The Google Blog Network Massacre - Blog Networks Deindexed

         

By Samuel Frost on March 29 2012 Mar 29 2012 140Comments

If you're anything like me then you love to keep your finger on the pulse of the affiliate marketing and SEO world. Just like you probably watch the 6pm news broadcast on TV, you should keep up to date with SEO current events. The biggest headline story this week has to be the deindexing of blog networks by Google.
Thousands have been affected by Google either partially or completely removing entire blog networks. When Google removes a website from its index, any outgoing links automatically become null and void. Also, it doesn't look very good if a big portion of your links come from services that Google dislikes.

What is a blog network?

In case you aren't aware what a blog network is, allow me to quickly explain. Basically, blog networks allow you to publish blog posts (read "articles") on different websites that are linked into some form of automatic content distribution system. For example, if I wrote an article called "5 Killer Guitar Solo Secrets", I could then submit to a blog networks and in theory this article will then be published to sites in the network related to "guitars", "music", "hobbies", and things like that.
Blog networks come in many different flavors and varieties, with the only real underlying similarities being they are a system for generating backlinks by submitting content, and there is usually a price for membership (I'll come back to why this is important soon) "Public" blog networks consist of blog owners putting their sites in the network to receive free content. "Private" blog networks are slightly different, because the administrators of the network actually own the sites to which writers publish their content.
The biggest casualty so far of Google's push against blog networks is the Build My Rank service. This was a private blog network, and the sites which made up the network have all been deindexed by Google. Any links generated through Build My Rank are now worthless, and the service has been closed down to new members. You can read BMR's statement about the closure of their network here - kudos to them for coming clean straight away about what happened too.
Other notable networks that have been punished include SEO Link Monster, Authority Link Network, and Linkvana.
If you want more evidence of this latest algorithm update in action, just search "blog networks deindexed" and see how many discussion results there are. Some of them are truly frightening - SEO companies relying entirely on blog networks like BMR to build links for their clients' websites, entire websites disappearing from Google's index; it's like Nightmare on SEO Street (I'm keeping the horror related quips going here!)

Why are blog networks being targeted by Google?

I see three principal reasons why Google has started to crackdown on blog networks, so let me run you through them:

1. Blog networks are a form of paid link building. Google's policy on paid link building is crystal clear, especially the fact that "buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results." The purpose blog networks is to facilitate link building, and these links are most definitely paid for in a slightly less obvious manner. Google penalized the website of their own Chrome software when it was revealed that a marketing company they used had employed paid backlinks; Google were hardly going to think twice about penalizing other paid link users were they?
2. Blog networks are a form of "link scheme". Just like paid linking, Google's opinion on link schemes leaves no room for confusion. They are not a natural form of link building, especially once blog networks developed the technology to allow you submit a spin-ready article to hundreds of different blogs in a short space of time. Nobody submitted to blog networks just for the sake of getting content published - it is and always was about generating links. Blog networks sold themselves on this basis of being a way to get unnaturally large amounts of links quickly, and it was only a matter of time until Google caught on.
3. Articles posted to blog networks tend to be low quality. The vast majority of articles posted to blog networks were low quality "filler" content that was only written to get backlinks. That might sound harsh, but the unfortunately the truth hurts. If the Panda update of 2011 wasn't a big enough wake up call, then hopefully the newest of Google's changes is. Google wants quality, unique content to populate its search index. Google wants you to create and distribute content for the purpose of providing value to readers, not just to build links. If you want high search engine rankings then you need to focus on providing value first, and link building/SEO second. I simply cannot stress this point enough! 

Are any blog networks still safe?

It's still early days with Google's latest rollout. Some blog networks, such as Article Marketing Automation appear not to have been hit yet. In fact, blog networks that publish content on member submitted blogs (as opposed to admin-owned blogs) appear to have fared better than other networks. However, that's not to say that more blog networks wont be penalized going forward, so proceed with caution.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket and rely on a single blog network as your main source of links. In fact, you shouldn't even rely on multiple blog networks for the bulk of your links. If you are going to use any of the remaining networks, it should be as the cherry on your SEO cake. The ball is in Google's court here, so you should be playing by their rules of natural link building and quality content.

