I had the great joy of waking up 3 days ago to a Google Analytics view that showed traffic on my last two Panda/Penguin proof, 100% original and no links ever built to them sites gone almost to zero. A quick look at the search results for some of their popular phrases shown people that have ripped off my content ranking above me now, I’m sure glad I spent 10 years building those sites up for people to “borrow” the content. But the May 2013 algorithm update is only a tiny preview of what is to come according to Matt, I can’t wait!!!

What Is Link Emperor

To sum it up in as short a way as possible Link Emperor is your basic “hands off” link building service, it provides a way of builing back links to your web pages in a way that requires the least amount of effot from yourself. If you ever used LinxBoss then think along those lines, it is perhaps a little more involved than that but not a whole lot.

How Do I Use Link Emperor

The basic work-flow for using Link Emperor is very simple. You create a campaign, your campaign contains target pages (pages from your money sites, videos, social profiles, whatever you want links built to really), you can then add keywords for each target page that you wish to rank for. Beyond this simplicity there is a lot of tweaking to be done, for example the Link Emperor system assigns weighting values to both your target pages and keywords as to how much attention they should get. You can rely on Link Emperor to provide these values (hands off) or you can manually edit them which is what I prefer to do. As far as I’m concernced I know best for how one of my pages fits in to how I want to rank but that is very much a personal choice.

Once you have your basic setup Link Emperor actually has some very clever options to help you avoid any issues with Google. Most importantly you are given the option to randomise your keyword linking profile. You decide on the percentage of links you want to be exact match, keyword with fillers and other random “click here” style keywords. We all know over optimistaion is the quickest route to Google hell so having this option without the need to use your limited keywords is a real bonus. Also on top of this once you have some links being created Link Emperor allows you to divert some of your link credits to building links to these other links, or in plain English multi-tiering your link building. This extra buffer is designed to avoid over optimisation and boosting your campaign landing pages in as safe a way as possible.

Where Do The Links Come From?

The Link Emperor system is actually a type of brokerage for other link services. You buy credits from Link Emperor with a monthly subscription and then their system uses those credits to send link blasts out via other services. It sounds complicated but it’s actually very simple. The only thing for you to decide upon is at a campaign level what type of links you want built. As things stand the options available are Article Submission, Blog Commenting, Forum Profile Creation, Misc Platform Creation, Press Release Submission, Private Network Blog Posts, Web 2.0 Blog Posts, Social Bookmarking, Social Signals, Video Creation and Submission, Web 2.0 Property Creation and Wiki Submission. In theory you could decide to use 100% of your points on just Video Creation or Article Submission but in reality the Link Emperor system has a standard profile that fits most sites and you can then use sliders to adjust how much of each you want done. If you have a real hatred of forum profiles then it is very easy to make sure no links of this type are built. It is a system that is very simple to understand and very quick to use. Link Emperor then spends your points on link services that offer the type of linking you want, this is all done in a fully automated way, there is no content creation or submission for you to do.

Are There Any Extras?

There are a couple of bolt-on features that whilst not essential to getting links are nice features. There is a decent article management system built in. The actual links that get created are placed on PLR content and all this is kept for you, here you can add your own articles for use in blasts or even take articles that have been used and use them elsewhere. The other nice feature is the rank checker which goes out and checks your rankings for your keyword targets in Google each week. Whilst not a fully comprehensive rank checker it is a nice bonus for those of you who don’t have access to your own none bias rankings checker. There is the option for paying for more frequent checks and including Bing/Yahoo as well. Not really a bonus but another nice feature is the ability to review link blasts and have them refunded. For example I had a particular problem with videos being banned as quick as they were created but it was actually a very simple 2 click process to get those credits refunded and eventually to black list that service so that it was no longer used in my campaigns. There there is some on-the-page analysis thrown in for free as well. Overall you couldn’t complain about the value for money you are getting with Link Emperor, not to mention that it is an obviously well coded and responsive interface as well.

Is Link Emperor Effective?

The real crux of the matter. For all the nice words above I guess this is what people really want to know? I’m afraid to say it’s not a black and white answer. I’ve got to admit that this isn’t the first access I’ve had to a Link Emperor account and it was on the basis of what I saw for a client that I went ahead and signed up to give it a try. For some types of “landing page” I’ve seen on-going great results with Link Emperor but for others it has been worse than useless and seems to have triggered the dreaded “oh shit I’ve fell of the face of the Google rankings planet” penalty.

