Just a quick post to let you know I deleted all the old feeds for MMOFB – seems a spammer now has the site and judging by the facebook comments some of you were getting a bit annoyed… ooops. If I missed any feeds let me know.

Needless to say I have taken the summer off – no computer – just golf!

I vowed this was the year I was going to shoot par or better and it took 93 games to do it… a 71. That is 1 under par or 6 strokes better than Tiger’s last tournament… hehehe…

Unfortunately I have now run out of life encompassing goals so I may have to catch up with the rest of you online. Google plus? Anyone care to fill me in… I’m not kidding when I say I haven’t turned on a computer in a few months. Seems I may have missed a few things…

Just perused my extremely full inbox and yes I am still kicking… thanks to all for your concern.

If I have missed any other Earth shattering news please fill me in otherwise I just wanted to say hello and hope all is well with everyone.

It's been a tough summer...

Cheers,

Griz

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Over the years Google has always relied on a tried and true method of curbing the manipulation of its search algorithm. They take a few well known sites and spank them. Matt Cutts releases a new algo udate post indicating that they now have a way of using the algo to take down sites that don’t fit G’s guidelines and the webverse takes a cumulative dump in its boxers. The example sites are bandied about in forums and leading websites and everyone speculates on the how and why and what this means to them. Google is branded as evil by the losers and cheered by the winners. Happens every time…

Did Google really eliminate all the content farms with this update? Did they really remove all the low quality content from the serps? C’mon… What they did was set an example by slamming some of the most conspicuous violators knowing full well that the marketing establishment would get the word out lickety split. And it did – in record time no less.

Article directories exist for two reasons – to provide adsense earnings for the owner and a backlink for the writers. Those owners and writers who pretend they exist to provide quality content and drive targeted traffic are fooling themselves. Article directories are used to game Google. Ezine Articles is the most conspicuous article directory online. Slap it hard and people will stop using article directories.

Ranking well in the serps still – let me rephrase that – STILL – depends foremost on what links you have pointing to your site. Everyone knows that. G has not found a better way to rank content – maybe they never will. People buy and sell links. If you want to rank well you need links. Google believes that writing quality content will get you links. Sure it will – if you happen to have a site that is information based and you are an authority in your field. The problem is that the majority of sites online don’t fit into this description. Does not an eCommerce site have a right to sell its wares online? Why not? The thing is an eCommerce site is never going to get backlinks from happy purchasers who also happen to own a website and can’t wait to tell their readers how wonderful ABC was in selling them a toothbrush… or oil filter… So what do eCommerce sites do – they buy links. They have too. JCPenny did it and would have likely been left alone (Yes – they spend 30 million a year on adwords but they also happen to be relevant to the keywords they ranked for) had the New York Times not outed them. Overstock.com did it and got spanked. They were outed as well. Can an algorithm pick out all the sites that buy links? Nope. Can a competitor? Yup.

I put up a post yesterday just to make people aware that Google is spending money on manual reviews. Before G spanked EZA they had to be sure that they didn’t act hastily – maybe the content was quality? Spend a little money and review some of the site’s pages and see what the consensus is from paid reviewers. They don’t have to review every post to see a pattern – if 80% of the reviews are negative then they can probably make a few safe assumptions from that data and maybe even find enough common footprints regarding crap content posts that enable them to tweak the algo. This is of course speculation as I don’t know how they decided which pages would be dumped and which would live to see another day.

What I do know is that over the past year I have had a number of readers email me with their own tale of being slapped hard by Google. The first to come forward were the owners of big and successful sites – they all had 10k plus a day visitors, they all made between $5k and $15k a month, they all used adsense, they all had original content and they all had their adsense disabled first and then slowly dropped out of the serps. Did the algo do this? Probably not. They were all in very competitive niches and I am pretty certain they all got reported by the competition or were reviewed by the adsense team. Yes – they all used crappy links – forum profiles and paid links. If the algo can discern these links then they wouldn’t work anymore – but they do. A manual review brought on by complaints would easily see the link manipulation and penalties would be leveled at the sites. And they were. Many of their competitors have link profiles just as shaky but I noticed none used adsense. It is possible that they were manually reviewed by the adsense team and not reported by competitors. Either way – regardless of the content, the sites existed to profit from adsense and were obvious about it. Does Google want to eliminate made for adsense sites? Yes they do but the algo cannot do this on its own. If you are using adsense and questionable linking tactics then you may well get the boot if you make it high enough in the serps to start generating real income. What this threshold is I can’t say but $25/day is probably under the radar – $100/day from a site and you can probably expect a visit at some point. If your links are legit you probably won’t have a problem – if they are spammy then don’t be surprised if you lose your adsense and likely your serp rankings as well. This isn’t all conjecture – I lost 3 of 9 high paying adsense sites this year myself and received two warnings regarding the remaining 6. Guess what – the 3 I lost were all using crappy links to attain ranking. The other six have legit links that have accrued over the years from authoritative sources – media, wikipedia and leading sites in the niche. I never had to build links as the sites grew naturally.

