Google's Promises to Punish for Selling Backlinks - Myth?

Today the whole community of webmasters is buzzing about Google's promises to change their policy and fight more effectively the tactics of selling backlinks.

I am not going to dispute about the morality of purchasing backlinks for SEO purposes, because this is a subject for another discussion. But let's try to answer a simple question...

Is Google Really Capable of Stopping Backlink Selling?

And this is a very good question. What Google offers to do right now is to report sites that are selling backlinks and they will find out some algo to fight it. Google is not saying how exactly they will penalize, but I think the wisest idea would be to simply not count backlinks (in terms of rank calculation) if the site is reported for backlink selling. This should make the purchase of links not interesting for webmasters and break the whole trend of buying links for the sake of SEO.

BUT...

How exactly can Google tell good links (real links) from bad links (paid links made for the sake of SEO)?

I personally know many super reputable webmasters' forums that sell backlinks. Even on home page. (!) Intermingled with real backlinks (!). And Google will not be able to invent some algo that will tell good links from the bad links for all sites if the good and bad links are coming together. Because all links look super natural.

So, if it's impossible to invent this algo, this means sites that sell backlinks in a wise way are out of threat. And Google will be catching only stupid link farms and greedy average sites that create piles of backlinks.

Most probably Google will make a big public punishment for some minors - and that's it. Big sites will be still selling the backlinks. And webmasters will be still buying the backlinks.

All this makes me think that it's highly possible that Google creates the buzz trying to threat naive webmasters and scare them away from buying links.

But there have been many examples when Google's promises have been to far from what they have managed to do in real life.

P.S. And, by the way, don't you think that all this fuss about purchasing backlinks is a good proof that Google can still be manipulated with backlinks? :)

Link Exchange and Yahoo Pipes - Going Step by Step

This is step-by-step guide to successful combination of link exchange with Yahoo Pipes technology.

As promised in the previous article published on this blog here "Link Exchange and Yahoo Pipes" today I am going to show step by step how you can use Yahoo Pipes technology to get better effect from the link building.

I have recently made a test and created special Yahoo pipe (more details on this link exchange Yahoo pipe blog) which had three aims:
- get better Yahoo exposure/indexing;
- get more traffic from visitors of Yahoo Pipes;
- get more potential link exchange partners.

Today I am going to explain how exactly I made it.

I created a special Yahoo pipe where I submitted the RSS feeds on my sites that had link building directories. The beauty of Yahoo Pipes technology is that other people, who liked the way this or that pipe can simply click 'Clone' link and get this pipe ready for their editing.

Why Editing?

Because when you clone any pipe, you get the access to edit it any way you wish. And this is where the spin-off effect starts. People see my pipe, see from having my RSS feeds inside it I can really succeed with my aims (indexing, traffic and more link partners). They want to have the same, so they clone the pipe and ... add their own RSS feeds of link directories. Now all others who see this pipe will see MY directories plus THEIR directories. And then it becomes a snowball, with more and more people adding their feeds to the base.

The results of this strategy can be amazing!

First of all, the more people clone this pipe, the more popular it is in the eyes of Yahoo - hence, the faster is Yahoo indexing to all new pages in the link directories that submitted their feeds to the pipe. And deep indexing of all directory pages by Yahoo is a great victory.

Secondly, the more popular is any pipe, the more people see it. Hence, any site has more potential traffic.

And the third advantage - the more people see the directories, the more chances that you will catch 'some extra' good link partners for the sites, because people like joining winners.

How to Create Yahoo Pipe - Step by Step.

(1) Register Yahoo Account.

(2) Go to http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ and click 'create a new pipe' button. This will send you to graphical interface where you can play with feeds any way you like: sort them, make them searchable for keywords, filter for unnecessary elements, etc.

BUT, before you start doing it yourself, better pick a good pipe and clone it. Because thus you will get a ready made pipe that you can experiment with and see the guts of this technology.

