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4 Tips to Using Backlinks of Angela in a Better Way

As it was destined to happen! I was doing some research on backlinks on Google and soon I noticed a thread on Warrior forum, actually two – all of them discussing Angela’s backlinks and their viability. One of the threads is very useful and I suggest that you read all through it, even if it is 5-pages long. Here is the link.

That above thread alone offered me some pretty solid advice and an answer to my inner voice that would always say that I am approaching these backlink sites in a wrong way. The "wrong" I did was something that was not fully clear to me until I read that thread.

I stumbled upon another thread that may not as useful but still worth reading! You can read it here.

Like they say, you live and learn. Everyone, even gurus, make mistakes. The key to success is not to repeat the same mistake twice, especially if you already know that it IS a mistake, and that there is a BETTER way to avoid that mistake by approaching the whole thing in a different manner. Can we make better use of Angela’s links? Let us see…

As I have repeatedly said, a tool is only as good as its user. Be it Angela’s backlinks, page generators, article spinners, RSS submission bots, or directory submitters, any tool can be used in right AND wrong way. At the end of the day, the tool user is more responsible for the consequences of his actions than the tool itself!

Look at Angela’s backlinks – they can be used in a positive manner but how many internet marketers are able to avoid the temptation of spamming these sites in the hope of some quick push in SERPs, thereby ruining them for everyone else?

Here are some of the things I am doing to make a better use of Angela’s backlinks and Paul’s backlinks, and I hope others would find it useful too. I am pretty darn confident that spammers won’t mend their ways even after reading it, and to be honest, I am not writing for them really; I am writing for honest marketers who are interested in building a real business.

The entire article stresses on the importance of adding content and links only to sites that invite you to do so, rather than spamming every PR8 or PR9 site on the World Wide Web. :)

I. The Kind of Pages You Link to from the Backlink Sites:

1. Your Bio page: It is always a good idea linkback to an internal page of your website rather than the homepage. The internal page can be any page but I certainly suggest your "bio" page for this purpose. If all your links point to the homepage, this may look a little unnatural and spammy to Google. On another note, even if you point all links to an internal page, the entire site, including the homepage, would be benefited by your backlinks! Our very own backlink queen is a living proof of that!

Your "About" or bio page may contain stuff concerning both your professional and/or personal life. You can be as elaborate as you want to be in your bio page, and even add your personal photos in the mix to make the page look even more authentic. The bio page should not contain any commercial links or ads: the one I use has a link only to my newsletter, which is again free (and boring too). ;)

Your bio page may also contain details about how people can contact you, connect with you through social networking sites (such as Linkedin, Twitter, etc.). I use the Retaggr badge for this purpose, as I have found it to be extremely cool!

Examples of good bio pages:

Angela’s Bio
Julia’s Bio
My Own Nuttie One (still working on it) ;)

2. Your Content page: Yet another page you can linkback to is a page where you have some useful articles. A useful content page doesn’t mean a page slapped with a bunch of plr articles and Adsense ads; rather, it means articles that are really useful and give visitors a lot of good information. Some sites frown upon links to article pages though (especially if the subject or topic of the articles is not thematically related to the backlink site), so keep that in mind!

3. Your Freebie page: If you have a page where you giveaway tons of freebies, you can link to that page too.

In my opinion, your bio page is perhaps the best option. If you are promoting more than one site per profile, you can use the linking technique I would be discussing a little later in this article.

II. The Kind of Sites You Can Put Links on:

A few days ago one of my Nuttiezine subscribers asked me:

"I’m new to this IM game so I’m teaching myself a lot of this stuff instead of outsourcing straight away. My question has to do with relevancy. I was under the impression that relevancy was very important in the SEO game. Surely linking to a site which isn’t relevant to your sites content is a paradox?

For example, the xxxx.com site isn’t even remotely connected to [niche or subject here]. Surely the SE algorithms can pick that up?"

My answer was simple:

"The issue is NOT about relevancy: I can show you some of my internet marketing sites that ranked with irrelevant links such as the one you mention. The thing to keep in mind is that, you are not doing anything good by putting these links on sites that don’t match your site’s theme; instead, you are SPAMMING the web!"

Let us say that you have got a packet of 30 links from Angela. How would you approach your link building campaign? If it is a short term project and you plan to sell your site in future, then you can follow Angela’s advice by the book. If it is a long term business project, that is, if you plan to be involved in it for a long time, it is better to use a little diligence when dropping the links.

Again it is not about relevancy, it is about being a good netizen. Think about it: since you have links to your websites in your profile, the site admin can easily follow you from those links and stumble upon your contact information. Not the ideal way to present yourself online! ;)

Here are some of the things you can do in that regard:

1. Pick up Related Backlinks only: Angela offers 30 backlinks per month, while Paul offers 50. Among these 80 links, you would surely be able to find a few sites closely related to your niche (of course, this tactic may not work for micro niches, but in case of macro niches, you may get a couple of sites around the same niche as yours). Drop links only on those sites!

2. Don’t be Limited by the Monthly Backlink Packets: As I suggested above, you need to pick up only those backlink sites from the monthly packets of Angela and Paul that are thematically related to your site. For example, if you have a site on Windows™ registry cleaners, probably you would be okay posting comments on software review sites, spyware or security forums, etc. However you may or may not be welcome in a health forum!

This in essence limits the number of backlinks you can build each month IF you rely exclusively on Angela and Paul as your backlink sources. The only way out is to increase your stock of backlinks by finding some backlink sources on your own!

In fact, it is quite easy to do if you are in a competitive niche, since the competition, especially those ranking on the first page of Google™,  has most certainly already done all the research work for you! Therefore, all you need to do is to spy on the competition and do exactly what they did to get the first page rankings!
 
There are a couple of easy ways you can use to spy on your competition and take a look at the sites they are getting backlinks from. The two tools I highly suggest for this are:

BacklinkWatch : It gives you a list of links your competitor is getting inbound links from, along with the pagerank of each inbound link, number of outbound links of backlink site (this can be very useful – a site with too many outbound links, such as a link directory, may not be as useful for backlink building as a site with just a dozen or a few hundreds of outbound links), as well as whether the backlinks are dofollow or nofollow!

Yahoo! Site Explorer : The backlink data it offers is not as comprehensive as backlinkwatch.com; therefore, I suggest that you use it only if the other site is not functioning properly!

The only problem with these backlink checkers is that none of them show you more than 1000 backlinks of a site at any given time. 1000 backlinks is certainly more than enough to get you on top of Google, if you use them tactically, that is! However, at the same time it would have been better if they showed the other backlinks too (the more the merrier, ain’t it?)! :D

On another note, maybe it is a good thing for the site you are spying on! Just imagine, if you get to know about ALL the backlinks of a competitor site, would it be really difficult for you to topple them from the top of Google?

Once you get that data, click on each of these backlink sites and see if they offer a way to drop links. Then grab a text editor and make a list of all the sites that allow backlinks. Yes, this list may also include the links from Paul and Angela. :)

III. The Backlink Building Etiquette to Maintain:

1. Don’t just link and leave: Active participation is one important aspect of social networking, but more importantly, it would fend off any doubts of you being a spammer. Have you found a forum? Participate in it, help people or ask questions. In fact questions sometimes get more page views than answers!

