Recently Google made an algorithm change which is being referred to be most as the Google Famer Update.
The name is developed from the fact that Google seems to have targeted content farm sites the hardest, but there is more to this update than just that, which is what I’ll be discussing in this post.
Content farm sites, are sites that collect a large number, of usually low grade articles, sometimes in the 100’s of 1000’s, and because these sites have collected so many backlinks they tend to rank rather well in Google, until recently.
These content farm sites are seen as low grade and offering little value to the search engine user, and clearly something that Google is not interested in. Some sites include ezinearticles, ehow, articlebase and hubpages. I’m not saying that all the content on these domains are low quality, but they have lost a lot of rankings for their pages from this update, but again not all rankings.
I personally don’t use these sites for traffic, but I do use them for backlinks to my money sites, so I’ve not seen a massive change from the effect this update has had on these kinds of sites. However these sites are not the only ones to get hit. I know a few marketers who’s sites seem to have taken a knock in the Google rankings.
Whenever something like this happens, which is not uncommon by the way for Google, all us SEO marketers need to do, is give it some time for the dust to settle, start analysing what has happened to sites as a result and look for trends. I do this by looking at my own sites and all the pages and also by calling up friends in the industry and asking them what they’ve discovered. So that’s exactly what I did, and I’ve discovered a few interesting things I’ll now dive into.
Quality Keeps Big Google Happy
The most important thing to keep in mind when doing SEO, is that Google’s main goal is to keep their users happy and satisfied with the results they show. The last thing Google wants is for people to have poor user experiences and decide to try another seach engine instead. This would mean Google would make less revenue from all their pretty little ads getting clicked, hence why this recent Google Farmer update.
My point is, if you just start with quality, orginal content, on your sites, then you’re on the track from the beginning. Auto-blogging and the like, are bogus ways to build sites and are only going to get you slapped silly by Google sooner or later, so steer away from this sort of stuff.
The next question is, how else do we let Google know that our content is good quality?
It’s a good question, and I’m glad I asked it…the first thing is to make sure the content you use is orginal, and also in the context of the articles have some high quality outbound links to authority sites. When I say orginal I mean for your target pages, when I’m getting backlinks I use my Rapid Rewriter to spin the content and this works well and nothing has changed here, I just spend more time with my money pages adding images and video and take more time over the copy itself.
Until recently I had outbound authority links on the sidebar or footer of my pages, but I think it’s better to put them in the article itself, as that’s what Google will see as the most useful for a user. I know we don’t want people leaving our site, so don’t put these links at the top of the article, but instead place them lower down the page.
I always tell people and have for some time, to try your best to place a Youtube video in your article somewhere, as Google own Youtube, and one can safely assume they would be pleased to see you using them on your website. However on that point, and as a good friend of my Terry Kyle pointed out, it’s not a bad idea to mix it up a little and throw in some Metacafe videos in sometimes instead.
These videos are easy to embed in your webpages, all you have to do is copy the code they give you and paste it in.
Another thing to do is make sure your articles are atleast 500+ words long. In fact I usually go for 700+ words. Also if appropriate I link off to research papers, or quote them in my article also, as I watched a video recently where Matt Cutts, head of Google anti-spam, said Google is looking for quality, and he mentioned research as something that is seen as quality. This won’t work all the time, but for a weight loss article, you could easily link to a government statistics page on obesity and heart disease or something.
I know a lot of you will be like me and produce reviews of products, so you may well be wondering how can I ensure Google sees my reviews as quality. One thing I’m doing is adding a few paragraphs in my reviews now that are about the niche that the particular product is in. For example if I’m reviewing a weight loss product, I’ll write about the product, then I will diverge slightly and discuss weight management in general and link to quality pages from these paragraphs, and then add in a video if I can that fits.
Social Proof
Twitter, Facebook and Digg are some of the more popular social sites on the web, and Google are always monitoring what goes on at these sites. Therefore it’s not a bad idea to encourage people to link to your content from these places.
I don’t do this on all my sites, but for this blog you’ll notice I’ve a retweet button next to each post, the last post I did got 225 tweets, which I’m sure Google noticed. I also have social bookmarking links under the post, but I intend to change this slightly now and add a large Digg icon under my Twitter one to make it easier for me to get Digg votes. Some people say these kind of links won’t help your rankings much, however even if they get you more exposure, you will gains natural links anyway.