(3) Once your pipe is made, publish it, and Yahoo will do the rest. Yahoo promotes pipes and sends people there, Yahoo indexes the sites that submitted their feeds, because Yahoo wants to push this technology, hence it is quite logical that they help a little in indexing. So this is a great chance to use this opportunity.

Yahoo Pipes technology will help not only link exchange. You can make your articles more visible by submitting their RSS feed to the pipe. Or you can make your site network more visible. Anything that has RSS feed can give you extra help in Yahoo. Use Yahoo Pipes, and you will see that they really help.

Link Exchange and Yahoo Pipes

Link exchange and Yahoo pipes have a really great potential to be combined. And I am going to prove it in this post.

What are Yahoo Pipes?

According to the quote from Yahoo web site pipe is 'interactive feed aggregator and manipulator; using Pipes, you can create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant.' But behind this shy definition stands new potential.

Imagine that now you can gather RSS feeds from different web sites and make then searchable under different parameters in a very simple visible form. With the help of visual constructor you can create your simple (but not primitive) search engines that will be focused to the feeds that you choose. And you don't need having big programming talents to make it work. You save it as your own Yahoo pipe and now every visitor of this pipe can submit necessary data and get result from the feeds of this pipe.

How Can this Help My Link Exchange?

Keep in your mind that Yahoo pipe is kind of search engine that searches the feeds that you need. Now this is real case example of how you can get extra boost to your link exchange directories with new Yahoo technology.

• Grab all RSS feeds URLs of your link exchange directories. If your directories don't have RSS feeds, than you are still in the 20th century. Today it is almost a must to have it, and there are many link exchange scripts and tools (even free link exchange scripts) that have RSS feed which is automatically updated with every new link in the directory.
  
• Now - take all these feed URLs into your Yahoo pipe. This means you created your own searchable base, base of your link exchange directories.
  
• Then using specific Yahoo Pipes modules create rules for searching the base. People can search by topic of links, or title and description, etc.
  

That's it. You have your own Yahoo pipe. This innovation is being nicely promoted by Yahoo, so it's not your problem to attract people to Yahoo pipe. And when they are there - they will use your pipe form to find good partners. If you fit their demand, it means you got new link partners.

In the next post I will show you how this can be possible in real action, step by step, so make sure to have your Yahoo pipe account registered by that time to follow me.

Link Exchange Not Ruled by Relevancy.

Link exchange is reported to no longer be ruled by relevancy of links during link building. According to the tests performed by Internet marketing team of DesktopMoney LTD (within the framework of automatic reciprocal link exchange tool tesitng) Google has shifted from relying on relevancy of web sites. Even more - in many cases links can be absolutely irrelevant, but they should fit the new factor that is coming into use.

Basing on the results from link building and testing of the backlinks indexed by Google the specialists of DesktopMoney LTD have come to the conclusion that many of the officially indexed backlinks were on the web sites that were irrelevant to the topic of the site they were linking to, however these irrelevant backlinks were displayed by Google among the top results of officially indexed backlinks.

This conclusion comes very close to breaking one of the pillars of Google's philosophy about link exchange which says that in order to have no problems with building links site owners should be very carefully choosing link partners, especially pay attention to link partners being relevant to their topic.

The issue of relevancy has been highly disputed by Internet marketing community, as there are many cases when topics seem to be irrelevant for the Google's algo, but are not irrelevant in reality. For example, 'business' and 'health' are absolutely different topics for automatic algorithm, but in reality business training website can be linking to yoga site as part of the stress handling techniques that are widely used in tame stress in business. Thus, two irrelevant topics can be very relevant.

The testing results held by DesktopMoney LTD prove that in reality Google is not relying only on relevancy of links as relevancy is a very disputable issue. And testing results hint on the new factor that is highly rumored to be introduced by Google. This new factor is Trust Rank.