Have you stumbled upon a great blog related to your niche? Does it contain useful articles? Read it, and if you can, post some nice comments ;) (yeah, that is a hint as my blog is one such place where I ask you to post nice comments, lol :D )

a) Forum posting guidelines:

-You must stay on topic

-Asking questions: Ask a question relevant to the forum. It is not necessary that the question is something you really need an answer to, but at the same time, you would not want other forum members to become suspicious of your motives and report you. ;)

-Answering questions-If you don’t have something useful to say, don’t say it. Don’t answer a forum question unless you are confident that your answer is RIGHT (at least, to the common knowledge). There is no better way to damage your online reputation overnight by posting something really stupid.

-Participate: If you receive a counter question or answer to your forum post, and feel that you can respond to it, then there is no reason not to continue the discussion. For this reason, I subscribe to forum threads of special interest for a week or so. Some forum threads are so good that I have kept myself subscribed to them forever! 

-Don’t spam: A rule of thumb to determine if you are a forum spammer or not: if you have not been banned from the Warriorforum, you would probably be pretty much safe with other forums too! (kidding) ;)

b) Blog commenting guidelines:

-Ask a question: Do you think you have a question related to a certain blog article? Feel free to start or participate in the discussion!

-Post a comment: If you feel you have something useful to say on a particular blog post, feel free to do so. If your market is the internet marketing niche, it is best not to post "me-to" comments as most blog owners would be able to guess your intentions easily! In fact, on my blog most "me-too" and one-liner comments are treated on the same level as spam comments.

Comments like:

"Hey, nice article, thanks!"

"Would love to try it"

"Beautiful article. Well done"

Do you really think such comments really add anything useful to the discussion? Nope, rather they add to the commenter’s stock of dofollow links!

-Don’t use SEO-ed names when commenting: I am far more likely to approve a comment posted by "John Doe" than some "Make Money Online" guru! ;)

An exception to this rule: if you notice several comments approved by the blog owner in spite of the commenters using "SEO-ed" names, you should be okay with it too!

-Don’t use links in comment body: Unless you see others doing the same and getting away with it, that is! Most blog owners offer a backlink facility in the comment form, and frown upon commenters who post links in the comment body as well. This is quite evident from the responses to Darren’s Article!

Some blog owners are nice enough to give you more options to leave seo links, such as Commentluv and KeywordLuv. In such cases you can easily add a link to your blog without looking like a spammer. Even I used to have those plugins on my blog a while ago, but since they terribly slowed down the loading of my blog pages, I had to deactivate them.

Personally I believe that genuine commenters would leave their comments if they find an article worth commenting on, regardless of whether or not they get SEO benefits. On another note, if your blog is in the internet marketing niche, it is a good thing to reward good commenters by offering them dofollow backlinks, especially if they participate quite frequently in your blog discussions and post useful comments.

Lucia’s Linkylove is a cool, versatile WordPress plugin you can use to control several aspects of your blog comments. I use and highly recommend it!

-Criticism should be constructive, not a personal attack: How many times have you disagreed with another person’s opinion on certain topics and resorted to an ad hominem argument on finding yourself cornered by the opponent? I am sure everyone has done it on some circumstances of their life.

As a matter of fact, people in general find it easier to attack someone verbally if their face is hidden behind a PC, than otherwise. When you meet someone face you face, the style of your conversation would be quite different from the one you use when you meet the same person online! People believe that they can throw tantrums online without impunity, as no one can see their face! The style of conversation and online etiquette such people maintain certainly throws a lot of light on their character, but that is quite another point!

Back to the main point – I am sure most bloggers would more than welcome constructive criticism even if it is negative; however, many won’t allow flames and personal attacks!

-Being the first to comment: One good thing that the Comment sniper software does for blog commenters is that it automatically notifies them of any new post made in their favorite blogs. This enables you to be the first to comment on those blogs and grab all the traffic. Sure, you can do the same thing with Google alerts too, but unlike Google alerts, Comment sniper sits on your Desktop.

On a side note, I never really used the software because I live in a different timezone and therefore, it is quite difficult for me to be the first to comment on most of my favorite blogs, the majority of the bloggers being from USA and Canada! However, I wonder if this kind of thing actually works for a long time! It may work for a while but if a blog notices that you are always the first to comment on each and every post of the blog, would the blogger welcome you or ban you over time? I am not sure about that.

I have not had such a commenter yet, so I am really unsure about what would I do as a blog owner, should something like that ever happen to me!  
 
2. Make your profile realistic: Most sites offer their members an outlet to express themselves in the form of a "bio" box or "About Me" box. You can write about the type of person you are, the profession you are engaged in, your likes and dislikes, etc., as part of your bio. Of course, a lot of internet marketers use these boxes simply to drop their backlinks (yes I have done that too). ;)

How about combining the two? How about offering a little information about yourself, and also putting the backlink in a way that it actually adds to that information? A typical site profile could be like this (obviously, this is just a hypothetical profile):

Bio-A:

*********************************************************
My name is [your name or pen name goes here]. 

[A couple of lines about your personal life go here. It does not need to be 100% accurate but it MUST look sensible and hype-free.]

[A couple of lines about your professional life go here. It does not need to be 100% accurate but it MUST look sensible and hype-free.]

[Optionally, you can also add a couple of lines about how you wish to contribute to/learn from the site. BE CAREFUL, this must be written keeping in mind the theme and audience of the site. Since you would be putting links only on relevant sites, this should not be much of a problem]

More About me (yep, the "About me" link can be hyperlinked to your bio page)
*********************************************************

Here is another way to do it. You can interweave your backlink within your bio in a contextual manner. It offers you the benefit of using your chosen keywords as anchor text. The downside is that unless you link to your about page, some sites may frown upon your bio links and even delete your profile altogether!

If you choose to go this way, here is how you can do it. Personally, I have recently found that so far as ranking on Google is concerned, the keywords I use in my anchor text when creating backlinks matter much less than the keywords I use on my site content! Okay, here is how the bio would look like if you choose the second option.

Bio-B:

*********************************************************
My name is Nuttie Guru. I was born at blah blah blah, completed my education at blah blah blah, etc. My job is to write long and boring articles on internet marketing. You can read more about me at www.flexiblewriter.com

I hope to learn a few secrets about how to make money online from your website.
*********************************************************

Hmm, does that look too spammy? How about this one:

Bio-C:

*********************************************************
My name is Nuttie Guru. I was born at blah blah blah, completed my education at blah blah blah, etc. My job is to write long and boring articles on internet marketing. You can read more about me at www.flexiblewriter.com

I hope to learn a few secrets about how to make money online from your site.
*********************************************************

OR this one:

Bio-D:

*********************************************************
My name is Nuttie Guru. I was born at blah blah blah, completed my education at blah blah blah, etc. My job is to write long and boring articles on internet marketing. You can read more about me here.