Too Many Ads
Another thing to be aware of is the number of ads you have on your sites compared to the ratio. If you have far too many ads then Google will see the page as just one big commercial page with little value for the user, so keep this in mind when including advertising.
So in closing, remember Google is always on the hunt for quality content and they’re pretty darn good at working it out, so best to give it to them!
Thanks
Matt Carter
Related articles
Hey Matt,
Thanks for these very useful tips. But do you have an advice for those who still want to rank their articles on article directories?
Dave
Matt Carter Reply:
March 28th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
Hey Dave
I think article diretories are still good, as I have a few ezine articles that are above me for certain keywords, so they do rank, I just think Google must now look at the content on these more carefully perhaps.
Matt
Wow. one of the first posts on the Google update which is actually constructive and not just rumours .Thanks Matt. Will take note of these pointers.
Matt, excellent post as always! One of the outbound links I like to use is a wikipedia link, for 2 reasons
1) Google LOVES wikipedia
2) there is a wikipedia entry for everything, so if you are stuck on using an outbound link, you could always go to wikipedia.
Example:
One of the benefits of dog (link to wikipedia entry on dogs) training is…
Thanks for all of your amazing content 🙂
Matt Carter Reply:
March 28th, 2011 at 6:24 pm
Hi Ryan
Great point there for outbound links
Matt
Hey Matt,
Thanks for the great article. If what Google is now doing with these content farm sites by reducing the quality of their rankings, it seems to highlight for me that certain article submission services, like Unique Article Wizard, etc, are not necessarily the best way to do your article marketing.
That’s why with my latest site selling Amazon products, my wife and I are working together on producing good quality articles on the niche we are in and then posting these ourselves to the better article directory sites.
I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts on this.
Thanks in advance and keep up the great work!
Matt Carter Reply:
March 28th, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Hey Mike
I am not sure if the links from these article sites are less effective to be totally honest, because I haven’t seen big drops in rankings and have a lot of article backlinks myself, so I think it is still fine to get article backlinks.
Thanks
Matt
Garth Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Well, yes and no. I had 2 sites completely deindexed and the common factor in those sites were that I was publishing articles from another popular spun article submission network. I only published articles that were on topic and formatted decently, and I did also have good unique content on the sites as well, but apparently Google somehow knew, probably by all the outgoing links, that these were mediocre quality articles created solely for backlinks.
So, maybe the links still carry some weight, but if I want to resurrect those URLs, I’m going to have to delete all those posts that make me a “content farmer” and just keep up with posting the good stuff, or I can abandon those sites and let them die. Either way, the links for all the people that submitted the articles to the system are going to go away on my sites. If it happened to me, I imagine there are lots of other links that are going to wither in those systems too.
So, unless you know the system you submit these articles to is heavily monitored and moderated to keep it’s users from submitting junk articles (and I rejected a lot of junk!), I don’t think those systems are going to provide long term value anymore.
At least, that’s the way it looks from here..
Matt,
Thanks very much for this info. As a relative newbie to this business I do appreciate genuinely useful info rather than just theory.
FYI your blog is on my igoogle desktop. It let’s me know as soon as you post.
Regards,
Adrian (UK)
Thanks Matt for a great post. Like Adrian, I am also pretty new to the business, and I am always looking for quality information that will make my journey both profitable and enjoyable. Some great tips here for me to work on. Thank you.
Cheers
Joy
This is like the 5th article I’ve read claiming that you can be penalized by the number of ads on your page – right now there is absolutely no data to support that and many of the other claims in the article.
It makes absolutly no sense for Google to penalize those who use their own Adsense platform.
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:36 am
Hi Kevin
Well it does make sense really, because it ties in with quality, if a page is primarily ads and little value then people are not going to like it and Google runs the risks of losing these users to Yahoo or Bing, so although it is there Adsense ads they still need to focus on their primary objectie of quality. Remember Google has strict rules about how you can use Adsense on page, as they know people can do all sorts of things to adsense just to get it clicked, but Google doesn’t want the ads just to get clicked, they first want a happy user and then second an ad to get clicked.
Matt
Thanks Matt for the blog post. I try to add outbound links in my articles and blog posts mixing up the outbound link positions through my article or post. I tend to create more links throughout my content rather than my side bars.
Matt
Thanks for the update. It’s very hard keeping up with the latest changes.
You are always a good resource.