What now?

However, there is one new blog network that looks quite promising - it's called The Content Facilitator. In fact, it isn't really a blog network at all because the articles you submit aren't automatically passed to sites in the network. There isn't really a network to speak of at all. Instead, I like to think of The Content Facilitator as a guest blogging marketplace. Bloggers looking for quality, unique (and non-spun) articles for their blogs can come and browse for content written for those who want to reach a larger audience and get some backlinks in the process.
The Content Facilitator also runs on a credit system, which means membership is free for both writers and those looking for content. Every time one of your articles is picked up by a blog owner, credits are deducted from your balance (this means you don't wind up with hundreds of articles being published at once, and an unnatural link profile) You can earn credits by referring new members to The Content Facilitator, and by publishing others' content.
My favorite feature of The Content Facilitator is the ability to set your article as "unique", meaning it can only be published by one member in the marketplace. Writing "unique" articles for The Content Facilitator therefore provides a strong incentive to other members to pick up your content and publish it before it's gone.

Mark has managed to organize a pretty sweet deal with the owners of The Content Facilitator, where you can get 100 free publishing credits by signing up here (you will need to use the coupon code TrafficTravis inside the members' area to get these credits) The Content Facilitator is in its infancy at the moment, and I predict it will get much bigger and more popular in the coming months; just remember that the early bird catches the worm!

 

Closing thoughts

One issue a lot of people are raising with the deindexing of blog networks is the theory that a competitor could simply submit hundreds of spun articles to networks, featuring links back to YOUR website. Think of it as a kind of "SEO sabotage". However, there is no need to worry about this - if a blog network is deindexed, the outgoing links in the network count for nothing, and therefore won't be able to affect your website. This is just disinformation at best, and scaremongering at worst.
If you've been affected by the closure and deindexing of blog networks, I'd love to hear from you. Just leave a comment below!

Why Your Website Must Be Responsive

Here’s Why Your Website Must Be Responsive

by Tim Parker

If people visit your website on their phone, do they just get a miniaturized version? How about on their tablet? Responsive web design makes sure each visitor has a good experience at your site, regardless of the device they're using. 

Image source: GraphicStock.com

If you’re like many small business owners, you have little knowledge of how websites work. You either hired somebody to do it or you bought a website template and figured out how to make some simple changes to fit your brand.

What is it?But the coding of your sites means nothing to you—You don’t have to be a website program but you do have to understand responsive design.

Unlike most techno terminology, the definition is in the term. Responsive, in web terms, means the same thing as in your own life. If you’re responsive to your customers, you listen and react to what they say or do. The same holds true with your employees and your family.

A responsive website reacts and makes changes based on a host of factors. The most notable is screen size. A responsive webpage changes image and font sizes, as well as moves elements around to fit the screen of the user.

If they’re viewing the site on their phone, the website has a design optimized for a mobile phone screen. On a tablet, the site will look slightly different and on a computer screen, even more different. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

Is it Really That Important?

Yes, but don’t take our word for it—let the stats do the talking.

According to Pew Research, 58% of American adults own a smartphone and of those, 63% use it to browse the Internet. As of August of last year, Facebook said that 78% of its 128 million active daily US users accessed the site on mobile.

There’s very little that “experts” agree on but there’s little doubt that mobile usage will continue to grow and the amount of people accessing your site on a traditional computer will fall.

Still not convinced? If you’re the type that browses the web on your mobile device, you’ve surely found yourself looking at a microscopic rendering of what somebody calls a website. You zoom in but after about 10 seconds of pure, unadulterated annoyance you go somewhere else hoping that your eyes are not permanently crossed. If that website was responsive, that story would have never played out.

As a business owner, you have to make sure that when your customers come to your site, their experience is positive. If your site causes even the smallest bit of stress, they’ll leave.

How about now? Are you convinced? Your website HAS to be responsive.

More Reasons to go Responsive

Google Loves it!

Nobody really knows how Google decides which websites are worthy of its front page but there’s no doubt that Google loves responsive design. Here’s what the company said:

“We recommend webmasters follow the industry best practice of using web design, namely serving the same HTML for all devices using media queries to decide rendering on each device".