At this point I should clear something up that I saw on a recent Hubpages forum thread. One of the resident experts made this comment;

Its just another theory. Im not sure how Grizz even has an adsense account anymore and Im pretty sure he gets a check from Google’s PR and Propaganda department now to make up for the massive loss to his splog empire after he received manual review.

Two things… G would never pay me and I never built splogs other than a few I used for demo purposes. My readers built splogs unfortunately and G didn’t much like that and nuked me for aiding and abetting. My sites however have grown and prospered because I have always built original quality sites that have a purpose other than adsense – in most cases they provide legit free info that the competition charges for. This is still the best way to get traffic and real links.

I’ve read a lot of comments similar in tone to the one above and it seems people don’t quite get me – I’m not telling you to stop what you are doing – I’m telling you to catch up. What worked in 2008 still works… until you get outed or rise above the radar. If your sites never make it to the big leagues then you have little to worry about but if you find your sites on page 1 for some competitive terms that drive traffic and produce income then you had better beware of the competition. If you are still using 2008 linking tactics then you may be in for a surprise. I’m not telling you this because Google wants me to – I’m telling you this for the same reason I always have – to fleece your pockets. My methods worked in the past as most of you learned and was worth every penny I charged you – funny that people don’t want to listen now. Am I charging too much?

So what exactly am I saying?

Use the knowledge you have acquired, take into account the fact that G will likely review a successful site at some point and make sure you are comfortable having it critically evaluated. I have a small group of readers (Lisa, Kimberly, James, Les etc) who recently asked me to check out their sites – I have and for the most part they all have very good content and provide useful info. I haven’t replied to each individually as I can do so here and perhaps help a few others out at the same time. All the sites (there are 23 in the list) are in one of the following categories; Weight Loss, Insurance, Finance/Banking – Mortgages or CD rates and the ever popular MMO. 23 different people and yet only 5 niches – niches that are known for spam since they are also known for being profitable. Almost everyone is using Adsense (a couple are lead gen sites) and have made some headway for a few popular keywords but haven’t quite reached the “holy shit I’m making big bucks” stage. Let me say this to all – look at page 1 of the serps for your keywords and notice the type of sites G has listed. Most but not all are legit sites in the sense that they are real insurance companies and real banks and real producers of weight loss products. The MMO niche excepted – everyone is a crap site. Now also notice most of the competition doesn’t use adsense – they are selling their own products or services. And you are trying to get page 1 ranking for an info site plastered with adsense…

My point – you may make coin from some of the long tails you rank well for but don’t pursue page 1 ranking for the main keywords. You will get destroyed if you ever succeed and all your work will be lost. Some times you are better off hovering close to but not attaining the top positions – best to stay under the radar and reap what you can for months and years rather than make payday that will be short lived. Yeah I know – F**k you Griz – I’m going for it anyway – what do you know?

I’ll tell you one thing I do know – the friends I’ve met online that are doing well and will continue to do well all have niches that are far removed from the spam topics mentioned above and cater to… drum roll… women and kids. In fact most of the successful marketers I know are women. I live with three females – a wife and two daughters (condolences accepted – thanks) and I am amazed, on a daily basis, about what women find interesting and what they will spend money on. Have any of you guys heard about “silly bands”? Do you know how elaborate kids birthday parties are these days – my wife has no problem spending a small fortune on them. Apparently this is common to mothers everywhere.

Two years ago big business hadn’t caught on to IM – today the big brands are dominating the landscape. Their money buys all the SEO’s they can get their hands on and will eventually own the big niches and most of the long tails that go with them. And G is ok with that as they are still happier with JC Penny ranking number 1 for “bed linens” – gamed or not – than having Bob`s no name adsense site in the top spot. This is the new reality but it doesn’t mean that Bob can’t make a living online. Bob has to find a niche that isn’t brand orientated and there are millions to chose from – start with those that kids and their mothers are interested in. I’m not joking – it works for me. The thing is most of you won’t – you are planning to rank #1 for “Payday Loans” come hell or high water and that’s the end of it. I wish you well.

I say this in all seriousness – many of you have been at this for a few years or more and have shown you are in it for the long haul. Do yourself a favor and stop spinning content, building MFA’s and spamming link profiles – you have enough of those nickle and dime sites – spend at least part of your time (and it is time consuming isn’t it folks?) working on something that will last. You can thank me in 5 years.