Take good care,
Peter
Hi Matt,
Thank You for this Great SEO Information.
cheers,
Rachid
Hi Matt,
I appreciate this update on Google Farmer which clarified the effect of Google’s latest algorithm, in particular with regards to article marketing.
Am I correct in assuming that you would use social bookmarking buttons mostly on information blogs as opposed to physical product sites?
Love your farmer picture, though it’s missing the finishing touch: a big G embroidered on his front pocket – it might even be worth a few extra points from Google!
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the tip about mixing up MetaCafe and Youtube videos on your sites. Also, thanks to Ryan about the tip about linking to Wikipedia within your site’s content. I would say LinkedIn would be another one to use when possible because of it’s ranking of 9!
Matt have you or anyone else used the WordPress plugin Disquis and gotten good results for backlinking SEO?
Thank You very much for the awesome post, Matt. It’s great that you described how to let google know how good our page is…
Thanks Matt, for clearing that up.
I thought Google was, just an big bully that was messing with us like a kid with a magnifying glass on an ant hill. LOL.
Love being on your list.
Matt,
Nice update. As Peter mentions, you are always a good source for effective SEO.
Any signs that daddy goodle is planning to whack sites like we make with the RPF system??
Thanks again,
Mike
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:33 am
Hey Mike
I haven’t seen any sites of mine get whacked, a few have gone up in rakings, one of my newer sites is bouncing around a bit in Google but thats normal. Just stick to quality stuff.
Matt
Thanks for yet another “sensible” post – too many of the so called gurus out there are scare- mongering us into buying their latest products to avoid getting a slap from the big G. But as per usual you are helping to keep everything in perspective – Keep up the good work.
Best regards.
Makes perfect sense Matt, I always concentrate on quality posts and articles rather than quantity there of, If you duplicate articles to competing article sites I find only the first submission is ever ranked, if you do this make sure it’s Ezine Articles fist, better still rewrite your articles for latent semantic keywords (related keywords) and submit unique quality articles, once you get in the habbit of doing this it actually isn’t as time consuming as you may think.
Thanks again Matt we can always rely on you as a guiding light.
Take care
John
Matt,
Thanks for the solid info. I’m wondering if you have any suggestions on tracking backlinks since it appears that Yahoo Site Explorer may be gone by end of year. Majestic SEO seems a popular alternative, but newer sites don’t register there in my experience as I believe they are not frequently building a link history for new sites.
Thoughts?
Hi Matt,
i just read through the Google farmer thing, its great to know. but i would like to know, what about the spun content, wont Google now that is clever, see these spun articles as more of duplicate content? just wondering,
sambani, newbie in this industry.
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:32 am
Hey Sambani
I don’t think Google noticed the spun content if it is spun correctly, as like I have mentioned a few times in this post my rankings are fine, but I don’t use spun content on my money pages just to be safe.
Matt
Hi Matt,
I carried out a very interesting experiment, but one which is very worrying (all of this happened after the Farmer update had happened). I wrote an article on lowering the costs of IT (written on a wordpress platform website) and saw it go to not only number one, but number two also on Google, plus a third entry inviting people to click for more results from my site. What a result! ‘Lower cost of IT’ is a pretty competitive keyword phrase.
After a couple of days I added in an affiliate link and the post did not only drop in the SERPS, it was completely wiped. After another couple of days I removed the affiliate link and the article returned to its rightful place at the top of page one – within minutes.
I really want to follow some of your guidance on affiliate marketing, but given that experience I’m concerned that Google is getting rid of all results with affiliate links, which pretty much kills that revenue model dead in the water. By the way – the affiliate scheme is about as high quality as you can get – it was the British Standards Institute!!!
What do you think?
Cheers,
Dan
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:30 am
Hi Dan
Intersting test you did and I think that is the way to go, testing things, however I have loads of pages with affiliate links and my sites have gone up if anything, so I don’t think you can claim affiliate links get wiped out by Google. There may be more to it, it might be the indusrty the article was about. I know a guy who had a hair replacement site and it was brillaint but it got wiped out, so it could be that Google monitors some niches more carefully, hard to tell with out more testing
Matt
Hey Matt,
Thanks very much for update on this. I asked about this on the BTF Webinar but really only got a general answer. Yours here is very to the point! Thank you for real tips!