That might seem a little to techy but this simply means that your site should be responsive. Yahoo and Bing also prefer it.

It’s Cheaper than the Alternative.

A little over a decade ago, the mobile web was becoming the next big thing. At first, developers were creating two websites—one for traditional computers and one for mobile. If you wanted to view the mobile site, you placed an “m” in front of the site and there it was. (Remember “m.yoursite.com?”) Technology developed allowing websites to automatically know the device accessing it and could automatically switch to the mobile version but now, there’s no need for two sites.

Responsive design is saving companies major bucks because responsive design is built into the site design. Nearly all new website templates have it and developers can easily include the code in most cases. The alternative is to “save money by not upgrading and watch your customers click away without giving you a chance.

Your Customers Want it!

The customer is always right, aren’t they? If more than half of your customers came to your store and said they wanted a certain item, you would get it, right? Your customers are coming to your site from their mobile devices. They might have found a link on Facebook or other social media platform but what if (gulp) you paid for online advertising and they came to your site but couldn’t read it? What an awful waste of marketing dollars.

The Good News

It’s probably not difficult to make your site mobile. If it’s a small, not-so-complicated site, simply buy a new template, install it, and make some tweaks. Platforms like Wordpress make this very easy. If you aren’t a tweaker, hire somebody. You can probably get the bugs worked out for a couple of hundred dollars or less.

If your site is custom made or has a lot of functionality that doesn’t make a simple template change possible, a good coder won’t have much of a problem adding the responsive programming in a short period of time.

The change isn’t likely to exhaust your technology budget but even if it does cost more than you hoped, the money you’re losing because your mobile customers can’t see your website is probably far more of a hit.

Don’t wait—get responsive. You’ll see an increase in your website traffic
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How To Get The Most Out of Expired Domains

Benefit of Expired Domains:

When you are creating a business or new website on the internet, as you probably know you will need a domain name. This of course is the obvious for any internet business, without a domain name you will not have a website, end of story. Now if you are new to the internet business world (where have you been?) you may not realize the importance of SEO tactics. SEO tactics, if done correctly, are designed to give you an advantage within the search engine ranks. Of course, you may be sitting there wondering, “What in the world are you talking about”.

Well, this all leads to the title of the article and will answer the question what is the “Benefit of Expired Domains”. You see when an domain has been in use by another person and this person allows the domain to expire without renewing, the domain name is placed back into the pool of “domains for sale”. This is where the benefits begin to show, just like a new domain name, the expired domain name is available to anyone who wishes to purchase it. What is the difference between a new and expired domain name? Simple, the expired domain name has already been in use. This means that the previous own has likely invested a great deal of effort and time, not to mention money into the promotion of that domain name.

Furthermore, this means that the expired domain is likely all over the internet, with a multitude of back links. Think about it, taking possession of an expired domain name means less work for you and more time for other, more important issues. You will have the opportunity to take advantage of the work that someone else has already performed. The expired domain could already be listed with many search engines, forums, directories, and a wide variety of other websites that have this link already on them.

What does this mean? Because the previous owner already did most of the legwork, it leaves less for you to do. The traffic specific to that expired domain now becomes your traffic, which leads to your sales, and ultimately your revenue. All of this because someone else was kind enough to do the work for you already and let the domain name expire.

Now surely you would know by now, that if you were to purchase a brand new domain name, you would have to do all the advertising, promotion, SEO work, submission to search engines, forums, and directories yourself. That is a lot of time, effort, and money spent on your part and trust when we say it takes a lot of all of the above to make a new domain work. It makes sense to take advantage of an expired domain does it not? We think so, you should find the expired domain of your choice today and begin taking full advantage of the legwork that has already been done for you and use it for your website.

Creating Your Own Blogging Site Can Make Money

Creating Your Own Blogging Site Can Make Money:

The internet has plenty of blogging sites and resources. There are thousands of blogging sites and almost a hundred contain topics such as yours. To compete with the thousands of blogging sites, you need to create your own style.