I have a ton more to talk about – Facebook – Tests – You Guys – but this is long enough – I hand the crown of “Long Posts” over to Dave at his Marketing blog – always a fun read but pack a lunch… (If you want to lesson your dependence on Adsense he has a lot of free info monetizing with Amazon – huge resource you should read – no sales crap.)

be back…

Cheers

Griz

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Since late 2009 I began noticing ads placed for jobs online variously termed “search engine evaluator” or “Internet assessor” and while Google wasn’t usually mentioned as the client one could not help make that assumption. In any event one company Leapforce has provided a useful summary of what a search engine evaluators  job entails. This was provided to me by one of our friends who works for Leapforce and wishes to remain anonymous.

Here are the Quality Assessment Guidelines provided by Leapforce to their Search Engine Assessors.

Introduction
This is a training to help you recognize a particular type of low quality landing pages: low quality informational articles.

This training is important both for Page Quality rating, which you may do in the future, and for URL rating. Please review the Slightly Relevant section in the General Guidelines: https://www.google.com/evaluation/portal/portal_files/General_Guidelines.pdf. (Note – this link won’t work but I included it so you can see who Leapforce is contracted to do work for – Griz)

Remember: Topically relevant but low quality informational articles often deserve the Slightly Relevant rating. If the quality is so low that the page is useless, use the Off-Topic rating.

Let’s start by thinking about this: Most of you had the experience of writing papers in high school. You may remember all the ways in which you or your fellow students tried to complete assignments with little actual effort.

Did you ever copy from an encyclopedia?
Buy a pre-written paper online?
Copy a paper a friend wrote and change a few words or the first paragraph?
Fill the report with large tangentially related pictures and hope no one notices the lack of other content?
Get your little brother to write it?
Make up content yourself without doing research?
Write quickly with no drafts or editing?
Fill up pages with completely obvious sentences that repeat the topic of the paper? (“Argentina is a country. People live in Argentina. Argentina has borders. Some people like Argentina.”)

Characteristics of Low Quality Articles
Unfortunately, there are plenty of informational articles out there which employ similar techniques.

In general, writing high quality information articles takes time, effort, and expertise. Low quality articles usually:

Are written by non-experts
Are not authoritative or trustworthy–and information is arguably useless if it can’t be trusted!
Contain either copied content or commonly available content, though frequently the content is summarized and the wording is changed
Are not well researched
Have no citation of sources or indication about where the content came from
Contain little actual information, even if the article is long and has a lot of words
Have poor writing quality, insufficient editing, and/or the information may be poorly organized
Exist on poorly organized pages, which include a lot of off-topic/unhelpful links and ads

Examples
Let’s look at some low quality examples. Please read the articles in the examples– at least the first few paragraphs. Better yet, read the article out loud.

Example 1:
http://goarticles.com/article/Why-Do-Men-Cheat-On-Their-Wives-Study-Of-Marital-Relationships/4078532/
This is a low quality article. Here are some reasons why:

There is no information about this author, aside from his name. In the “about this author” section, there is this information: “You can get to a place, where you feel more safe and have a deep trust that your partner will never ever cheat on you ever again, learn how to survive an affair at http://www.howtosurviveanaffairblog.com/.” Clicking on this link goes to a blog. On that blog, there is no information about who is writing or what their education/credentials are. The blog claims to be based on research, but there is no evidence of research.
The writing is very low quality. Look at this sentence “There may be many reasons as to why men who’s happily married could cheat on their wives and quite often, it’s not exactly what women would like to hear, such as men are biologically wired to seek out as many suitable partners as possible or because they’re not getting as much action at home or it’s due to the reason that his wife refuses to try new things, there may be many reasons as to why men would cheat on their wives.” This is a run-on sentence using poor grammar. Looking further, you will see other obvious classic errors in grammar, punctuation, and style.
There is very little actual information presented in the article. The multiple paragraphs could be condensed to a few sentences involving the 80/20 concept, which the author admits is not scientifically supported.
This article fails the “would you trust this?” test for discriminating users. And, in fact, if you explore the website a bit, you will find that anyone can write and submit articles (up to 10 a day!). You can make up your own theories of marriage and publish them, too.