Regarding BTF, I joined, am a newbie to IM, have your Rapid Profit Formula(which I find very good) and going through right now for the first time.
My comment is that, in the BTF Forum I am finding many posts of people not having (or very little) success with the affiliate internet marketing following BTF. This concerns me greatly,especially being new to the BTF program and your RPF program.
BTF is presented as an easy,straight forward,sure-fire, step by step program method of building a profitable IM affiliate business. But, reading all the people Struggling in the BTF Forum makes me skeptical and think “another internet money sucker hole”!
My understanding is that BTF is a complimentary program to go with your Rapid Profit Formula. That is why I joined BTF. Now I wonder where this fits in with your RPF? And, how effective either program will be or is with our affiliate success?? Perhaps I/we would be better for success following your RPF? -not BTF?
Sorry, but I have been burnt so many times in the past I have to wonder if this all is just another repeat. I need a real money earning affiliate marketing success step by step program -not $24.99 here and there a few lucky times.
Worried and delusional newbie,
TFW
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:26 am
Hey TFW
BTF is a great program and it works for people, what you will find with any forum is the complainers are the ones that pipe up and love to rant, and it is usually because they are lazy and that is why they can’t succeed. At the end of the day it all comes down to your SEO skill, and most people are lazy and don’t want to spend the time learning SEO, I have seen it time and time again, it’s a real shame because once you invest the time into SEO you can make money online easily, and BTF is another way you can to do so. When I come across a new way to make money with affiliates sites I just apply my SEO to it and its simple. This is how my course compliments it, as I give solid SEO training that you can apply to anything.
All the best
Matt
is Rapid Writer still okay to use?
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:22 am
Hey Fran
Yes it is, and the short answer is it doesn’t affect it much if you use it the way I do, which is for backlinks, and not for content on your sites. I spin adn submit for links, and these links are still working, but I don’t use this content for my own sites, as I spend more time adding videos and images etc…to my money pages.
Thanks
Matt
Great useful info as per usal Matt.
One thing I would like to ask you about, is your opinion on setting up a FB fanpage in order to drive traffic back to your money-site. I have been toying with the idea for the last few months, but still view FB as more of a playground where visitors are not entering with credit card at the ready, to solve whatever problem they want to fix, or else purchase the item that they require?
Cheers
Mike
Matt,
Aside from linking out to Wikipedia & YouTube, I also like using WebMD as well as Google Dictionary. I just use it to give my customers certain definitions etc. I figure it’s another Google property so it can’t hurt.
As for social, I have been using the “AddThis” plugin for my WordPress sites. It’s gives me a Facebook like button, as well as twitter, email, and other social buttons. Here’s the link:
http://www.addthis.com/home
Thanks,
Gregg
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:21 am
Hey Gregg
Thanks for sharing your tips here, good stuff and I have also used WedMD they are great to link to.
Matt
Where does this leave Rapid Rewriter?
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:20 am
Hey Mark
Great question, and the short answer is it doesn’t affect it much if you use it the way I do, which is for backlinks, and not for content on your sites. I spin adn submit for links, and these links are still working, but I don’t use this content for my own sites, as I spend more time adding videos and images etc…to my money pages.
Thanks
Matt
Thanks Matt for the updated, I personally always try to provide value at everything I’m doing on the net, I have total a commitment to customer satisfaction.
Hi Matt,
Very informative post – which is what I have come to expect from you 😉
Thanks,
Paula
Hey Matt, I thought it was called the panda update. Cause Google wants to put content and link farms on the same extinction list as the Panda.
I do agree on the growing importance of social sites. Site dynamics is or will be a ranking factor soon enough. The big importance of bookmarking and FB is that they can be great traffic funnels provided your content is good enough. This in turn will give you natural links without having to build those links yourself.
I’m running an experiment with one of my sites without building any backlinks myself nor outsourcing them. (no, not a sniper site)
I’ll keep you informed.
Cheers,
Andreas
As always Matt, thanks for your clear insight. You always have a level headed approach to things and remain positive. That is why we all believe in you. You are that lighthouse beacon which keeps us from crashing on the shores. Take care.
Thanks for a great blog.
I find the outbound link part very useful since I previously thought that would be a waste of time. I can see now the value in it and will be using it.
Regards,
Viola
Matt –
I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your writings. I learn more from your site than from any other. Actually, to reduce my time of reading emails, I have opted out of every other affiliate marketing email except for yours and one other.