I hope to learn a few secrets about how to make money online from your site.
*********************************************************

Personally I feel that the last one is the least spammy and therefore most likely to stay on the site; the ones just before it look somewhat okay, and may or may not get approved.

IV. BONUS TIP:

Use other backlink building techniques: That is a story for another day! Are not you already yawning anyway? ;)

So that is it! Actually, it so happened that one fine day I sat down to plan my backlink building campaign and it was then that I thought about writing this looong article and share my plan with you! :D

So, as you can see, this is more of a plan than anything else. While I have already started implementing this link building plan, only time will tell if it would really benefit me in any way or not. What do you think? :D

70 Comments

  1. lose belly fat

    Hey there this is really good information. I have been backlink building with Paul and Angela’s packets as well as Terry kyle. I just have one comment. I have found that it is ok to link to sites not in your niche as long as you fill out the profile and don’t post comments. I do make comments on forums that are related to my niche. My site currently dances between position 7 and 11 creeping it’s way to number 1 as it was at 6 for awhile today. I also try to make a connection some way with the forum topic in my bio. For example if the forum is about fishing I talk in my bio about my son as he loves to go fishing. It helps me keep my links.

  2. Arindam

    >>I have found that it is ok to link to sites not in your niche as long as you fill out the profile and don’t post comments

    Yes, SEO-wise, relevancy does not matter as I said! The question remains though: does not posting a comment help in your profile visibility? If Google cannot find your profile URL then the backlinks you drop there make little sense. Some sites are well optimized for SEO but others are not! :)

    My personal experience shows that profiles can get deleted even if you don’t post comments; such deletions are few anyway. If it were just you and me doing it, it would not have raised eyebrows. But spammers also put links on these sites, often sites that are related to gambling, porn, viagra and such other stuff that no one likes to link to. The case is made worse when thieves steal Angela’s packets and do the same. Someone on DP even found out a “legal way” to get all backlinks of Angela and Paul for free! :)

  3. lose belly fat

    I do agree that the spammers out there make it hard for the honest people. You make a good point about the profile url’s getting picked up by google. It is a little slow however I have been reading a little on doing something called cascading. It is new to me so I am just learning. Do you have any insight on that subject? If so, I would love to find out more. Thanks Susan

  4. Arindam

    >>Do you have any insight on that subject? If so, I would love to find out more.

    Nope :( In fact. *I* would like to learn about that from you :)

    What does cascading involve?

  5. lose belly fat

    Well I have just read about it today so I hope I am explaining it right. If you have a packet from Paul or Angela you can start with doing one profile in the normal fashion. Then with your next site that you set up a profile on you are to add the first profile as a link as well. You do this in groups of 5 or 6 sites at a time. So when google finds you on one of those sites it will crawl the other profile links you have listed therefore google finds your backlinks faster. I haven’t tried doing this as I am a little unsure if it is considered black hat?? Have you heard of or know Terry Kyle? He speaks of it in his packet of backlinks. I want to find out more before I try it as I don’t want to do something I shouldn’t do.

    1. Arindam

      Hi Susan,

      I hope I understand it like this:

      Let us say that you create a Google profile and add links to it, and say the profile links are dofollow (actually they are now nofollow). Then you create a profile at Yahoo profiles and link to your Google profile from the Yahoo profile, right?

      SEO-wise, I don’t think it is black hat.

      However, if the sites are not related to each other, don’t you think it may be looked upon as spamming? If indeed the other site, say Google, sees you as a spammer, and if it deletes your profile, where do you stand?

      Or say, that the two sites are indeed related thematically and so you don’t have any worry of profile deletion. But what if the site you are linking to (Google profile) suddenly makes the “public” profile “private” (it has happened to me on a few occasions), or completely shuts down business?

      Now look at this: you create profiles at both sites, and say one of them deletes your profile for some reason. But if the other one keeps your profile, then at least you get backlinks from that site? Am I going in the right direction? Let me know :)

      Instead of being worried about Google’s constantly changing algo, I would like to make sure I am not building a house of cards! :)

      I think I have that book of Terry you are talking about. It is called 750 backlinks or something like that, right?

      Arindam

      P.S. Susan is a far better name than “lose belly fat” ;)

  6. susan

    Yes, that is the book. Yes the way you explain it sounds spot on. I also thought it would seem a bit spammy with tons of links to random forum profiles. See this is why you are the SEO guy and I am the lose weight girl, lol. I am learning about SEO though with the help from people like you ;)

    1. Arindam

      >>See this is why you are the SEO guy and I am the lose weight girl, lol.

      LOL. I talked more commonsense than SEO :D

      I do stand by my earlier suggestion that Susan is a better name than “lose weight girl” ;)

  7. susan

    That you did and yes Susan is a better name. lol ;)

  8. Scott Sheen

    Arindam,
    Kudos to a well thought out post. Most of what you posted about I agree with but not all.
    I do think you have a great point about making your profile authentic. This is something I have not thought about and never put into practice. That changes today. Tonight I will sit down and write out a few generic profiles, maybe so I can tweak them a little based on the site relevency as best as possible. If your going to go to all the trouble of creating backlinks you might as well spend a few minutes and do it right. I wish you had posted this about a month ago.

    Scott

  9. Madeleine

    First of all, I’m a newbie … Two weeks ago I didn’t know what banklinks were. Thanks for all the good advice about backlinks! :) Is it better to have a few related backlinks and be active in the forums than link back to 80 sites (Angela’s and Paul’s backlinks) and not be active? It doesn’t really feel right either to link back to pages that aren’t interested to me and my business. Cascading seems interesting, and I guess it’s time to start being active in the forums. :)

  10. Arindam

    >>I wish you had posted this about a month ago.

    Hi Scott,

    You can say that again! :)

    In fact I really wish I could know about this stuff a long ago; if I had built links this way, most of them would have stayed intact :(

    BTW, since you commented on “authentic profile”, I just had an idea and updated that part a bit, for those who work in non-IM niches and use pen names ;)

    I have also added a few links to bio pages I personally like. I hope you find them useful :)

  11. Arindam

    >>Is it better to have a few related backlinks and be active in the forums than link back to 80 sites (Angela’s and Paul’s backlinks) and not be active?

    Yeah! :) But don’t ignore the packets entirely either! They may as well contain some links directly related to your niche! In fact I have found a couple of weight loss sites in her earlier packets. That is why I am still their subscriber :)

    >>I guess it’s time to start being active in the forums.

    And here too, on my blog! ;)

  12. Mark E Thurston

    I made a really long post and in the process used ‘A)’ and ‘2)’ to make two points.

    I realized that looks funny and edited the ‘2)’ to ‘B)’

    Then I resubmitted and a box popped up and said my edited post was spam! And disappeared.

    That was aggravating. :|

  13. Frugal Living

    Hey Arindam,

    Excellent article.

    I am finding that backlinking can be extremely hit or miss. It’s been great to get Angela’s packets and it has been helping my rankings a lot but I am learning that you need to do things all over the place to get a natural spread on Google.

