Welcome back to Make Money The Honest Way blog. The title is totally non-SEO and to be honest, I couldn’t give a flying rat’s turd! I can only imagine how many “ordinary” bloggers like me felt upon hearing the news that John Chow has been allowed back into the Google index for his name and MMO keywords, especially those of us who have had sites de-indexed for far less than what he did.
Yes, there is certainly one rule for us and another for them.
Us ordinary folk have to go through the process of grovelling to Google via Webmaster Tools reincusion request, to which someone might take a few weeks to come and look at your site and maybe, just maybe let you back in. I have a couple of sites that are pretty damn clean that have NOT been let back in via this process, so I went ballistic when I read JC’s post on how he got his very publicly anti-Google blog back into the index.
No dicking around with re-inclusion requests for him. Oh, no. He gets to go straight to the main man himself, Matt Cutts, who actually tells him what to fix and then lets him right back in. WTF?
Are the rest of us such evil badass bastards that we don’t deserve the decency of a fair crack of the whip? Nobody tells us what the spam team are not liking about the blogs that we have de-indexed. We have to just do our best, hit and hope. My currently de-indexed blogs are NOT selling damn links and never have, they are NOT writing paid posts and never have, they are NOT spam, their content is all original, they are informative. So why the hell were they not re-included when I asked?
Nobody emailed me to say, “Hey Terry, you got a link in there to an undesirable site that you may not have realized. Take it out and we’ll index your site”, or “Hey Terry, looks like someone scraped your original posts and because their blog outranks yours, we decide its their content and you’re the plagiarist of your own content (ha’dy fucking ha)” or any shit like that. Not a bloody word. Nada, zip. I have to go through and check every link out, copyscape my own content to see who’s scraped it, in essence make sure my blogs are tighter than a ducks arse (that’s watertight). And I still don’t get let back in!
This is shit. Its unfair and it’s shit.
So maybe someone at Google likes John Chow, even after what he said about them, even after he spent nearly three years holding the finger up to Google and bragging how he doesn’t need their traffic to make money and letting his not inconsiderable readership know how much he holds them in contempt by waving his bare arse at them at every turn.
One rule for us, another for them.
Ok, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with John Chow himself. I don’t much like how he does it, but he’s just another guy making a living from the Internet like me, so fair dues. You gotta what you gotta do.
The system stinks just like the system has always stunk. Its out to help the big boys, the old school, the established people at the top with scant regard how they got there or how they stay there.
When Google was just a new toy, the guys that launched it were visionaries and they were the little guy. They were out to show the big guys that they could be toppled and they did what they set out to do. Now they’re the big guys and they are behaving just like the big guys before them did, no difference, same arrogance and attitude. What changed?
Same as the infamous Mexican “revolutions”. Everyone hates the guys in power, so they have a revolution to get rid of them and put another load of guys in power. That power corrupts them and they become just like the previous rulers. Then another bunch of people start another revolution to get rid of the guys in power because everyone hates them and they put another bunch of guys in power. And they get corrupted by that power… ad nauseum.
“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” said George Orwell in Animal Farm.
Let’s not let all that power go to our head, guys… remember the little guys! Some of us are actually on the level, not how you think we are because you’ve been lied to about us. Some of us, like me are playing by the rules but got labeled with the wrong description. And we’ve been a lot more compliant and respectful than certain bloggers have over the past 3 years.
So how about making that one rule count a little more fairly?
Make Money The Honest Way Blog
Welcome back to The Honest Way blog. I’m going to talk about something that has been irritating me on a business level for some time now and may or may not be affecting other people involved in trying to scrape a living from the Internet using honest methods. Its all about the way Google may be looking at certain individuals with regards to their activities online. In a word, SEOs.
Now, first things first. I’m going to be talking specifically about my own experiences here, so no one else is in the firing line, just me.
I was alerted to this post http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-web-spam-team-deriving-value-from-profiling-seo-operators-of-interest a few days ago and it got me thinking about the possibility that Google might view me as one of these evil black bowler-hat SEO monsters who are using illicit methods to game their index in order to rank websites highly.
All I can say to that assumption is “Why?”
If its even true, of course but certain things are happening with websites bearing my name that lead me to wonder if that might not be the case. Things like websites that have a ton of originally written content, by me, on topic and relevant, have a large number of authority backlinks obtained gradually over the life of the site and still don’t rank anywhere in the SERPs for certain keywords or have been rewarded with a decent Page Rank for all the effort. Let’s take a highly visible website like, oh, I don’t know, this one as an example!