Thanks for this information. I have always tried to write quality original articles for my sites. I just wouldn’t feel right putting “junk” articles out there just to try to earn a dollar. I think that if you put your readers first in your mind, you will earn a lot more in the long run.
Thanks again,
Erin
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:18 am
Hi Erin
Glad you like my content, and great to have you as one of my subscribers!
Thanks
Matt
Great article
one thing that has not changed is quality…i always put a high quality 700 word lsi article with a video.people wont read 700 words but will watch a video..so i give both google and the people what they want…google wants the content and the people want a video..and put a call to action by the video so as they are watching it..the call to action is staring them right in the face..
Hi Matt,
Always good and helpful info from you. Thanks!
IMO, Google has always wanted and always will want good quality sites. This is just common sense. I try to make my sites from the point of view of someone who is searching for the information I’m offering. It has to be helpful. The site will rank well if one keeps this in mind!!
Thanks Matt, your post clears up a lot of the confusion and gives me great tips that I can immediately put to use.
Matt,
Thank you for the great article. After reading other content you published about linking out to reputable sites I, like Ryan, started to link to Wikipedia – it’s great your post provides a source of in-depth information. I’m glad to hear your thoughts on that.
Your suggestion for a variety of content in a post is great, it will keep the reader engaged. This style also makes me think of how Squidoo lens are set up.
Which I have a question: In the past I have seen Squidoo lenses ranking high for keywords, however would you recommend this as another backlink source?
Also, I have heard some scuttlebutt about Google changing their view of Squidoo (not for the best), but I can’t find any concrete info. What are your thoughts?
Thank you – Theresa
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:16 am
HI Theresa
Yes web 2.0 sites are ok for backlinks, just make sure you have a mixture of other links also. Some web 2.0 sites go ‘no follow’ often so just keep that in mind, although I know a lot of people that believe even no follow links are still valuable just not as much.
Matt
Concerning article marketing, Ezine Articles responded immediately to Google’s action and has made it far more difficult to get articles approved. There is a plus side to this though because if you can get your articles past the Ezines examination it should be “Google Proof”
Regards
Russ
Good post. As you say thou we’ll need to monitor sites over time to get the full picture.
In response to using Unique Article Wizard, as you say I haven’t seen a big affect in my rankings even thou a large proportion of my links do come from article distributions through them and 2 other of the important services (AMA & AB). I do do heavy spinning thou, 3 versions of every sentence and quite a lot of second level spinning as well, even changing the number of sentences, paragraphs and links and positions in the article of the links in the case of AMA (And yes the articles do make sense 😉 )
Also in regards to article directories, only the case of UAW as the others mentioned don’t even submit to them, they are not the only sites being submitted to, UAW also submits to lots of blogs where the content is often more unique in general. Basically there’s at least some diversity.
Still at the end of the day we need to diversify as much as possible, i will be stepping up my promotional efforts by doing more promotion on other sites, profiles, web2 properties etc. But i still think article distribution is the easiest set and forget promotion, so it’s always the base promotion i set up first for a site.
Jayen
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:14 am
Hey Jayen
Some great points in your comment, and I totally agree with you especially about divesifying, this is very important and something I have been telling people for a long time, because by doing so you are protecting yourself from changes like this at Google. I see far too many people only building profile backlinks, and I am just waiting for the change for Google to slap them silly! Nothing wrong with profiles, but when 100% of your links are profiles its risky.
Matt
Hi Matt
Speaking of quality. Thank you for the quality of this blogpost also.
For a beginner like me it is very helpful. Now I can understand why quality is important for Google.
Regards
Desmond
Hey Matt, thanks for the GREAT CONTENT (maybe Google will see that 🙂 ). I’ve been hearing a lot about the algorithm changes, however most people out there don’t fully understand what it all means. I respect a ton that you take the time to consult your powerful network of marketers and try to pinpoint the best options to help us all avoid any issues, and shared it with all of us.
You have taken this “big fear” and placed it into a small box that we all can understand and implement. Thanks again Matt!
Matt,
How does this, in your estimation, affect articles submitted thru AMA. I know you recommend that service. Still so? Or does it’s value decline some.