    I’ll definitely consider linking my bio in future too, it’s a great idea.

    Thanks,
    Forest.

  14. Mark E Thurston

    I love this blog. I have 2 comments, one, I always use my real name and real info in any profiles I have in various places. (Recently, though in the past I did have an alias) Why?

    A) I noticed that is what the people that make really big money on the net do and

    B) It makes it so much easier to remember the information. Lol.

    Relevancy – There are many people that have more than one profitable passion with more than one site on the web. And no matter what your niche(s), there are certain subjects that would interest any and every one interested in promoting their site(s); SEO, PPC (for some), usability, findability and web structure design & more. Though you might post on an SEO web, your profile would not lead to a ‘relevant’ site unless you happen to have one on SEO.

    I too am a newbie. Only recently have I decided the web holds a possibility of an income that can keep me from having to rely on disability (car accident.) I have spent about 6 months learning and have recently begun ‘doing’. The learning has been like trying to get a BA (BS?) degree in 19 majors in 6 months; (or as Perry Marshall likes to say, ‘it is like drinking from a fire-hose!’).

    There is so much to a well thought out site from having correct. meaningful and interesting information on your niche site to all the things it takes to make that site successful like design, SEO, marketing, psychology of commercial intent, etc, etc, etc.

    (By marketing, I don’t mean Madison Avenue marketing, where they get salary and bonuses with no accountability, I mean marketing as in research and deployment of ethical tactics that bring things that are wanted or needed to the people who want and need them.)

    There is another 16 (or more) huge pieces of the puzzle, each one practically able to be a college major subject in it’s own right. So relevancy can be a very subjective thing.

    A fishing site that recommends using corn to catch bass posting on a site about corn DNA altering may seem irrelevant to a causal on-looker that doesn’t have all the facts. So while dropping ones link willy-nilly is definably a spammy technique, judging whether a person is being spammy or not almost has to be left to each person’s conscience.

    Mark

    PS- I sometimes put a link to a site that makes no income for me in a blog profile! (I have 4 or more sites I have had a long time, before the accident, where making money wasn’t and isn’t the purpose of the site. In these cases, they are like ‘give back’ sites. At least 2 give away huge amounts of desirable stuff. And in at least one case is information on a not for profit help topic.)

  15. Mark E Thurston

    A note, in the 1st paragraph I use ‘A’ and ‘2’ to make two points. That is because using the proper form caused ajax to spit the post out as spam!
    Odd.

  16. greg cryns

    I get a bad feeling about these methods of building backlinks.

    I think Google has told us many times (through people like Matt Cutts and other reputable and experienced folks) not to try to fool the search engine. I feel that Google will discover a way to unearth activities that are used simply to spam the search engines. These activities may have quick results but I don’t think they will have lasting impact.

    My 2 cents. Worth what you paid for it. ;)

  17. Alan Petersen

    Great post! One of the most comprehensive ones I’ve seen offering some real helpful backlink tips so thanks for sharing! I subscribe to Angela’s backlinks and I’ve heard some of people now complain about them but as you shared in your post if people would use them the right way like Angela recommends as well we wouldn’t have issues.

  18. Steve1943

    Scott – you are so right – if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right!

    TIP – set up your profile info in Roboform, then it’s a snap to complete each profile form.
    Just Right mouse and select “fill forms” TA DAAA!

    If “fill form” does not work, can still just leave Roboform Identity open and copy/paste from it – much quicker than typing it all.

    PS This is not an affiliate plug for Roboform – I just find it useful. You could probably use LastPass.com (free) similarly.

  19. Arindam

    @Mark

    Wow wow, those are the kind of comments I really look for where I too can learn something new lol. :D

    You are right that “spam” is quite subjective in nature, but if the guys who run the fishing site are also the ones who delete the spammy profiles, perhaps they know what they are doing(or why would they have an authority site on the subject? ;) )

    BTW, One of your comments were in spam and another under moderation. I guess it was all because of a long post. But let that not stop you from posting nice comments, as I DO look into the spam box too ;)

    @Steve123

    Yeah, RB is what I use, and you can even download a free identity from here: http://flexiblewriter.com/must-have-tool-for-backlinks-of-angela-and-paul

  20. Mark E Thurston

    Don’t always worry about page rank when back-linking from a site. If the site ranks high in results for several dozen keywords, the ‘link juice’ Google gives you is more than what that site’s page rank might indicate. (Little known fact, I have a client whose brother-in-law works for Google and let some things ‘slip’ last Thanksgiving. He once asked him a direct question and was met with silence as Google told him not to even tell is wife some stuff!) Lol.

    They are very hush-hush; but because people are always testing, that is why they keep changing the exact algorithms. (They changed the exact algorithm 7 times last February… that is every 4 days!) But there are some factors that though they are always changing the weight of, are and always will be of some weight; like how many keywords people type in that the site does rank for. That, most times does not enter into that page’s PR equation, but DOES help pages that it links to! Strange and non-intuitive, but that is Google.

    And back-linking is not ‘gaming’ the system, Greg. Unless you are using automatic and arbitrary methods to do so. (I wish they would figure out how to stop the auto-bloggers and end that black-hat system. I have seen an auto-blogger site rank higher with stolen content than the poor blogger that wrote the original article and whose page is de-indexed for duplicate content because a ‘blog’ with more juice stole his or her work!) It is discussions like this that help the spirit of what Google is attempting more than hurting it.
    Mark

    1. Arindam

      Yeah Mark, you are soo right. Lately Google has been giving weight even to PR0 links. I guess the next thing black hatters would do is to start spamming all the PR0 sites! :D

  21. Mark E Thurston

    And apparently someone at this site agrees. (Someone who works there must have a relation to the same brother-in law! ;))
    http://www.cemper.com/seo-tools/link-juice

  22. Salt Lake City Guaranteed Carpet Cleaning

    Great post Nuttie.
    I like your name, I use a lot of Alias names also. I like your Nutty Professor type of name. I am confused why people are buying the link system from Angela. Once I learned what she was doing I just searched in Google for sites with high pr that had a forum. Then you are not hitting sites that are inundated with Angela links. I would link to her though because she is pretty, even if she is married.

  23. Steve1943

    @Salt Lake City

    Angela does the leg work to check that locations where she places the links are not NoFollow. That’s worth a few bucks to me. Have you found any convenient DIY alternative?

    Sadly, so many people jumping on Angela’s bandwagon that sites are reacting hard. Doubt most of those links are going to last long.

    Problem is that Google checks on links disappearing – treats as “Vote of No Confidence” and sanctions accordingly. Found that out the hard way after discontinuing a 3-way link subscription.

    However, world does not end with Google. MSN doesn’t care if link drops. Experience with Yahoo inconclusive, but mildly encouraging.

  24. Professor

    Good long post, Arindam. I don’t have time right now to comment on everything I would like to. So I’ll just ask one question, and then come back in a day or two:

    The way in which I discovered your blog was through Angela, since she gives your earlier post as a reference in her packets. So what does Angela think about your new ideas on using her backlinks sparingly? Have you made an enemy out of a friend?