It is always easy to have your own blogging site because blogging sites allow users to set up an account for free. You just need to fill out some forms and you're done and you can start posting anytime you want without the expense. You can also add related links to your own blogging site.
You do not actually have to be a wizard if you want to create your own blogging site. Most of the people who keep up their own blogs are enthusiasts and common people. If you have your own blogging site, you can converse with someone and learn about their comments.

If you have a blogging site, it will be easy for you to market yourself and make benefits from your products provided that it has all the important facts and that can keep your customer interested.
Setting up your own blogging site means that you are creating a little space on the Internet where you can update and make posts on your own with just about anything that interests you.

Of course, your blogging site will have variety of topics within your specialty. If you want to make money with your own blogging site, you need to have multiple blogs with different topics. If not, your blogs will be too messy if all topics were all posted into one blog.

Now to have a good blogging site, you can post anything from your hobbies to your interests. There are lots of people who can get interested in reading your blogs. If your blog is interesting and can give knowledge to the people, they might visit your blogs more often. In having a good blogging site, you need to come up with interesting topics. It is important that you know your target and you know what they like to read about.

If you personally love dogs or a certain type of pet, you can write about it and post it in your blogging site. You can include useful information that the readers may be interested about. Blogging sites are a good resource for knowledge and information. If not, what will be its use anyway? If you have your own blogging site, you can start using Adsense to it. Adsense program can give you enough money and increased traffic out of your blogging site.

If you want to upgrade your own blogging site, you need to have at least 10-15 pages which has relevant contents. You also need to have 5 posts on your blog. To apply Adsense in your blogging site, it should have an interface that is easy to use and it has to be clean. All pages must be working and it should not contain broken links or under construction pages. It should not contain popups and animated gifts.

Your blogging site does not need professional designs. It can stay simple because designs are not the main requirement. If you have simple designs and a simple site overall, it will have more chances to get searched in the search engines. Users will also find your site easy to navigate because it is readable and not confusing.

The Benefits of Outsourcing Article Writing

The Benefits of Outsourcing Article Writing: Have you recently learned that you can outsource articles to professional writers? If so, you may be wondering if this is an opportunity that you should try. So, is it? Yes. One of the many benefits to outsourcing your articles is that you can make money on articles you didn't even write. What could be better than making money when you, essentially, have to do nothing? Whether you just don't want to do the work or if you are pressed for time, outsource your work. In the end, you will be glad that you did. Another benefit to outsourcing your article writing is that it is easy to do. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of freelance writers looking to make money online. This means that you should have a number of quality writers to choose from. Many of those writers also charge affordable rates. Perhaps, the greatest benefit to outsourcing your articles is the freedom that you have. You are in control. You have the freedom to make as much money as you want. You also have the freedom to decide how you want to make money with those articles. As for how much money you can make, limit your expenses. You want to pay for quality articles, but don't pay too much for them. The less you pay for outsourced work, the bigger profits you will have. However, remember quality. A quality article is worth paying a few more dollars for. As for how you can make money, you may be surprised how many options you have. You can turn a series of outsourced articles into an eBook to sell. You can outright sell articles to other webmasters for a profit. They can be added to third party revenue sharing websites. They can also be used to generate traffic for a website or a blog that makes money through affiliate programs or the selling of a product. Despite the fact there are a number of benefits to outsourcing articles, there are some downsides too. These downsides can easily be negated into benefits though. One problem you may run into is not getting what you wanted. Did you want your article writer to take a different approach or cover different points? This can be fixed in the future by outlining your specific wants and needs. Not only give your writer a topic to write five articles on, but give them five specific article titles to write. When you outsource article writing projects to someone else, you are putting a lot of trust and faith into that individual. Unfortunately, some will take advantage of that. All professional and experienced writers will generate new, fresh, and unique content for you. This means that your article will not be published online in the past or in the future. On the other hand, some will simply just copy an article online and try to submit it as their own. This can be damaging to your own career and professional name. If you opt to outsource your article writing projects, always request to see sample articles first. This allows you to gauge the writing of the professional in question. Do they meet or exceed your expectations? Before processing payment, always check for uniqueness. Never play for work that was simply just copied from another website.