Where I’ve used Link Emperor to target profile pages on high authority websites, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Places, Google+ to name just a few, the results 3-6 weeks in have started to show real signs of improvement. I have used Link Emperor to rank YouTube videos in the top 3 for some reasonably competitive keywords. It definitely works for that. The client account I had access to was solely setup for this purpose and we had some stellar results. The theory behind this being that by placing links to your own actual sites on this type of 3rd party content you should see a boost in your own sites rankings, again you are using a type of buffer level of (well respected) content between your websites and the links that you create. If I’m being honest I’m yet to see that knock-on effect and whilst the profile and content on these other sites does great with Link Emperor there has been little or no impact on the sites being linked to from them. Even for a very large and respected Real Estate website that does well anyway. The overall result on MY websites has been negligable using this buffer strategy.

The other side of the coin is what happens if you point Link Emperor directly at pages on your own websites? Not good news I’m afraid. One month later and the rankings have crumbled to the point where Google is a total waste of time for those sites. I’m not saying they were riding high prior to Link Emperor (think top 30-40 for most keywords) but they have literally fell into the hundreds. I didn’t get to see any of this with the other account I had access to as we stayed away from this direct linking strategy but I’m not hopeful of things picking up. Once a site falls of the map like this it is very very rare for it to come back stronger.

In conclusion then if you are a business that has lots of social profiles, video and other forms of distributed content then Link Emperor is certainly affective in promoting that. In addition if you are an affiliate marketer that makes their money from syndicating content to other websites such as Youtube videos then this would be a service well worth trying. If on the other hand your primary goal is promoting your own content on your own websites then even with the randomisation of keywords and extra buffer layers using Link Emperor is still a big risk and not one in all honesty I could recommend.

Link Emperor Pricing

I used the most basic $147 a month “Soldier” plan which seemed fine for promoting the 2 main websites I was targetting. This gives you 30,000 credits a month to be spent and allows you to target up to 100 primary keywords. You can find out more information about the other packages available by visiting their website here. If you are interested then they are currently running a $7 trial which gives you 7 days to try out the service. Unlike some other trials this does open up the full functionality of the system and you will get links built in that time so it’s where I would recommend you start.

To open 2 windows it is a simple case of using your normal anchor tag but also including a onClick event handler to launch the new window using Javascript, here’s a quick example:-

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/referralurl" target="_blank" onclick="window.open('http://www.mysite.com/targetredirect')">Click Here</a>

Like I said, very simple.

I tested this on my usual browser Firefox and Chrome and it all worked ok. I had a gut feeling that it may cause a problem with Internet Explorer and its popup blocking behaviour so that is why I included my referral link as the anchor tag, assuming that if there was a problem it would be with the Javascript. I may not be able to get the visitor to the exact page I want but it’s making the best of a bad situation.

However my assumption was very wrong. When this code fails on Internet Explorer and prompts for permission to allow pop-ups it’s not the javascript page that gets blocked, it’s the original anchor tag URL! This is a huge mistake on my behalf. Over the 4 years the referrals from those links have generated in excess of £80,000 (about $120,000 US dollars) for me. But I’ve only been getting credit for less than half the traffic I’ve been sending because anybody using Internet Explorer has had the referral link blocked. Since putting this right my number of new sign-ups has more than doubled. I really have screwed up big time here.

What makes it even worse is that the fix is so simple. If you want to stop Internet Explorer throwing a pop-up exception when opening 2 windows all you have to do is make sure you don’t set a target for the original anchor tag. So instead of having

<a href="http://www.somesite.com" target="_blank" onClick="..... you just have <a href="http://www.somesite.com" onClick="....

As simple a fix to as costly a mistake as I would ever like to make.

Google has decided to host the worlds largest image repository, or to be more exact, Google has decided that you are going to be part of hosting the worlds largest image repository. The mutual benefit of having images included in Google image search was that when a user clicked on the thumbnail image looking for the original you got a visitor but that’s no longer the case. Instead Google are more than happy to show the full size image (courtesy of the hosting you are paying for) and in return give you the square root of exactly bugger all. Even if you only get a few referrals from Google images each day it is worth looking back to the end of January and seeing how this has affected you? If you have websites that heavily rely on this traffic source then I’m guessing you don’t need me to tell you how significant this change is to your traffic stats!

I realise this is yet another Google bitching post but one way or another it is getting beyond a joke, the Google/webmaster relationship has become take, take and more take. There are a couple of things you can do to help this, first of all you can use a disallow statement in your robots.txt and stop Google from indexing your images (thus losing all Google image traffic as a side effect) and most importantly you can change your default browser over to Bing* and tell everybody you know to do the same. The only way Google is going to change path is if they see real changes in browsing behavior from users.