    Professor

    1. Arindam

      LOL, she says it is an excellent post. ;)

  25. greg cryns

    I spent a couple of hours last night using Angela’s newest finds. The first issue I never got to

    Then I remembered that someone posted articles about how to effectively use Angela’s product. I found this page.

    Thanks Arindam!

    So, can I assume that putting links back to your niche websites is not the best way to do business? Would you recommend that we all use an “About” page to link to?

    I am confuse.

    greg

    1. Arindam

      >>can I assume that putting links back to your niche websites is not the best way to do business?

      Not sure what you mean by that. What I suggest is that you try to find sites that actually OFFER you a place to leave links (Angela said her October sites are just like that; I have not looked into them though)-like, say, the social bookmarking sites, or say, Hubpages (these r just examples).

      Second, for blog commenting and forum posting, it is a good idea to find sites related to YOUR niche. Like, if your niche is weight loss, find forums and sites on that topic (niche+forums, OR niche+blogs are search parameters you can use on Google to find them) and post there; if they r not enough, find health related sites too ;)

      Why? You get many advantages this way:

      a) You don’t get labeled as a spammer.

      b) You not only get backlink but also traffic, subscribers, and even possibly JV partners. In other words you not only build traffic but also RELATIONSHIPS that may last much longer than traffic ;)

      c) Your links have more chances of staying. For me the stress of my links getting deleted a fortnight later is worse than doing this bit of hard work! :D

      I don’t go into nofollow/dofollow discussion because that is just your choice. Personally I put comments even on nofollow sites (even several of Angela’s backlinks are nofollow, if you check her site using backlinkwatch or yahoo explorer) because –

      They bring me traffic+Google gives some weight to nofollow sites these days+It is good to have a variety in link building ;)

      Now, if you want to focus only on dofollow link building that is up to you ;)

      About me pages are best, but if that is not an option, then you may use a freebie page or any other non-commercial page that is part of your website. If you spy on Angela you would notice that on many forums her links have stayed intact (because she uses her bio page and the goarticles page for her backlinks, none of which are commercial pages in the strict sense of the term) while others get a quite different treatment! ;)

      Apart from that, you can also buy the Backlinks 750 guide of Terry Kyle (if his wso is still up). Now don’t take everything he says at face value but overall it is a good guide! ;)

      You can also use Google’s search operators to find backlink sites related to Angela’s; that way, the links are exclusively yours! ;)

      http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html (this one perhaps need a bit more explanation so watch for it in a future article ;) )

      What I would also suggest is that categorize your backlinks into several broad niche categories, so that when you build a site on a specific niche, you know which backlink sites to go to. It saves you a lot of frustration down the road, though building the initial list is certainly painful! ;)

      Hope that clears the confusion ;)

  26. Mark E Thurston

    Matt Cutts says in one of the many videos he has done that the bots don’t consider the nofollow links all the time. I suspect, that the bots do follow the no follow links and that where they lead is considered for search results. What the no follow was for was to HELP the bots not see a page that was on several ways for your customers to find it from seeing it as duplicate content.
    (EI: the nav bar, tags, categories, archives, etc.) Keep in mind, the bot may not follow, but it does read the address of where it is not going. ;)

    That that ‘link’ may not show up on a backlink search does not mean the fact that it is there, is not being included in the current algorithm.

    I think the bottom line is, if you do no evil, (at least have no evil intent) you will get what you deserve eventually.

    Speaking of evil…I’d like to see a post about the current glut of internet marketing that teaches internet marking. (Incestuous at best, huh?) Including the ‘guru’s that sell marketing information that is incomplete and in some cases actually designed to discourage the buyer from following through at the most vulnerable places in the process by mis-leading or leaving out crucial info! (According to a psychologist I showed some purchased ‘systems’ to that had a handle on IM already)
    Michael Fortin’s wife, Sylvie (I think) wrote an ebook called ‘Internet Marketing Sins’ That tells how some ‘do it’ to their clients. In normal times, there is only so much of a market for selling to wanna be IMers, but in this economy, that market is flooded and if you don’t think those ‘gurus’ that ‘do it’ to others don’t ‘do it’ to newbies, you are just not paying attention. In my limited 6 months of trying to learn this stuff and after showing everything I bought relating to it, according to someone who should know, I was ripped off dollarwise 10 times to 1. No one talks much about it, but many who have just lost their jobs are getting shafted with money that they would be better off to spend on food for their families.
    I don’t know the answer and being new, I am sure there are those that could (and would) make my life hell. I will never mention names, it has become easier to figure out who is ‘evil’ and who is not. (90% of those with pictures of cars, money, houses and pretty women, I bet) This is off subject, just something that ‘gets’ to me. Sorry,
    Mark

  27. Arindam

    Hiya Mark,

    I was waiting for your comments lol. I understand your frustration, and will try hard not to get on that “evil” list lol :D

    On a personal note, I would say that do not pay unnecessary attention either to what Matt Cutts or the IM gurus say. Think about it: both Google and those IM gurus are your competitors, and vice versa. Why would your competitors want YOU to succeed (in fact they would just want the opposite)?

    An eminent warrior was saying the other day that Cutts has been specifically hired by G to spread misinformation about their algo so that no one can ever fully grasp their actual algo. You would see that almost all of this articles and interviews are incomplete or open ended, leaving plenty of room for speculation. And that IS his aim! ;)

    I am subscribed to only a few gurus’ lists, and that number keeps on decreasing regularly! I certainly read some of the emails but with an objective view (my aim is certainly to spy on these gurus than reading what they say). Why? I know at the end of the day, it does not matter if some guru earns 10 millions per month, or if he says that dofollow is good/nofollow is bad; what matters to me is the result of my own TEST!

  28. Bruce

    Arindam,

    I’m a new subscriber to your nuttie newsletter. Your thought’s about Angel’s list of high pr sites caught my attention. I’ve been using this automatic program called ‘linking loophole’ that creates yahoo email accounts and then subscribes to Angela’s sites. It then posts to each of the accounts (automatically) with random name and birthday etc and places my keyword anchor text links to inner pages on my website. It then collects the urls of the pages where my links are where they are then converted into RSS feeds with html2rss. Another program in the same set of software then sends out the newly-created RSS to the big RSS aggregators. Whew!, that was a long explanation. In the program creator’s opinion based on his testing and the seeming results from his subscribers, there seem not to be any bad results from setting up such links from Angela’s sites. In fact, after an initial surge of page rank for the keywords in the anchor text to the website page optimized for the anchortext keyword, the page then disappears for awhile but within a week or two returns to nearly the same spot. Doing that also helps new pages of content on a website get indexed by google within hours.
    So after this long-winded explanation, what I am hearing from you is that these links that are created with Linking Loophole will be removed by someone at each of these sites if the links created in my profile going to my website pages are not relevant to the theme of the websites that Angela compiles each month. And thus, Google will then penalize my website pages because the links will be taken down. I hope I am understanding all this correctly.
    Therefore, I shouldn’t use any automated software to set up these accounts for me unless the sites are relevant to my website pages. Do I have that all correct? If so, then if I happen to sell wellness products on a website that reviews and offers helpful info to people about great products BUT I am also a sports fan and a Democrat or I am interested in Science etc etc AND the high PR site in these categories asks me to fill out my profile including a website if I have one, then does it really matter if I put my website link in with my keyword anchortext?? Common sense tells me it wouldn’t matter since I am not advertising my site to others on the forums and not writing spammy articles at the sites. If it doesn’t matter to the site owner, then I assume I’m alright doing this type of automatic one-way link building from these high PR sites. Also, it seems that if keyword anchor text and link relevancy did matter and was frowned upon, these websites would not allow profile information to contain keyword anchortext links back to my website if it wasn’t relevant. They do allow it however, which makes me think that it must be okay. In the short time I’ve been linking in this way, I’ve seen very good results in pr and traffic from pages that previously were not even indexed by Google (within a week or however long it takes for the google bots to go through the profile pages of these high pr websites).

