Changing SEO – The Panda, The Backlink Networks, and The Cutts

There’s been a swarm of news and hysteria that’s going around the SEO world as Matt Cutts and his ‘heroric’ team of Google spam fighters have come out with yet another scary update:PANDA 3.3 has actually shown to create a few tides in the waters.

One of the biggest impacts we’ve seen is BMR (buildmyrank.com) announcing a shut down because the majority of their sites have been de-indexed. Sad and a little bit dissappointing as it looked like they were one of the strong ones. Read their announcement here.

In addition, it’s been report Matt also made a tweet about another blog network called ALN (authoritylinknetwork.com), which he proudly destroyed.

What IS Panda 3x Doing?

Ever since the beginning, the Google spam team is trying to weed out sites that are artificially pushed to the top of the rankings due to massive linkbuilding efforts. Essentially, they want to get rid of many of the traditional SEO efforts. It’s essentially a shift to rely more on the page content rather than backlinks. How are they doing this? Here’s a list of 3 broad actions they are taking

More focus on on-page factors

Google is now looking at on page value a lot more. Where as traditionally, an average to low quality page/site could rank high with enough backlinks thrown at it. Those days are over. How can an algorithm tell that it’s quality content? Good content combined with user interaction and keyword optimized (but NOT stuffed) pages are what the signals to a good quality page. It’s essentially combining everything that’s detectable to use as indicators of quality. I’m sure they have algorithms to detect word placement, content length, the number of paragraphs and headings, images, video, outbound links and related on page words. In addition, user interaction is measured by bounce rate, time on site, and interaction within the site itself. This is just a quick run down of things that they can look for, for all those people who think on page factors is all mumbo-jumbo. There are a lot of clues an algorithm can pick up. It’s not complex, and they are things you can easily include in all your posts.

Spotting over-optimized sites

If your page or site is clearly designed for Google ranking purposes, it’s obvious and will get penalized, or devalued. Meaning, if you are stuffing it with keywords, and just writing fluff content for the purpose of integrating as many keyword focused sentences as possible. It will give off signals that this page is made purely to get ranked by Google.

Devaluing over optimized backlinks

This is the BIG ONE. SEO relies heavily on backlinks and now they can see through it by the way links are built. Not just by the sites it comes from, but from the way it is created. Mainly targeting anchor text. It’s very obvious that you are building links if all your anchors are the same. While coincidentally, your anchors point to a specific page where that keyword is also the same. Watch out for this. Don’t get greedy.

Getting rid of blog networks

Many marketers seem to be frightened by recent take down action, because this act is something that’s actually tangible for once. Over the last week or so, a few of these blog networks, as mentioned earlier, have seen de-indexing of many of their sites. What this means is that a lot of posted articles with backlinks on them are disappeared over night. These networks were the source of what most SEOs use for their backlinks. Paid networks such as BMR and ALN, which probably contained over 1000 blogs, all of which had tons backlink content distributed automatically for their paying customers, is looking to shut down. Reports have said only a small percentage of their blogs are actually affected, it’s still something to take into consideration. All it really means, IMO, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. My take is that they focused on these ones manually to send a message. With the millions of blogs out there, it is impossible to take down them all. Even if they do find them, it must be manually reviewed, and the decision from them as to whether or not a certain blog is real or made just for backlink purposes comes down to being subjective. If overdone, Google knows they will be facing a lot of heat. There’s a very fineline between an assumed content, or link farm, and just a good overall community blog.  There’s a really good chance they can over do this and accidentally de-index ‘REAL’ websites. They know they can’t do this forever without hitting some tipping point. WHAT THEY DO KNOW, they can push it a little bit, create a panic, cause a shift in the SEO world, stop and see the results. Which is what they are doing right now.

How Do SEOs Adapt To This

As far as I’m concered, I don’t think there’s anything to fear. There will always be strategies for SEO, it will just be different. The first thing you need to do if you are guilty of over optimizing, and not diversifying. Here are some actions to take immediately.