*Yes we know Bing do similar with images but it’s more about shaking up Google’s market dominance as a whole.

Let me first of all tell you my tale of woe. Once upon a time I had lots of websites and they all ranked relatively well, as they should have, they were mostly good quality so why not? Then in 2011 Google started its assault on webmasters which continued through 2012. With each new update the impact on my websites became more obscure, sometimes old established sites would lose lots of their traffic, other times they’d bounce back “a little”. Other times my crappest sites would flourish for a few weeks before vanishing out the SERPS altogether. The short story is that I didn’t know whether I was coming or going, a situation not unusual to a lot of webmasters?

After 18 months of this I decided to call it a day, cut my losses with everything that had been impacted and go 100% white-hat with my old established sites that despite all the messing about still had good traffic (800+ unique visitors a day). I concentrated on more great unique content for these few websites and decided to let the promotion side of things take care of itself, truth being told as it always had for the most part. The websites in question had always attracted natural links and in later years Facebook likes, Stumbles etc etc.

I honestly expected to see things starting to pick up again once the abundance of “new” spammy websites was pinged by Google. The trouble is that they haven’t. In the time that I’ve been doing no link building or promotion I’ve seen my steady websites slowly losing all their traffic, my best website now only gets 400 uniques a day. This is from a high of over 5000 and the quality of the content hasn’t changed any, nor the fact that it is a website that contains completely unique content (and software) written by me. It is STILL getting natural backlinks, Facebook likes, Google +1 and anything else you care to mention but it is still losing out to copy and paste websites where people are obviously buying links, buying social promotions and doing any number of link blasts.

What Lessons Have I Learnt?

Put simply it is that links still rule, ranking in Google is still a links game! Whilst you can get away with social proof if you happen to be a multi-national with a team of writers and a whole marketing department bigging up your 10,000 page website on Facebook and Twitter for most website owners you’re going to need links.

Going Forward

Shed loads of links. Trouble is finding enough reputable links or moulding the links in a way that Google doesn’t get its knickers in a twist. I’ll have more on that and some early results in my next post.

Then this:-

Then do this:-

Buy Katherine Crowe Smile (From Amazon)

Buy Katherine Crowe Smile (From iTunes)

And if you really want to help think about Tweeting/Facebooking and everything else you can think off to raise awareness for this fantastic lady. I’ve had cancer rip through friends and family in recent years and yet I have never seen anybody with such a fantastic attitude to the ordeal, if there is a right stuff to be made off then Katherine Crowe is definitely made of it!

And from that introduction we have John Chow’s new blogging course, complete with enough shit testimonials to sink a battleship, name dropping video segments and even better a really long drawn out sales page perfect for snaring idiots. Just to make sure there’s even one of those really annoying “Don’t Leave Our Page” pop-ups that are as spammy as hell.

A-list blogger releases course, the circle jerk network promotes it by telling all their mailing lists how great it is, lots of hype for a little while and then nothing is ever heard again because the results just aren’t there. Would I buy John Chow’s blogging course, no, not even if I was spending YOUR money.

ps You want a tip? EVEN if there was anything useful in his course do you really think it would be useful after thousands of morons have replicated everything he does?

There are some people that think all Americans are self centered ass holes, having been on cruises mainly made up of American guests I’m not one of these. Then yesterday they made the ultimate sacrifice, they are willing to have their economy disappear down the toilet in order to stop somebody who thinks the world starts at California and ends at Florida being in charge. Surely we should all be saying thanks for that? We’ve all avoided the potential for more wars, endless shit-for-brain statements and American involvement in every part of the world that they take a disliking for, and only at the expense of the dollar. Result! There you have it, proof that Americans can see the bigger picture and are prepared to vote based on the things that matter, policy, not just on personality or race. It’s not as if 95% of one demographic voted for somebody based on them just being in that same demographic is it?

The trick for me now is to move that 10% of my income that is earned and paid in dollars back to a currency that stands more chance of being worth something in 4 years, maybe the Chinese Yen or Indian Rupee? I have a feeling that in 4 years pretty much anything is going to be a better bet than the dollar. Just a gut feeling and I’d be happy to be proven wrong by anybody who thinks pouring billions of borrowed public money into the economy is the future.

Maybe social signals are important? Nope again. Sites with very active Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc profiles gone, websites not touched or mentioned in years untouched.

Of all the Google updates in the past 24 months this is the one that has me the most confused. I’ve seen new domains and domains more than 10 years old getting hit, I’ve seen the most convoluted hyphenated exact match domains remain untouched whilst generic domains related to my own product names floored. I’ve even seen websites where the domain name isn’t even mentioned punished. This just doesn’t match up with the Matt Cutts downgrading of domain name significance explanation. When websites drop from having first page rankings suddenly to the high hundreds I’d consider that a penalty.

