do any good to your website. So cut loose the cord connecting to Google and jump off the box! Don’t get stuck in one phase and think that Google is just one part of a vast solutions in marketing your website/business.

Be spontaneous and put out all those ideas that have been running through your mind. There’s nothing wrong in beating the odds.

From time to time Google will surely come up with something to fight any ‘rule-breaker’. It probably gets more complicated or Google might tone it down but who knows what really goes on in their minds. But whether there’s a Penguin update or not, don’t let anything get in the way of making your website reach the top. Be prepared for any changes coming along and remember that an A-Z plan always come handy on times when abrupt changes like the Google Penguin update happens.

Johan Hedin is the Managing Director of Marketing Ignite, which is a 14 years experienced SEO company in Thailand. He has set up over 200 search marketing projects over the years (at affordable prices). He also offers a step-by-step search engine optimization training course for those wanting to learn how to gain top rankings in Google. Contact him for further details on how to set-up and manage your successful SEO campaign.

But, alas, Google is still changing, tweaking, and plotting, and in an effort to continue its support of transparency it released 52 more changes and updates.

We don’t know exactly when Google implemented these changes, though, or if they coincided with Panda or Penguin. Does anyone else get sick of talking in zoo animal code?

Here are the changes we feel are important for our readers: If you want the unabridged version, click here.

Freshness Updates

Every month, Google makes changes to its Freshness update. I can’t say I am sad about it. I am not a fan of the first page of search results spitting out five-year-old articles about how reciprocal linking is a great linking strategy.

Google introduced three freshness updates involving search results and ranking signals. Breaking news topics along with other new content may see a boost as well as “fresh documents.”

We aren’t entirely sure what this means, but Google did mention it excluded websites identified as “low quality” content from the classifier it uses to promote fresh content.

No freshness boost for low-quality content. [launch codename “NoRot”, project codename “Freshness”] We have modified a classifier we use to promote fresh content to exclude fresh content identified as particularly low-quality.

Rankings

The first update discusses authoritative content:

More authoritative results. We’ve tweaked a signal we use to surface more authoritative content.

Can anyone say “ambiguous?” Every webmaster thinks their content is authoritative, so what does this really mean?

The web geeks over at SearchEngineWatch seem to think Google will improve the ranking of older domains that have strong link profiles and those that have refrained from questionable (spammy) techniques.

The next update may coincide with the Penguin update:

Keyword stuffing classifier improvement. [project codename "Spam"] We have classifiers designed to detect when a website is keyword stuffing. This change made the keyword stuffing classifier better.

Penguin centered on keyword stuffing so we may have already seen the results of this one.

How many keywords are considered stuffing? We will never know. As a rule of thumb, write your content with no thought about keywords. After it is complete, go back and take a count. If the content is focused on the keyword topic, most likely you will have used your keywords appropriately.

Tip: This is completely unscientific, so take it for what it is worth. When my mind starts to wonder if there are too many keywords, I know I have added too many.

The next update:

Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking. [launch codename "Bi02sw41"] One of the most fundamental signals used in search is whether and how your search terms appear on the pages you’re searching. This change improves the way those terms are scored.

Matt McGee over at SearchEngineLand guesses that this along with the keyword stuffing update is related to “spun” content, although it could refer to a number of things. It definitely alludes to the misuse of keywords. Spinning content and adding keyword-specific links that have nothing to do with the content would most likely fall under that blanket. Any thoughts?

If you know what “spinning” content is, I would re-consider your linking strategies if you are doing it. If you don’t know what it is, don’t worry about it. It’s not worth the risk.

More updates include changes to how Google categorizes paginated documents so they don’t take over the pages of search results. The search engine also announced it would focus on publishing more diverse results by removing excess results from the same domain.

Local Search

Local search may get a boost even for websites that are not as optimized. Here is Google’s first update:

Improvements to local navigational searches. [launch codename "onebar-l"] For searches that include location terms, e.g. [dunston mint seattle] or [Vaso Azzurro Restaurant 94043], we are more likely to rank the local navigational homepages in the top position, even in cases where the navigational page does not mention the location.

Google is trying to improve its spider to detect a local business’ location even if the home page does not mention a specific locale. The next update followed in the same vein though it involves countries:

Country identification for webpages. [launch codename "sudoku"] Location is an important signal we use to surface content more relevant to a particular country. For a while we’ve had systems designed to detect when a website, subdomain, or directory is relevant to a set of countries. This change extends the granularity of those systems to the page level for sites that host user generated content, meaning that some pages on a particular site can be considered relevant to France, while others might be considered relevant to Spain.

Google is digging down deeper into a site to detect additional locations from user generated content since certain pages may be relevant to users in one country while other pages may focus on a different country.

Page Titles

Last year, the SEO industry was “up in arms” over Google’s announcement to change title tags in the search results as it sees fit:

The newest April update improved Google’s ability to change page titles. According to the search giant, “you’ll find more informative titles and/or more concise titles with the same information.”

Many SEOs are irate over this. What do you think?

Sitelinks

Google announced four changes to sitelinks and “megasitelinks,” the links that display below a website’s listing that link to deeper parts of the website. Sub-sitelinks will now replace text snippets and Google improved the ranking of megasitelinks by “providing a minimum score for the sitelink based on a score for the same URL used in general ranking.”

Additional changes:

• Indexing – Google increased the number of documents served by its main index by 15%. It also launched a new index “tier.”
• Instant preview changes
• Changes to how Google interprets the intention behind search queries by using users’ “last few searches.”
• Improved user interface for searches related to breaking news topics.
• Anchors bug fix

So, we’ve had a lot of fun trying to decipher Google’s code and as always I love to hear your opinions.

Do you have any other suggestions about the updates? Has your website been affected? Let us know in the comments.