Google is not officially approving or rejecting the usage of this factor in their algo. But it is highly logical that Google might have given Trust Rank to a line of websites that have good Internet reputation and gained trust in their niche. Surely Google is not disclosing the websites that gained Trust Rank from it, as this can cause intense attention to getting backlinks from these sites. However it is possible to suggest that among these sites one can find reputable media websites, established article and press release services, various online communities (forums, memberships, chats, polls), reputable directories (script directories, product directories, service directories), social networks, well established niche majors and other websites of this level.

Getting a backlink from the site of this kind, even if this site is irrelevant, will not produce any problems. And testing results prove that Google is adding these backlinks to the official count.
Having taken into account the mentioned reasons, it can be stated that Internet community is on the verge of getting new set of rules for link exchange, where Trust Rank will take one of the important positions.

7 Traits of your Product being Popular and How to Fight It.

It is rather difficult to rank the popularity of your product in the net via some ranks, or traffic, or the number of subscribers. But there are specific traits that immediately tell that your product is a real success on the Internet market. Plus, some tips on how to handle the success, because success quite often brings envy.

In this article I am mostly relying on my personal experience of creating scripts and tools (my latest link exchange script in particular), that is why the popularity traits that I am going to mention are focused on this type of products. Still, I think these traits go really nice not only with scripts, but other types of products as well.

So, you can be sure that your product is really popular if:

1. You see others swapping something to get your script.

If on any forum you see the message saying "I'll swap (or trade) my product/info/membership/etc. for *this product*" - well, you can start opening your celebration bottle of wine. If others are ready to give away something valuable in return for your product, then you have stepped on the road of success.

Don't fight it. Let people get your product. In any case they will need support and only YOU can give them support. This is where you'll convert them to YOUR clients.

2. You get inside hackers' list of cracks.

There are services that promise they can steal any product and give it to you for a cheaper price. If you got to the lists of items that they are offering - it means others are asking them too often about your product, and they had to put you to top list of their hacks.

Don't be scared by hackers. They can't hack everything. And if you want to kill their business, make a free version of your product - no one will pay hackers if people can legally get your product (with your support) for free. Hackers are not volunteers, they like to get paid. If they see you have a free version, they will not waste the time on it.

3. Someone tries to sell your script on eBay.

Well, this planet is full of crappy-minded people. They will always try to make money circumventing the owner.

The solution is simple. Make free version of your product and make "witty Ebay sellers" look like idiots.

4. You see your product as 'not another...'

This is a good trait. If you see that someone tries to sell the product in your niche, mentioning "It's not another ", it means this person agrees that your product is very popular. Because using the name of your product definitely catches the attention of people, and they know about it.

Don't fight it. Only the quality of your product can prove that yours is better. So, focus on quality, don't bark back.

5. Your competitors prove they are better.

If you see that your competitors are doing all possible to prove their product is better - this is very good. Especially when you see your product in their 'comparison lists'.

The same advice - don't fight it; focus on quality. Make sure that when people get to your site they see that your product in head over shoulders above your competitors.

6. JVers are running after you.

No longer you are jumping out of pants to get a JVer. Now they send you emails, showing the advantage of doing a JV with them. They give exclusive commissions, they offer you customized approach, they suggest sign interview with them.

Well, that's great. But don't be too greedy. Pick only those JVers that can bring targeted traffic for your product. Surely you don't want to harass unmotivated people by getting your product. This can create negative emotions about your product and you.

7. Someone tries to junk your site (DDoS attacks and spam "from" your site).

If you are a real pain for your competitors - stay alert: some of them can decide to use black techniques to junk your site. They can make DDoS attack to make your site unavailable (more about DDos here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDoS). Or they can try to send spam from your site, for your site to get listed into as much blacklists and possible.

Well, choose good hosting company. Don't play with hosting resellers. In case of any problems they will have to contact the support of the mother company. Better pay more for hosting, but this will escape you from much pain in the long run.

Summary.

Well, if you are familiar with all these traits from your personal experience - congratulations! The net loves you. You are popular!

Go on, squeeze the best of this success. And now that you made money, don't forget - being rich does not make better than others. You just have bigger opportunities and freedom. Use them wisely.