I’d love to know if anybody has got a handle on this yet? I haven’t even looked at what has replaced my websites in the search rankings yet, going by past experiences it’s not good for the heart to see generic crap still ranking well so I don’t think I’ll bother.

In the meantime I’ll keep on looking for any sort of patterns and as soon as I’ve got my head around this I’ll let you know.

Why Does On-The-Page SEO Matter More Now?

I could go all nerd on your ass now, offering up theories about Google’s algorithm changes since Panda and Penguin but I’d be hiding the truth. The whole reason why I think that On-The-Page has become a competitive market again is because getting backlinks has become more difficult. Or to put it another way, optimising your pages is MUCH easier than sourcing valuable backlinks that have a long term benefit. I don’t see it that OTP SEO has become any more important in Google’s algorithms, just that with the massive discounting of so many links around the web (as a whole) doing just that “little bit extra” can make all the difference. I don’t mean keyword stuffing, quite the opposite in fact. Content should be well written, spell-checked (I’m just as guilty as anybody of not doing this) and original. Make sure all your header tags are in place and even more importantly, unique for each page of content. This is all stuff that Google has been telling us for years but it was advice we could choose to ignore because we could go out and blast a few thousand backlinks to our pages. Those days are over.

Backlinks Are Still The Most Important Ranking Factor

Everything has changed and yet nothing has changed. Backlinks are still the most important factor in ranking well with the search engines, that’s my experience anyway. I’ve written several times about how I’ve had websites punished and various ways of dragging them back from the dead. All this has meant that I’ve had the chance to start plenty of new websites in the past 6-8 months and it’s because of this that I still rate backlinks so highly. Yes you can get a site moving along on social signals alone but IF you can source a reasonable number of HIGH QUALITY (the type that Google doesn’t discount after a week) traditional backlinks then things can really take off. The trouble is that getting these links is more difficult than ever. You want to know what I’ve done? Basically I’ve gone back old school, no automated systems, no thousands of article submissions, just plain and simple asking for a link where I see relevance, being active on forums/blogs and the use of web 2.0 websites in a totally legit way. Oh and of course I try to write content that people want to link to, this is the real key to success. Quality content as linkbait is where the future is at as far as getting good links is involved. Yes you can still buy links, but I’ve not seen much evidence of “systems” being able to avoid Google’s gaze for long (with one exception). I’m now a big fan of slow and steady.

What About Twitter, Pinterest, Stumbleupon etc etc?

Twitter is full of spam, Pinterest can deliver good traffic and Stumbleupon must now have more fake accounts than real ones, next! I’m joking!!! Of course all these sites and services are useful, Google openly admits to using social signals in their ranking algo and I wouldn’t build a website today without including the AddThis button as a minimum. Facebook likes, Google +1′s etc are all valuable indicators of good content. The problem with them is that in some ways they have become the new “automated backlink systems”. Before automated back linking having 50-100 real backlinks to a single page was seen as being very good in most markets! Before automated stumbles getting 20-30 real ones could be enough to get the ball rolling and produce massive amounts of traffic and traction. Do you see what I mean? In order to compete these days it is almost impossible to rely on the natural system. If everybody else is using automated tools then you’ve got to be in it to win it. Google has got a firm handle on the link building tools and services out there but something they will struggle to have any control over is the rapidly expanding world of social signals and bookmarking. What is real, what is fake, what is valuable, what is junk? Unless you have access to the inner workings of these services then Google is limited in how much it can do but at the same time is desperate to include them as a factor in their rankings. How easy is it to get 500 Facebook likes? About $20 easy!

Overall then what am I doing? I’m trying to write good content and making sure everything else on the page is right, I’m doing as little link building as I possibly can to get a website up and running and then relying 80%-90% on the links coming in naturally. Am I scared of over optimisation? You bet I am! I am taking advantage of the social tools that “everybody else” is using to elevate my contents importance via social signals. And that’s just about it. Most of my websites are now at about 75% of the traffic levels of the old penalised websites that they replaced and even with Google’s never ending list of minor tweaks and changes I do see month on month growth, frankly I’d bloody hope so too! There’s is no doubt at all that it’s a lot harder to get started, I do sort of miss the days when I could have an idea, knock up a quick site with some outsourced content and then LinxBoss/Build My Rank its way to the front page of Google in a number of weeks. On the other hand I don’t miss having to worry about when Google is going to discount all my work and make the services I’ve been paying for worthless!