Earlier this year Google put out a warning that a war on search engine spam was about to be waged . For those webmasters using questionable techniques they were all shaking in their boots. Now fallout from that change is here. If you haven’t already check your Google Webmaster Tools site, many people are now getting these messages and they look like this:


Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links

March 28, 2012
Dear site owner or webmaster of
We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team


Now I’m sure a lot of people will find this article after receiving the warning in Google Webmaster Tools and are here looking for a solution. First off there is no sure fire fix on this and people are going to guess and speculate on solutions so take everyone’s advice with a grain of salt. For simplicity I’m going to provide you links to the two most prominent opinions on the Internet and what you will find is there proposed solutions are 100% opposite (big surprise):

White Hat SEO Opinion:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/unnatural-link-warnings-blog-networks-advice

Black Hat SEO Opinion:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/black-hat-seo/419816-guide-google-webmaster-tools-notice-detected-unnatural-links-5.html

I would say that everyone should consider their own personal situation. If your site is 100% made up of bad spam links then I don’t think there is a real solution for you, regardless of what is said I’m sure you will lean toward the Black Hat opinion. If you are a strong site with few bad links you might be able to clean them up and go with the White Hat solution. I think most people will be in the split situation where they have lots of good links and lots of backlinks (backlinks were supposed to be good). For those people you will have to carefully select your future course of action.

One thing that is for sure is that Google made an example of the site BuildMyRank.com and reindexed a huge amount of their backlink network. If you used them, they know about you and you will probably have a message in webmaster tools. If you’d like, the site now allows you to login and click a link that says ‘Delete All Live Links (all domains)’. If you are looking to clean up bad backlinks that is where you should start.

The Internet is a brutal place; its a tough game. Unless you have a legitimate service that people love and need and tell their friends about you can’t expect Google to do you any favours and preserve your high rankings regardless of how you got there. I remember when Yahoo switched from the Yahoo! directory to the Google search engine as their primary source of search results many moons ago, all my #1 Yahoo listings evaporated over night. It happens.

I sympathize though. Google did make thousands allowing BuildMyRank to advertise with them allowing them to tell the world that using their service will allow you to dominate the search engines only to punish all their customers years later. That really isn’t fair. I also appreciate how hard it is to watch your competitors dominate you for years and years, knowing that they are using backlinks and spun articles while you sit back waiting for Google to intervene. Heavy buckling building was such common practice that it really started to seem like standard webmaster practice.

Going forward I would just advice people to stick with things that really make sense. That is what ultimately drives Google’s algorithm. Create a social presence to compliment your site, get your site listed in niche directories or list where it makes sense, exchange links with other webmeisters when it is truly complimentary, guest blog on reputable sites, and create quality content.

For everyone feeling the heat let’s hope Google keeps a level head and devalues all the bad links instead of waging a war on webmeisters. I’d hate to see a spam war emerge where highly ranked sites are targeted by other sites with backlink spam to devalue their Google position. What I think Google may find is if you penalize all the highly ranked sites out there you will find a worse layer of crap below. Generally the sites doing well in the rankings the last few years probably have established larger communities and have been the ones to spend more time and money on improving their sites.

Anyways guys, good luck on cleaning up your site and getting back on track. Share with us your stories.

Joe

After part two in the series, I had completed most of the visual refresh. Now it’s all about content. I had a very good freelance writer I know produce a series of 20 articles. I’m going to start publishing those, and build up some back links. Busy day today but I put the first one, getting started as a freelance writer . I’ll publish a new article every few days, work on backlinks, and monitor progress in Google Webmaster tools. Busy day today so that’s all for now!

I had about half an hour of time tonight so I picked up where I left off. As you may recall I bought an old freelance blog and I’m going to show you what I do to improve the site.

Here’s what I changed today:

• Changed the theme to Desk . The problem I had with the old theme pictured here, is that the header was far too large, taking up valuable ad real estate, and more importantly not adding much value to the site. This new theme is a lot cleaner, fun, and minimizes waste on the users screen.
• Optimized the blog title and headers: Not rocket science but I changed the tag line and optimized some of the header text. Inspiration for the text came from looking at search trends using Google Insights for Search
• Added AdSense code: The site was always making money through AdSense, I just added it to a few different spots. No fancy plugin used here, I just edited a few files where I wanted the ads to appear.
• Added the WhyDoWork Freelance Job Search Widget: Also pretty easy to do, I copied the code from here and put it on its own page.
• Added top menu items: The “Desk” template I chose had a menu, so I added a few key items: Home, Advice (which is the WordPress category where I’ll publish all the blog posts, a simple contact form, and the job search tool I created in the previous item.
• Installed some key plugins/tools: There’s a few plugins I always install. The first is a sitemap so search engines know about our content, I like the better wordpress google sitemap. Next I installed the fast secure contact form. It’s easy to use and configure. I also installed Google Analytics and turned on WordPress Stats just in case.

That’s it for today! Not bad for half an hour

Here’s what it looks like now:

Stay tuned for updates. Many more changes to make!

Just yesterday I bought a very small but very old website (> 8 years) in the ‘work at home’ niche called SeekFreelance It’s currently not making a whole lot of money (best month ever was $30 via AdSense), and it has very few pages indexed in search engines.

I’m going to show you exactly what I do to improve the site . This is what it currently looks like:

Given it’s day 1 and I don’t have much time, all I’ve done so far is swapped in my AdSense code. Woo-hoo I got 1 click already . The immediate and glaring issues I see with this site already are the header size (it’s taking up all of the ‘above-the-fold’ space, and the content (it’s pretty crappy). That’s probably where I’ll start.