Diversify your link sources

This goes without saying. If you relied most of your backlinks from networks like BMR and ALN, you’d know how important this factor is. Spread out your sources, not only to prevent a disaster, but it also looks natural. Mix in more Social Bookmarking, Social Votes, Web 2.0 blogs, Article Directories, Blog Comments, Video Links…etc

Diversify your anchor text…A LOT

This is probably the biggest signal for Google to detect spam links. Using the same anchor text for 90% of your backlinks is dangerous. If you were Google and you recorded 1000 links with the anchor text ‘best weight loss program’, it would suspicious to you too. You don’t need to be the head of the Google Search Quality to figure this one out. Add variation to your links and it will look more natural. In fact, using anchor texts like ‘this page’, ‘click here’, is actually very normal. Using your URL as the anchor text is a good idea.

Diversify your backlink URLs

Don’t point all your backlinks to the page you are trying to rank. In fact, have 2 – 3 related URLs you can potentially point to. This requires internal backlinking to divert the incoming links. Pointing to homepage, and a related article has great effects.

Get real backlinks

Guest blogging, link baiting, and just partnering up with other blogs to get your site listed is a good way to get natural and real links. Consider this part of your overall link strategy and you should do fine.

Make better content

Yeah, it seems like a pain. But it’s really not. The quality of writing I’m sure is not detectable from an algorithm. However, you should find ways to keep readers engaged. These are not time consuming efforts. Adding more than one photo, finding a video, and just putting a poll or animation on the sidebar can dramatically increase the quality of your site and page. Each piece takes no time to add and can be outsourced. So look into it.

Don’t get me wrong, backlinks will still count and there will always be good strategies out there we can all use. For now, we will wait until the tide has settled. I would check out Mike and Troy’s blog as they have regular webinars that updates you on Google’s changes, and especially the latest linkbuilding strategies.

Affiliate Marketing Authority Sites a Must!

I’ve been on hiatus once again exploring the different facets of internet/affiliate marketing. This post is geared towards the marketers who are using SEO to drive traffic to their websites and blogs. If this is you, then read carefully. Recently, the direction for affiliate blogs have been growing steadily towards Authority sites. I know this is not what most people want to hear, but the days of having exact match domains focusing on a single product keyword for quick profits won’t work anymore. Google, and pretty much all search engines, are slowly increasing their sophistication towards filtering out more garbage. What ‘they’, and everyone wants is more quality on the web. They will look for good sites to rank highly, while single product sites for quick money will quickly get weeded out. This Google Panda revolution is going to only make this worse. In short: Quliaty is now King.

Authority Sites Pays Off

The following is a video from Duane Forrester from bing about authority sites and content. I know no one really pays too much attention to Bing.com, but this message applies across the board.

Best Keyword Research Software PT 2 – Niche Reaper

Niche Reaper Review

The all in one, auto keyword finder for niche affiliate marketers is here! But for a price…

Niche Reaper is an amazing Keyword Research Service that spits out tons of great profitable nices at a click of a button. Keyword niche selection has always been considered a sort of an art, however Gary Prendergast and Matt Garret has turned it into a system that just keeps on providing. It does a lot of the leg work for you, and is up to date as it is a system that is constantly scouring for new keywords. You’ll never have to worry about a keyword that USE to be profitable as this system digs and analyzes in real time. There’s a lot that can be said about something like this, which is why it was easier to show in a video.

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At $47/month, it gives tons of training, and TONS of keyword ideas that ACTUALLY make money. I’ve created quite a few blogs from this system and it does prove to rank pretty quickly.

Social Monkee – Cool Free Backlink Builder Auto Bookmarking

Social Monkee is one of more recent in popular free links. It`s an awesome little service that anyone can use to get some instant backlinks. The best part is that it is free for submitting 25 social bookmarking links a day.

How it is used

You give it a title, your URL, tag, and a description. You must spin the title and description to keep it unique.

What you get

Well obviously you get backlinks! Free ones at that. After it makes the submissions, it gives you a full report with a list of URLs containing your backlinks. This is quite impressive and I love how it automitcally places your backlinks on random accounts spread through out the sites. More randomization the better.

Limitations

You get 25 submissions a day for free, if you want to upgrade, there is a fee and you get 100 submissions daily for only $4. There`s also a one time option of $47 for 3URLs to 100 sites each. That gives 300 links per day. Although this is very good, the one thing it is missing is automated scheduling. I would like to set it for maybe 2-5 links per day and spread it out daily, instead of a one time blast. But that`s just me.

It is definitely worth using, especially if you are on a budget. Click my link below.

**Free Automated Backlinks From Social Monkey (affiliate link)