Mark
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:11 am
Hey Mark
Networks like AMA are fine as these are lots of small blogs and Google doesn’t notice these as much I don’t think, and I only use AMA for the backlinks anyway, and like I mentioned elsewhere I haven’t seen any major drops so I assume my backlinks from http://amarketingautomation.com and article directories are still valid in Googles’s eyes
Good question
Matt
Thanks Matt for the great advice. With my first experience from Google blackballing me from adwords I have had little to do with them. But that being said it is virtually impossible to avoid dealing with Google if one chooses to rank.
Since this last Google Panda uprising, I have concentrated on good original content. I have taken my auto-blogger programs and use them only for content ideas and not content for the my websites. ( I pretty much did this anyway)
Again, Thanks for the great post.
Charles
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:08 am
Hey Charles
Cool, sounds like you are on the ball. And yeah Adwords is pretty much dead now for affiliates, SEO is the way forward!
Matt
Thanks Matt!
Your post is a great help. It gave me 8 very clear to-dos for my ever growing task list. One thing I can check off the list is bookmarking this site:)
~Virginia
Hi Matt,
One thing I learned early on is to keep my blog 100 percent original content (learned this and other tips from David Jenyns). My blog is only months old and although it has been a bit tough in the beginning to get traffic I did notice a spike in traffic as soon as the Google Algorithm change was made.
So I guess I was rewarded for my content by Google. My articles on Ezines have taken a hit and have gone from page 1 or 2 down to page 3 or further back. Like you I used Ezines more for backlinks than traffic but it is still disappointing to see since those articles were also original content written to help readers.
Let’ see what happens when the fallout still continues to settle.
-Sam
Good information. The “Social Proof” information was really valuable and after posting this remark, I’ll be searching for a way to get that “Retweet” button and installing it on my sites.
I know that the Google spiders are constantly crawling through Twitter…in fact, posting a remark on Twitter and linking it to my latest posts has proven to me to be the fastest way to get things indexed.
Thanks, Matt.
Rick
Hello Matt
here’s a copy of an email I sent to Angela Edwards:
Hello Angela
I’ve just received you mail and have started putting in links.
I just wanted to say thank you for an excellent system. I have spent over $3000 on programs, courses, schemes etc over the past 3 months and have made absolutley zero from it all. I now realise that 90% of these things are just scams being promoted by unscrupulous people.
Can you believe, it wasn’t until I came upon Matt Carter and his Rapid Profit system that I learned that backlinks existed and that I needed them!
I’m just very pleased to have found some serious, effective and honest people such as you and Matt at last.
Thanks and good luck
Hi Matt,
Agreed that links to authority sites are good, but to take the Wikipedia example to extremes, what do you do about having, say, 20 pages on a fairly tightly-focused niche?
One certainly cannot link all the pages to the same page in Wikipedia – or can one?
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:06 am
Hi Bruce
Yes you are quite right, you shouldn’t just use wikipedia for all your links, as that will look suspect, so just mix it up, use news sites like CNN, BBC etc….and any other authority sites you can find.
Matt
As Russ has just said it is now a lot more difficult to get articles ranked at Ezine articles. A couple of my articles have been rejected even thought I thought they were really good. One failed on just the heading, which I still can not understand why, but I changed it and it got accepted.
Regards,
John
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:04 am
Hey JOhn
That’s interesting about Ezinearticle, I don’t try and rank article myself, I only use these sites for backlnks, but it seems they have responded to this Google change with much tougher approval guidelines, which is interesting
Matt
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the quality update and your take on it.
I hadn’t heard of metacafe so thanks for that one.
I don’t think article marketing is dead if used correctly i.e. a backlink vs traffic. Of course it depends on your niche but a quality article WILL attract traffic as well as a backlink albeit with a little less omph.
I tend to agree Matt. I believe article marketing, particularly with Ezine Articles new standards, is still a great way to get links and traffic.
Thanks for the insight.
Michael
Hi Matt,
Great post, I think this is a great example of why it is very important to diversify your link building and traffic getting strategy so that one unexpected change or problem doesn’t bring your webpages crashing down on the traffic/sales scale.
Great content and keep up the good work ; – )
Matt,
Thanks for the update and your thoughts on the newest Google change. I was very diconcerted when I first heard about this change because I incorporate a lot of article marketing in my quest for backlinks and traffic. I have found that with EzineArticles it is taking much longer to get articles approved and I am not getting nearly as much traffic from those articles. I am getting backlinks though, so there is still a plus to article marketing. I really need to embrace YouTube, but am not a fan of filming myself. I know I just need to get over it. Any suggestions on other effective ways of getting good targeted traffic other than Adwords? Thanks for the info.
