Paid Links Crackdown, 36 SEO Myths, International SEO, Speedlink 22:2013

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Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great and productive week. FTC disclosure requirements aside, Matt Cutts from Google’s Webspam Team released a video recently reiterating that they are and will continue to take strong action for any paid content that flows PageRank and that are not “abundantly” clear that is paid content. Matt’s video explains what editorial and advertorial content are, as well as mentioning what an “advertorial” content is.

Essentially, all these boils down to receiving money to for these type of “advertising” campaigns. Google always mentioned that these are in violation of their guidelines, but this time, Matt sends a “strong warning” that the crackdown will increase, mentioning that they may remove the page, and can go further. Don’t know about you, but if these type of advertising is part of your business model, things can really get very complicated for your rankings.

Matt also tweeted this recently… (note “several thousands”)

Advertorials

What do you think about this? What really should be disclosed? Receiving money is one thing. But what about other types of compensation like, gifts, giveaways, heck even guest posts in exchange for links? If you look at the comment thread over on Google’s webmaster channels, you will see that there are many people, including Ann Smarty (MyBlogGuest) and Dino Dogan (Triberr) leaving their two cents. A final thought on passing PageRank – a brand new post with zero PR and actually not even indexed, how’s that work?

On a different note, Stephan Spencer on SearchEngineLand.com published an article about 36 SEO myths that persistently continues to be mentioned out there, which should really have to disappear forever. Take a look at them and see if you agree/disagree. Highly recommended if you are into SEO and specially if you are outsourcing SEO work from “someone”.

Finally, Google (again) published a blog post this week providing 6 quick tips for international websites. International SEO is primarily applicable to those that have their sites in different languages. If you are an “international” website, this article should be of great interest for you.

As usual, in no particular order:

Inbound Marketing/Analytics/Advertising

Social/Blogging/Small Business Bites

More Cool Stuff and Other Roundups

That’s it! Enjoy and have a great weekend!

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

17 thoughts on “Paid Links Crackdown, 36 SEO Myths, International SEO, Speedlink 22:2013”

  • After Google update Penguin 2.0. Some website is not on top.This video will help Seoer have a suitable strategy in 2013.

  • What they should be cracking down on is the crappy backlinks. I have seen US sites rank with Russian directory links. Heck most of their links were in another language…sketchy stuff there.

    • That´s interesting. Are the links at least relevant, from you can tell? I have seen things worst, like sites ranking number one with 3 redirects.. go figure

  • Google+ comment plugin above, a serious competitor to commentluv? I think it’s a nice idea to have both, Francisco, possibly to see what your audience loves better 😉

    • Hi Enstine. I know people luv more CL and I do too. It´s been here since almost it´s inception and right now, I just turned off the “luv” part because I am running an experiment, which as soon as I have more data, will eventually make the final decision.

      • Hi DiTesco, many bloggers are running this experiment at the moment, I think ComLuv should win though

        • Hi Pitt. From my end, I’m not really looking into it as a sort of which is better. Each of them have their benefits and CL is and always be a fantastic plugin, specially for those who are just beginning. CL is a lot of “plugins” in one, so one can turn “on or off” any functionality on the fly 🙂 The experiment is more on the SEO side of things 🙂

  • Paying for links that pass link juice is not that far away from paying for a link to be displayed at the top side of Google search results via Adwords. The only difference seems to be whether Google gets that payment or not.

  • The message to content producers is clear, publish shallow content that is obviously SEO’d and disliked by users and eventually you won’t be rewarded by Google’s search engine.

  • Video by Matt Cutts really help SEO to plan their strategy. But if they are going to penalized advertorial links then what you think about guest post we are doing that also to get good back link and that help us ultimately to get ranking in Google.

  • “and will continue to take strong action for any paid content that flows PageRank and that are not “abundantly” clear that is paid content. ”

    So if it’s clear a paid link means it is okey?

    • Hi Nagib. Provided it is clear and the links don’t pass PageRank, yes it’s OK. At least that is what I understood from Matt and how it’s really always been. Disclosure is a FTC requirement in the US..

  • i think duplicate content is more a threat than seo.

  • Interesting topic, Francisco.

    Not sure how they will define what is acceptable….considering people get links across a very broad range of sources(many paid content sources) this will send some larger ripples through the web-o-sphere.

    Slightly off topic….One of my main sites was hit recently(around time of latest algo update/ refresh)….yet, I have no paid linkage/paid content/etc/etc and that site has always been in Google’s ‘Good Books….and the site lost rankings across the board….

    Again slightly off topic, I have to agree with other people’s comments regarding how sites are still using dodgy poor quality links(en mass) and are ranking well and making some good money in the deal…and that should be where Google focuses their attention…

    • Hi Daniel. I hear you on your off-topic. Sometimes, it can be just a coincidence that your traffic has decreased. This does not necessarily mean that you were hit by Penguin. It could be a data refresh, or simply put, your competitors may have outranked you. Whether or not your competitors are using SEO best practices remains to be seen, it is possible.. Read this one https://www.iblogzone.com/2013/05/google-penguin-2-rolled-out.html

  • H,
    I don’t think paid backlinks are good. Google always check for slow and steady growth of backlinks. Its is good to make 1000 backlinks within 6 month than over just one month.

  • Google rules are so dynamic! One has to always play catch up with them. I am not a pro in blogging so I have just been self educating myself by researching and I must admit I have benefited a lot… I think it is safe to go with link building techniques that are google friendly!

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