    1. Arindam

      @Bruce: Hi Bruce (I think there is another Bruce on my list too),

      Since I have not used the software in question, it would probably be best to keep my mouth shut on that, lol. You see, I cannot really answer either “yes” or “no” without using the tool first.

      I am not a big fan of automation in seo btw. IMO, semi-automation is the way to go-be it for article submission, rss submission (in fact most rss directories force you to read captcha before you can submit your blog to them, and software cannot do it for you), social bookmarking (again, captcha poses a hurdle), etc.

      All I can say is that if you are indeed happy with your results six-eight months from now (I mean, in terms of ROI), then nothing like it! Again I personally suggest semi-automation or even better, zero-automation, in case of seo, because softwares, no matter how smart they maybe, can never replace the human brain! However, to each his own! ;)

      Also, “assumptions” are not always right (In fact, 90% of the times they are WRONG). RESULTS are what really matter! ;)

  29. ManieE

    Would it matter much if you don’t use you keywords as anchor text and use your name? It would certainly appear more natural and less like spam. What if you use you name together with keywords but I suppose that would be too many words to look natural.

    1. Arindam

      @ManieE:
      >>Would it matter much if you don’t use you keywords as anchor text and use your name?

      My own tests show that anchor text keywords don’t matter much because you would inevitably end up ranking for several keywords whether or not you have built links for them (as long as your site content has those keywords, that is)! I also had the odd experience of not ranking for one of the keywords that I used extensively as anchor text for building links to one of my sites! ;)

      Still, your own tests may bring up different results ;)

  30. Bruce

    Hi Arindam,
    Thanks for your quick response. The program I mentioned in my last post also automates the captcha process and does a fair job of getting most of them correct most of the time. If it misses, it tries again and skips the site if it exceeds a certain amount of time and then goes to the next site. I’ll keep trying this for another month or so and see if my links get removed.

    Interesting topic though. I have often thought about just taking my time and filling out a complete profile on each of Angela’s high PR sites when I have spare time (which is hardly ever btw).

    Thanks,

    Bruce

  31. Arindam

    Hi Bruce,

    That is great to know. Hopefully soon you will post your results here with a link to the tool (affiliate link is fine ;) ) so I too can exploit the “loophole” of Google until they get it fixed lol :D

    If too many people (ab)use the tool though then it may soon become as ineffective as the page generator tools which were once a big hit ;)

  32. Bruce

    Yeah, I often worry about people who may abuse the program. It hasn’t seemed to happen yet but I haven’t been using it long enough to know how long this will last. The developer allows only four keywords per ‘run’ and of course they are all connected to inner pages on the website(s).

    I’ve noticed an increase in traffic to my pages – especially after I submit the RSS feeds to the RSS aggregators that the html2RSS program does for me.

    I’ll let you know if traffic keeps up

    Bruce

  33. Steve1943

    Angela linking to GoArticles (or Squidoo or Hub, whatever) which onward links to her site is an example of a powerful technique called “chaining”.

    Chaining has many advantages – crawling and link juice are forwarded pretty much intact if the origin has few outbound links other than to your own sites.

    Chaining can combine several tiers of onward linking.

    An advanced blackhatter will use thousands of expendable junk sites (often on kited domains) to forward spammed link juice and cloaked traffic to intermediate sites (preferably with authority like Squidoo, Hub, GoArticles etc) which in turn forward to the money sites.

    Links point upward from black to white; also sideways (same color) but never down. So when a junk site is rumbled (it always is in time) it is deindexed, but the money site stays clean, insulated and sanitized by the intermediate site.

    In the meantime, the money site benefits from the authority of the intermediate sites, the spammed link juice, and the cloaked traffic.

    I’m not suggesting anywone here try that route – quite apart from the ethical issues, it requires great skill, and massive software and hardware investment to implement and maintain.

    But the power and potential of “chaining” can be deployed totally white hat (like Angela is doing). And it is not limited to 2 stages.

    Chaining reamins a wide open opportunity because very few people have cottoned on to the potential, and eveb fewer have the organization and and motivation to implement.

  34. Mark E Thurston

    Google has a way of discovering the money site (I think they just follow the juice til it ends, just like Elliott Ness did to take down Al Capone). In no way is the money site safe. I know people that tried that and eventually the money sites where de-indexed BEFORE the junk and intermediate ones where!
    The latest craze is auto-blogging. Crap, soon the net will be nothing but bots posting contents for bots. “Oh the humanity of it all!”

    1. Arindam

      Mark how dare ya even mention the word “humanity”! Don’t ya know it is an obsolete word in the dictionary of internet marketing! ;) (kidding)

      BTW, one of the biggest mistakes that of IMers of is trying to complicate simple matters, in the hope of either achieving quick shortcuts or finding the “missing” piece of the puzzle. Before they realize, they have been trapped in muck and the more they try to rescue themselves the deeper they would get trapped. Over time I have learned to to keep things simple and use my common sense-works for me though may not work for everyone! :D

      Some of the highest ranking sites in non-IM niches have crappy on-page seo. You would wonder how come such sites even be on first page of Google, but they are there nonetheless! :D

  35. Steve1943

    @Arindam

    “I have learned to to keep things simple and use my common sense”

    Spot on Bro! Save you a stack of dough too.

    “Some of the highest ranking sites in non-IM niches have crappy on-page seo.”

    Links+Links+Links. Off page factors account for at least 60% of keyword ranking variance.

    Google figures out most on-page factors for themselves now – contextually.

    I have statistical evidence suggesting that Google even penalises some traditional on-page optimisation.

    Better to forget it and try KISS instead.

    1. Arindam

      >>Google figures out most on-page factors for themselves now – contextually.

      Yeah, well actually that is what I was hinting at (smart guys think alike lol)! ;) Apart from the title tag, most other meta tags have become useless over time due to their extensive abuse by “spammasters” (spammers+webmasters)!