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:03 am
Hey Victoria
You don’t have to film yourself to do a good YOutube video, just record your screen with camtasia, and do a slide presentation. Also SEO is still the way to go for traffic, just add more pages to your site and funnel that traffic where you need it to go.
Matt
As usual Matt you’re over delivering! Love your stuff it’s the best I’ve come across in a while totally enjoying Rapid Profit Formula and HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who is looking to get into affiliate marketing.
Yours For Prosperity,
Anthony Aires
AnthonyAires.com
Hi Matt, thank you for the post it was helpful and clears a few things up. I did have a fb like button on my site and also a Twitter widgit but my site became slow at loading, and I discovered that it was these that where slowing it down, so I removed them, as Google also looks at site speed as one of it´s factors.
Regards,
Wolfgang.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the post and the good advice. I try to follow these guidelines but this algo change really has me scratching my head. I wsh everything was as clear cut as you make it sound. but I think this algos effects are still unclear and not fully understood. yet.
I have had about 10 sites flat out de indexed and several more knocked way back. Many were front page for over a year and honestly what replaced them is not better in quality.
I am seriously considering never using analyics or webmaster tools again. I think they can use that info against you. My sites were all on the same hosting plan ad it’s like they just turned off everything on that server.
The only thing I can think of was some sites had adsense on them and Google may have thought they were MFA sites although they were clearly sites selling affiliate products.
Something else I noticed since Google has backed of on these sites Yahoo and Bing are both spidering these sites much more aggressively. Fortunately my sites rank well there but the traffic is a trickle compared to what Google sends.
Steve
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 7:01 am
Het Steve
Yeah that is actually a good point, I don’t use any Google analytics tools, as don’t like to give Google that much access to my sites stats
Matt
Matt,
Loved the post and whilst I am s newbie to this business I have been noticing my arThanks for the confirmation.
Markticle syndication is not producing back links but I am getting rankings from good content within hours of posting.
Hey Matt. Great post on the recent Google algorithm change issue.
Up until about a week ago my product reviews were ranking #1 or first page on Google. I noticed my Amazon sales dropping off in mid March, and when I checked google on 3/24 I noticed that most of my articles and product reviews have dropped off.
If this happened in March, would this be related to the Google Farm issue? My site has been up for about a year, and once before my site fully dropped from Google and came back up a few weeks later.
On a last note, how many post tags in WP are too many, based on your experience, and can Google slap you for this? I don’t keyword stuff my articles, but can have 10-20 post tags, in addition to the keywords in the articles. Can this be perceived as spammy?
Thanks for all your help and advice.
Ken
http://www.menshealthcures.com
Hey Matt,
I’m quite happy about the Google’s recent changes. I noticed an increase of my blog traffic and pages indexed. Good Content is and will always be KING.
thank you good heart genius
you are impressing me time after time and i am not kidding when i am telling you that i have found you as the most honest and proffesional guy on the net.as a jewish i can’t allow myself to follow you as a guru…..but somehow you are becoming my internet rabbi……i must confess, that still i havn’t purchased none of your good products, but it is just due to a ridiculous temporary problem i have with clickbank that should be solved next month.so thank you again for being there for us and for me.
Hey Matt,
Thanks for the post. I wasn’t overly concerned about this originally and when my site finally made it to the front page of google for my keywords, I was pretty excited. After being on the front page for a week, my site disappeared. That was a little over a week ago.
I don’t know if it’s the infamous Google dance I’ve heard about or I got slapped for something. My content is original and my site isn’t spammy, so I guess I’ll give it some time and see what happens.
Thanks again for the info,
Fred
Hi Matt,
Enjoyed your blog post and the content. You always deliver great information and do your research on the subject you post on.Big brother Google cam be a challenge for us newbies to understand and you input helps a great deal to shed light on the Google creature.
Hi Matt
Thanks for sharing this with us, good info as always. I am not sure what metacafe video’s are I will have to Google it.
Thanks
Neil
Thanks for that update Matt – the extra value in staying up to date with your blog are the comments that follow – they also add to my basket of knowledge – so many thanks!
Hi Matt,
Thanks for responding back to my question(s) on BTF. I was hoping you would say something along the lines of what you said! Usually it is the disgruntled that speak up and usually it IS because they are lazy or did not follow the program carefully.