Stay tuned

Came across this great article today. Worth the read if you’re a small business owner.

Well isn’t this blog a model of neglect. I happened upon the link and noticed that the last post was exactly 364 days ago. Time sure does fly. A lot has changed for me both personally and professionally, and it’s interesting to look back on the posts that we had written around this time last year.

I have some extra time so I thought I’d quickly post a quick tip that I think has worked for me, and might work for you too. I noticed we were getting a lot of traffic to WhyDoWork.com for the search term “cool google tricks”. It was all going to one thread, getting a ton of views, but not a ton of comments.

In about an hour, I bought a domain name, set up a wordpress blog, and had some content on the new site, cleverly titled cool google tricks . Once the site was set up, I did a 301 redirect on the content (see how to do that here) and had traffic flowing to the new site. It now makes a few dollars a day, and has over 1,000 views/day across a number of different posts and categories.

Not rocket science, but not something I’d usually think about doing. Think about your own sites, if you do have something that might be getting some traffic outside of your main content theme, consider spinning it off into something new. It just might work

How many of us have made the following type of comments: ‘Why didn’t I buy a great domain name back in 1996?’,  ’Why didn’t I start a money making website in 1999?’ , ‘This sucks! All the good ideas are already taken!!’ Sure, the people who did those things are wealthy now, but while some people complained about missing the boat, others have built a new one and the smart people got on board. For example, in 2004 Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook and then in 2007 another gentelman created Zynga (owner of popular Facebook apps such as Farmville). Trust me there will always be room for new innovations.

With the Internet rapidly evolving, it is so important to stay current, read about trends, and proactively think of where the next opportunities exist. I have personally run businesses that were very successful at the time but are now totally abandoned. At one point I’ve sold pop under ads, bought expired domains, ranked tops in the Yahoo Directory, and others, all completely irrelevant in today’s Internet world. In the meantime I’ve shifted my efforts to stay current. Last year I created a Daily Deals website (a niche that has exploded since) and am working on some totally customized Facebook Connect integrations.

One thing that I will admit is that the opportunities are not as easy as it once was. In the early 2000s I created all my own websites (simple HTML and php).  Now I outsource all my development and focus my efforts on design and marketing. The technologies used to compete today have gotten quite a bit more advanced, however the ease of outsourcing has gotten substantially easier and cheaper so don’t be intimidated by it.

So where do I think the next big ideas will come from? Here is my list of the hottest places to focus your efforts in 2011:

1. Google TV (Apps) – I really believe this is going to be huge in a few years and now is the time to start coming up with some creating applications to creatively merge together the TV and Internet.
2. Social Media Promotion – This one is really on fire right now and it may be only a temporary market but there is a huge desire for people to grow their social exposure. I’ve seen a lot of sites emerging that allow you to buy facebook fans and twitter followers, and guess what. They are raking it in.
3. Facebook Connect – It’s time to take your current site and figure out how to integrate with Facebook and Twitter. I’m not talking about setting up the obligatory pages but building in real value added integration that allows people to seamlessly share content on your site with their facebook friends.
4. Blackberry / Android Tablet (Apps) – While there is still opporunties with the Apple iPad, that niche is becoming saturated. The Blackberry and Android tablets might be a better place to look.

Have any ideas to add to the list?

I read an interesting post last week and wanted to share the message with you. Think about the title of this post. Have you ever caught yourself saying or thinking along these lines?

These often grand dreams are tough to see to fruition, so X doesn’t happen all that often. “When I lose a little more weight I’ll start X”, “When I’m not so busy at work we’ll take that trip to X”, “When I’m more settled in I’ll stop X”;  there’s always a condition holding you back from X.

What’s the solution?

Remove the first half of whatever statement you’re hanging onto and just do X. If for example you’re waiting to have money so you can move to france and become a painter, do something on a smaller scale that brings you some personal satisfaction like taking an art class at a local studio.

Hang on to your old outlook, and you risk life chugging along uneventfully as you wait for a circumstance that might never come. The present is all you’ve got!

It would be worth checking out the Work at Home Business Expo set for November 13-14 in Pomona, CA.  Keynote Speakers, such as Dr. Laura Schlessinger, will be attending the event to give key advice to attendees who either already have an at home business or are looking to start.

According to the July 2010 Kiplinger Letter, more than half of all small businesses are run from owners’ homes. Moreover, 6.6 million of them supply 50% or more of the household income. This is in a large part due to the advances in technology which gives business owners a global reach while saving money on rent overhead.

For those who have been previously hesitant to invest in home based programs, the WaHB Expo gives an opportunity to meet company representatives face to face.

Admissions is $10 or $8 advance online, and children 12 and under are free. The admission fee can be applied to an investment in a Home Based Business program, product, or service with participating exhibitors making the event entirely free to the public. For more information visit www.wahbexpo.com

I sometimes get asked about managing one’s career. Today I came across a blog post that has many of the same ideas and advice I pass on to others. While I don’t agree with everything on the list, there are a particular few I think are vital:

• If you aren’t being challenged in your job – leave.
• If you think you are successful – leave and find something or somewhere where you aren’t. When you become successful again – leave again.
• If your work is winning awards and it feels like you win most pitches – leave and go somewhere where no one has won anything and there is a low rate of success at pitches. Help them turn it around.

Now you might be saying, “but Matt I have kids to feed and billz to pay! I can’t just quit my job!” The word ‘leave’ doesn’t necessarily mean quit. If you’ve mastered the role you’re working in, it’s a good time to think about moving laterally within the same company, taking on more responsibility, or transferring to another department.

The #1 lesson here is do not get lazy. If you’re not pushing yourself at work, you’re not growing your career.