      Right here on this blog you will find me quoting it straight from Google that they don’t consider meta description or meta keywords when indexing a page; rather they “extract” such info directly from the body of the content page. That is how the term “Google style extraction was born)!

      http://flexiblewriter.com/search-engine-optimization-demystified-part-4

      Don’t forget to read the rebuttal comment lol. Apparently such stuff stuff works for him ;)

    2. Arindam

      BTW, Googlebot has been staying on my blog since the beginning of October, lol :D This overzealous and constant attention of Google on a minuscule site is very unusual and alarming! I am smelling an imminent Google slap, for exposing all the “Google secrets”! :D (kidding)

  36. Angela

    Mark, that’s because some website owners don’t like links…ANY links. Some websites (many forums are like this) think of you as a spammer if you leave any type of link at all. I usually have pretty good luck with my bio page, but I have been labeled a spammer for using it. And there isn’t anything on the page to sell!! :/

  37. ManieE

    I think all the comments on your posts are the attraction for the Googlebot… :)

  38. Chandan

    Wow, So much to learn. I liked mostly that you are showing how to use about me page. Good reference too. I read that WF thread and it was interesting. Will wait to read your backlink building success with this new strategy in coming post :-)

    Cheers Arindam! Great post :-)

  39. Mark E Thurston

    Bottom line I think is:
    If you write and structure for humans, (usability, findability, readability): They will come.

    If you can use words that work and others do not use, but have searches, in a natural way, you can rank for those small searches. Then word of mouth takes over IF you provide what humans need and/or want.

    I saw an ‘ad’ for an auto-blogger. Posts to 1000 blogs 5 times a day! Had examples. The examples were crap content scraped from Yahoo answers to make the site look like a question and answer site. All dup content and even if it is spun, it is just thievery in my book. Stealing from the people it draws, from, Yahoo and from any other IMers in that niche that is trying to do it right!

    That is what Google should be going after (in my estimation). There are literally thousands of crap auto blogs in the top 5 Google search results of many niches. They keep allowing that or don’t find a way to eliminate that and some upstart search engine will and do what Google did… take the vast majority of search away from them like they did to Yahoo years ago.

    I just hope it is soon because auto-blogging disgusts me. It is so black hat but the purveyors of it think (it is only light gray (or so they say).

    (How do you feel spending hours on keyword research, building a site, providing good content, helping people find answers to their problems and making enough to feed your family and then one day the top 10 sites in your niche are all auto blogs from some ass who picked your niche to fill with 20-50 scraped auto-blogs and now you’re on page 3 or 4 for most of the words you were in the top 5 results for page one before? Instead of feeding your family, you are back at step one while some guy is stealing your hard earned traffic in his sleep, while providing nothing! He may even be scraping YOUR CONTENT to be ranked above you!

    Thievery!

    Mar

    1. Arindam

      Hi Mark,

      RE: Autoblogging

      Again it boils down to a simple fact that a tool can be used and abused. A potentially good tool can become bad if it is abused by thousands of people, something that is happening with Angela’s links, and has happened in the past with page generator tools, RSS bots, social bookmarking submitters, etc. Autoblogging is AND is not bad, depending on how you approach it.

      I have done auto blogging too! However, I did it through RSS feed syndication, which is completely legit as long as you give proper credit to the originating source. In fact some of the top news sites do nothing other than syndicating content from Google and BBC news through RSS feeds, and yet rank in top 10! If you have sharp eyes, you can find a few such sites in Angela’s packets, and more if you search in Google! :)

      There is nothing illegal in it (unethical may be), not at least in my eyes (I am certainly no lawyer, mind you). Do you want to syndicate content from my blog to yours? You are more than welcome, as long as you give me proper credit! Hey, after all, that is what RSS is there for-helping fellow webmasters with content syndication!

      Problem however crops up when some scums want to bite the hand that feeds them-by not giving any credit to the originating source. It is no different than reprint article publishing-as long as you keep the author bio intact, it is perfectly legit, but when you remove it, you are a content thief! Problems are accentuated when the blackhatters present these seemingly “illegal” techniques as white hat and “legal” to unsuspecting newbies, and before they know it, they have also become a part of the blackhat industry!

      Forget about what Google can and cannot do to you, you would probably end up in prison for copyright infringement, which is 10k times worse than even the biggest Google penalty!

      And don’t tell me about dup content Mark – so many bigwigs are enjoying more attention from Google using reprint articles and RSS feeds than we are! In fact, there is not really anything called “dup content penalty” as Google and even I have clarified many times. It all happened when a certain marketer positioned this “theory” to pave the way for marketing his product which happened to be…you guessed it, an article spinner software! :D

      So what is dup content?

      Well, at its simplistic level: if you have a page containing:

      dog dog dog

      Google will take only one ‘dog” and ignore the rest. No penalty, mind you. I know it is really an over-simplistic example, but that is it!

      In fact, Google applies this rule even to off-page factors such as backlinks-

      If you leave 3 backlinks on a single site and all of them point to same domain, Google will count just one backlink and ignore the rest.

      But again this is no “penalty”. Like everyone else, Google too has to make sure it makes best use of its disk space (because diskspace and bandwidth don’t come cheap, at least not the quality ones), and that is why it has to clean out “duplicates” from its database all the times in doer to save space and maintain high-speed performance, much like we clean duplicate emails from our email lists, or optimize our WordPress database tables form time to time!

      More than auto blogging sites, the ones that completely p*ss me off are the auto-generated pages based on search keywords. Example: say you search for “Britney Spears” (without quotes). You would expect to find her bio, album reviews, etc. on first page, right? Well, yes only IF you are lucky.

      Many times I have stumbled upon sites that have zero content but the titles are so optimized with the search keyphrase that they rank higher on Google than the legit sites. A typical such site would go like this (assuming that your search keyword is “Britney Spears”):

      Title: Britney Spears-Discover more details, reviews about Britney Spears

      Meta Description: Ditto as title

      Meta keywords: Britney Spears, reviews

      Body: Ditto as Title

      Adsense ad goes here (again optimized per the search keyphrase)

      Sorry, no information is available on Britney Spears at this time. Please check back later!

      Are you pissed off? I sure am, but what is even more appalling is such sites rank on first page of Google (even though I am confident their average bounce rate is pretty high) while legit sites struggle on page 3. It all comes down to….

      Backlinks!

      I bet that same page would come up again on Google’s first page even if you searched for a different keyword.

      I have the software to do all that, but I have never really done it and may never do either! I prefer to do better things with my limited time! :D

      There are WordPress plugins that you can use to achieve the same results, maybe with a bit of tweaking!

      As much as I say that content is king blah blah blah, I simply cannot ignore the fact that a large group of webmasters are making money by doing almost nothing-well, except building links!

      As for chaining, linking to authority sites have an advantage in that the links would get pulled down less frequently. Thus, you can use them effectively as your guinea pigs. The downside is that you have to do a bit of extra hard work.

      Phase 1: Take all Angela’s backlinks, and build 2 links per profile. One of these links could point to an article site (say, an article you published on Goarticles, or Ezinearticles) and another to a Web 2.0 property like Squidoo, Hubpages, etc. Build and leave.