I was concerned though because the forum heading is;”Is anybody making any money out there?” The vast majority of responses were that many were struggling.
I thought those making money would post to give those struggling some optimism and confidence to stick with it. But, it really is not there with the exception of one or two posts. That left me wondering what the real situation is with these program.
I have wasted too much money and time on past so called “true blue”.internet marketing and affiliate programs. Did not want to do it again.
I finally have belief I have found the real deal with you Matt! Thank you and look forward to a long successful and profitable relationship with you!
TFW
Yeah. I haven’t noticed anything yet…. Having both sites and ezine articles ranked. I have a feeling they’ll hit the spun articles a it harder… As always, great advice!
Thanks!
Brian
Matt,
Thanks for the input. I had been hearing about this for some time and it was good to read about the actual changes Google is doing, and how to stay on page 1. I know that Ezinearticles is making it harder to get your articles posted.
hEY mATT,
Thanks 4 all…..
Do you believe one page sites with the 3 posts will suffer and it is better to go with building authority sites, like your natural health care reviews site?
Also, would it be advisable to take off google site maps?
Cheers
Natasha:)
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 2:56 pm
Hi Natasha
I have quite a few small sites like this and they have not been affected at all by this change, so I think smaller sites can still work.
Matt
I must admit, the new changes to Google seem logical to me. I get heartedly sick of reading comments that are obviously robotic and the writer has no interest or knowledge of the article they have just read. I always try to make my comments and articles interesting and relevant, it takes more time, but I get a lot of responses from people (which ultimately means more traffic) and I really enjoy having my say. Some things that Google does leaves me wondering what the heck they are doing, or wondering if they are just deliberately making life difficult for people trying to earn a decent living via the internet. However, I am with them 100% on their efforts to ensure qualify. – Thanks for the article – Jay Jay
Actually, its about time Google put a stop to these bogus sites and autoblogs. And thanks for the update.
What does BTF stand for? I’m brand new at this. Matt, going through your program now for the first time and wow, you really deliver a lot of quality content. Thank you.
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 12:32 pm
Hey Cindy
It’s a course and I did webinar with the owners recently which you can watch here: http://btfresh.com/webinar.html
Thanks
Matt
No matter what, I do not think you guys are going to like the future outcome of google. Google is not here to make you money, they are not looking after your goals, they are looking after theirs. google pretty much owns the internet, if you are not getting anything for Googie, then I guarantee you that you are not getting anything from any other engines, or very little, in the end, googie is going to do whats best for them, and I am sure that will not favor us any at all. I am sure if their paying clients said fart on that website, then I would bet your done for…those with money have the power, everyone else is just trying to catch the crap falling from the sky….
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 12:35 pm
Hi David
Well I must say I don’t agree with you on this, but I appreciate your comment though. Google makes it very clear that they want a happy end user experience, this is what makes them money, because these users are the ones clicking their ads, if the user stop coming to Google then the ads don’t get clicked. So it all ties back to keeping the user happy, and that is what we are talking about in this post, so you can make money from Google just keep their users happy.
Thanks
Matt
Superb Post! I’ve noticed several of your points to be right on, and I can’t stress enough the importance of playing by Google’s rules; this way you won’t be affected by the next algorithm change.
Hi Matt,
This is a great post and this is what I really wanted to know. I am a newbie and wanted to really learn about affiliate marketing. I have watched many of your videos and learning the trade little by little. By the way I am really interested on your Rapid Profit Formula. I am wondering if it is still available with a discount. Also is it downloadable thru the internet or it only comes in a CD? Do you ship to Cost Rica? I look forward to hear from you. Thanks a lot Matt!
Thanks,
Jude
Google changing the rules again eh!
Thanks Matty for the update. I have been wondering if doing article submission is now old skool and outdated.
Matt,
Thanks for the good information. I have used some youtube videos and found them helpful, but I have never thought about using metacafe. I also need to place a tweet button by the article.
Thanks,
Frank
I agree that having social proof for blogs are awesome but how can a Twitter/FB/Digg button work for a sniper site? I can write the best product review for a sniper site but will it compel the visitor enough to retweet that review?
Matt Carter Reply:
March 29th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Hey Ramses
Yes it does become harder for a smaller sniper style of site, just do the best you can
Thanks
Matt