Example 2:
http://ezinearticles.com/?5-Tips-to-Fix-a-Sexless-Marriage-Or-Relationship&id=1006418
This is a low quality article. Here are some reasons why:

The author has no identifiable expertise. Here is what the page says about the author: “Kate Dixon is an author and sexless relationship expert. To read more about Kate Dixon’s method of solving sexless marriages, go to this website: http://FixYourSexlessMarriage.com/.” Other than her claim to be a “sexless relationship expert”, there is no evidence anywhere of the kind of credentials needed to do marriage or relationship counseling. The website exists to sell her self-published book. The website itself is low quality. (And in fact, this article may in part exist to link to her website and sell her book, rather than to actually provide advice or information.)
The writing is low quality. Read this part: “If you’re in a sexless marriage or relationship and wish to change it to the better, this article is definitely for you, and I urge you to read it through. In order to fix a sexless marriage you need to be able to take a step back from what is happening to you and look at things objectively. I know it’s hard as you must be going through an emotional turmoil, but trust me, it’s the best sexless marriage advice I can give because it needs to be done. If you let your perspective be clouded by your emotions, it would be difficult for you to fix your sexless marriage.” The style is poor and unprofessional. There are punctuation/grammar problems. The verb tenses are not consistent.
The information is fairly generic and commonly available. Each of the listed steps (for example, “don’t play the blame game”) appears on self-help articles throughout the web. In addition, this article does not cite its sources, and there is no justification or evidence of usefulness or correctness of content.
The article fails the “would you trust this information?” test for discriminating users. Ezine is a website that allows anyone to publish just about anything.
The page itself isn’t well organized. The article is nicely framed, but most of the page real estate is devoted to ads and other links. The article font is lighter colored and less visible than the navigation and ads.

Example 3:
http://www.virginiacops.org/articles/Backstabbers/backstabbers.htm
This is a low quality article. Here are some reasons why:

This is a modified version of an existing article. Here is the original, full article: http://articles.latimes.com/1998/aug/10/business/fi-11827. The content in the article you are reviewing in this training (the modified version) exists on many low quality websites. To check this, copy a sentence or two and do a search on Google with quotes around the text, like this ["As a co-worker, what can you do about them? Total avoidance is often impractical"]
The writing is extremely poorly edited. One sentence is actually copied twice in the first paragraph: “Backstabbers– every office or workplace seems to have them. As a co-worker, what can you do about the? As a co-worker, what can you do about them? Total avoidance…” It also has an obvious formatting error: “USC’s business school m=name academia — despite” The original version doesn’t have these errors. We suspect this is a copy of a copy.
The article fails the trust test. Any article with obvious errors is hard to take seriously. Users would be forgiven for not even believing it originally came from the LA Times, a newspaper that is known for high quality articles.
Why was this page created? The LA Times is an authoritative website and access to this article is free. Why not just point to the article there? Why would anyone want to read a poorly copied and altered version of a high quality article that exists on an authoritative source?

Example 4:
http://www.pregnancysymptoms.net/Basics/info.html
This is a low quality article. Here are some reasons why:

The article is on a medical subject, but it does not appear to be written by a person or a company with medical expertise. The author is “Jane Brown”. There is no information about her education, expertise, credentials or medical degrees.
The writing is poor. Look at the first two sentences: “Pregnancy symptoms signal that you are pregnant or that you could be. As you consider if you could be pregnant, keep in mind that some of the symptoms of pregnancy may not be as specific.”
The information in the article is available on many, many websites, including authoritative sources such as well known medical sites. Most of it is common knowledge as well, such as the point about a “missed menstruation period”.
The article fails the trust test. The writing is poor, there is no evidence that the article is written or even reviewed by a medical expert, and the website itself has no information about who wrote the article or who is responsible for the information.

Since the algo update there has been no shortage of Google speculation and knee jerk reactions given to this latest serp update – most I find quite comical as everyone is an expert and has an opinion on what this does or doesn’t mean. I’m not much interested other than to say I have suggested getting out of the spam site – spam backlink game and move on to more substantial site building. Yes, easy for me to say but if you are really interested in staying around for the long haul then at least consider broadening your network to include legit sites that have a purpose other than providing adsense income.

Cheers,

Griz

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RT Cunningham from Untwisted Vortex has a post regarding a simple SEO tip. I encourage you to read it as he has seen some drastic improvements in the serps since he implemented his new site structure. It has to do with one of the main annoyances using these bloated WP themes. Bleeding too many links from each page. In general you want far more incoming links on each page (internal or external) than outgoing. These themes kill your juice percentage because of all the widget links – archives, tags, categories.

RT has a solution for this problem – worth your time reading and implementing it yourself.

Click the link above and for those on FB you can follow some of the group discussion here. SEO discussion on FB

Cheers

Griz

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It’s Title;

Griz Grizzly’s Secret Video Blog Post Revealed – Click Link To Watch

He refers to Splork’s last post… read it here… Bloggers Blogging About Blogs… Suck

Yeah…

Sorry to disturb ya’… back to the keyboards…

Cheers

Griz

How’s your weather?

This is mine…

Winnipeg Temperature... Getting a bit chilly out

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