You only need to look at its lowly PR2 despite having in-links from many trusted, authority PR4 sites to see its being held back. Not that I’m overly worried about Page Rank. It doesn’t really affect SERPs authority and position so its no big deal. It’s just it’d be nice to have the recognition for all the work I put into this site. Its all original, no PLR, no dup content – I wrote it all. If scrapers have taken my content and duplicated it on theirs, there’s nothing I can do about that. Its two and a half years old and gets updated regularly, if not this blog, then the forum that is attached to the site. The main static pages stay the same, but they’re another powerhouse of original content.
I’m not going to reveal my niche sites here, that would be foolhardy. But Google knows what they are and it also knows that very few of them actually rank where they ought to. Now, if I was a great black topper SEO guru, then wouldn’t those sites be kicking the crap out of their competition?
Yes they would.
You only have to look at sites that dominate some of the more high power keywords like credit cards, weight loss, loans, finance, insurance, make money etc to see that the majority of them got there and stay there because the owners are buying links like they’re going out of fashion.
I don’t buy links. Never have. I don’t sell links either.
They are two of the most widely used illicit methods of gaming the SERPs and the site owners that engage in the practice are keeping legitimate site owners down. Black beret SEOs buy links and engage in obtaining links from paid link farms. Incidentally, I’m not a member of any paid link farms either. Never have been. This is the mainstay of their activities and it is this practice that causes the SERPs to be gamed by these guys who are literally buying their way to the top. So are Google going after those site owners that are obviously buying links?
Who knows, but if they are, then why are those sites still there at the top?
Lets look at one of the biggest concentration of SEO activity – the make money niche. This is a potentially huge money spinner for the owners of websites/blogs that sit on top of that tree. Nobody is going to get there and stay there without having the use of some serious fire-power, I’m sure you’d agree. So how, if Google really are keeping a very close watch on people they believe to be black panama SEO mongers, are these sites staying on top? Are they legit? Mostly, yes. But so are the hundreds of other sites that are below them. So how do they stay put in such a volatile niche?
And if I’m such a big shot black fez SEO, why am I not up there too?
The answer is that I’m not a big shot black porkpie SEO. Not even a minnow compared to those guys that can dominate niches like make money or insurance etc. Not even close.
I know some things, but the methods I use to promote my sites are nothing out of the ordinary. I do what everyone else does, by writing articles and getting them published on other sites to get backlinks to my sites. I write in forums, submit my sites to directories, socially bookmark them, even submit the blogs to RSS aggregators to attract more traffic in the hope that traffic will like what they read and link back to me of their own accord.
Is this black trilby SEO? No it is not. Its actually what Google tells us to do in order to promote our sites.
So what else do I do that might lead a Google investigative employee to suspect that I’m a black fedora SEO?
I do create lots of website, blogs, squidoo lenses and hub pages and link some of them to each other. This is merely building up my online real estate and promoting it legitimately. You see by linking some of my own sites together, I am creating a linking system that links sites that are written on a similar subject or topic together. This is a perfectly natural thing to do. Why shouldn’t I link two, three or a dozen sites together that are on similar subjects? They’re mine after all. And I write all the content so they’re original and legit, just like the search engines want.
I might link a general health site to a weight loss site, which might link to a fitness site, which might link to an exercise equipment related site etc. This is correct linking as information contained in one site can be enhanced by making a reference to a post in another site that is related in some way. Its improving the surfing experience by expanding the information base across many websites. This is exactly what Google wants us to do!
So if my doing this is what might be causing me to come under suspicion of being a black cap SEO, then its crazy, because I’m only doing what is in actual fact good for the web surfer who is looking for information.
So guys, give me a break please, if indeed you’re even taking any notice of me.
I’m just an ordinary bloke trying to make some headway in a business that is as tough as anything you’ll find in the real world. I put in 12 hours a day at this and its not funny to watch a lot of hard work go up in smoke for no good reason, even worse when its by association and not even for any actual infringement of your quality guidelines.
If you want to really make an impact on the index, go after the real villains who are buying their way above everyone else. They’re easy to spot. They live at the top of the SERPs in niches and for terms that are impossible to get there by fair means.
Terry Didcott
The Honest Way