      Phase 2: Check back your work 2 weeks later. Some links would inevitably fail to work, but since you are linking to authority sites instead of your (affiliate) sites, the chances of deletions would be a bit less. Now go to all those sites that have kept your links intact, and just change the backlink URLs to point to YOUR money sites.

      Have I done it? Nope, but this is one method I read about in a :”black hat” forum! The people who are doing it are apparently very happy with the results but will it last long? Only time will tell it for sure!

      The long term strategy is still relationship building-if you are not joining a forum in order to contribute, then you could have nothing better to do than spamming that forum. Forums are more about relationship building, networking, etc., and less about link building. Just think about Warrior Forum. If you merely register at the site, make 1 post and have all links in your sig file, will you get as much benefit as you would as a prolific contributor?

      Blogs are safer than forums if you are not ready for relationship building, but again, your fate is controlled by the blog owner. If the blog owner does not approve your comment (aka, seo-ed name and spammy links), you don’t get a backlink!

      Anyway, just my 0.02 cents. Let the discussions coming. Don’t let my Nuttie ramblings stop you! :D

  40. Arindam

    I must add I once build a test site containing nothing but “unchanged” plr artcles and adsense ads, and did no promotion at all. Even this site has got indexed in Google and earning me a little Adsense income! The site is perhaps 2 months old, or maybe a bit more than that! :D

    The site was actually built for a different project (rather than earning Adsense money), but that project never really took off.

  41. ManieE

    “I saw an ‘ad’ for an auto-blogger. Posts to 1000 blogs 5 times a day!” I agree with Mark, this is evil… Google should root this out, the same as Arindam’s example of sites with rankings but no content. Syndication is good as long as there are links back to the source.

  42. Arindam

    Manie,

    If G really wants to “root this out”, they should root out Adsense because this is the #1 cause behind these junk, spammy sites. People who don’t know any better build junk MFA sites. This is the reason why WordPress.com banned Adsense sometime ago in a bid to stop spam and they have been successful!

    So as you can see Google is both the cause and cure of the problem. I do doubt they would discontinue Adsense program anytime soon. As long as they make billions from the Adwords advertsiers, they could care less about what we “web surfers” really feel! Yes, if another search engine such as Bing poses a formidable threat to Google’s market share (I don’t know when it will happen, or if it would ever happen) then big G might have to revamp its biz model to save its a**. Until then, we would continue to “suffer”. ;)

  43. ManieE

    Maybe the advertisers will rise up! They are paying for of ads that will not produce business. If I land on one of these junk sites I leave, I don’t click any ads.

  44. Arindam

    You would be surprised to know that many big corporates simply outsource their ad management to a “media manager” and neither track their ROI or anything (maybe they don’t know how to do that, after all, not every coroporate guy is necessarily as smart as internet marketers ;) )! They have money to burn, so to speak, and Google knows that. They are Google’s biggest revenue earners anyway; we internet marketers form just a tiny percentage of adwords advertisers!

    Yes I know the content network is junk, and don’t ever buy ads on content networks because if you have a limited budget you would become a beggar before you know it! ;)

    BTW, in my comment I have given you a hint of a potential offline business model you can take advantage of. Can you spot it? :D

  45. ManieE

    Maybe doing companies Adwords campaigns for them?? Be the media manager aka Adwords expert….

  46. Arindam

    >>Maybe doing companies Adwords campaigns for them?? Be the media manager aka Adwords expert…

    Yes, but a better, more “intelligent” expert. Your USP could be that of saving client’s money instead of burning it as other media companies do! :D

    I told you that many of this corporate bigwigs don’t track their ads. How do I know? Try clicking on all the Adwords ads you see on your search page, (for best results, open each ad in a new tab because if u hit the back and forward buttons you may see a different set of ads; not that it makes any difference other than confusing you) and see how many of them go to VALID pages. A mainstream niche is ideal for your test! ;)

    Next, compare all the VALID landing pages and see how many of them are “proper landing pages” (u know what I mean, right – seo, list building, quality score, etc.). You would know how many dollars these guys are losing each month without even knowing it! That is just one aspect. You can also help your clients achieve better ROI by offering them ad optimization tips, bidding tips, etc. If you position yourself as a media manager-cum-business advisor or whatever, you can make pretty good money :D

    And when you do make money, you should definitely buy me some beer bottles for giving u that tip! ;) (kidding)

  47. Arindam

    P.S. I am assuming that you can easily differentiate a Clickbank affiliate’s landing page from that of a corporate ;)

  48. Mark E Thurston

    In your Brittany Spears example, the bounce rate is not any higher than anywhere else, because, the surfer is as likely to leave thru an adsense link or a paid search Google button on that page. No cause to alarm the bots!
    lol

    I agree, G starts it, them condemns it, but does little to do anything about it if it is to their benefit.

    They will de-index a small internet marketers page, as they rarely use adwords if they are good, and having a site with adsense is like carrying a leaky bucket unless you don’t want to work enough to have content people are looking for on your site.

    They are less eager to de-index Coke-a-cola if they are spending a million or more in adwords a month! Or a small marketer making junk sites for adwords conversion. (Hard to have adsense clicked if you have already provided what they are looking for!

    I have a site, gives away PaintShop Pro ‘Tubes’ (images) or PSP Tubes for short. put adsense on it because all the ads where for play station (psp). THEN after they were done, enough surfers were play station players that they would exit thru adsense! But if all the ads were optimized for my product I was selling or affiliate for, I’d rather sell something for $30 than $.02 as they leave!

    I run an adwords account for a tiny medical doctor. I trade for free treatment. PPC is a whole different ballgame than SEO when keyword optimizing due to broad term bidding mostly. There are nuts out there that just throw money at a market, as well. You have to be very willing to continually test, test, test to keep ahead of them. You also have to be more attuned to a keywords with ‘commercial intent’ when it costs $10 a click! (and your landing page better convert high!)I pay over 300/mo in education on adwords alone just to stay even and in the game. If you decide to manage adwords for someone, you better make them pay. To do it right, you should be charging 2-4k up front for research alone and another 2-4K for set up. Otherwise, you are cheating yourself or them.

    Content network is not crap, it is just more work, but can yield better ROI! Up to 10 times as much if you are willing to test, test, test. I know a guy that pays .01 a click there with low bounce and high ROI. You never know. The fact that most people THINK it is crap helps. ;) With a little work, you can become king of the content network in almost any niche. (Notice I said ‘work’, that is why the CN is still so open. ;))

    1. Arindam

      @Mark E Thurston: Well, cr*p indeed can help you if you know what you are doing. Like some people make money even by spamming, and some from safelists (just another version of spam) ;-). In fact just above I gave you one example of a crap site which makes me a little adsense cash with ZERO promotion. Imagine if I had actually PROMOTED that site!!! The site is nothing extraordinary – just a bunch of junk plr articles that I did not even changed a bit (dup content, anyone, lol?) but if you are interested feel free to email me and I wud show it. Just don’t want to show it here publicly because it is really cr*p ;)

      Adwords-the trick for content networks is to have total control over the sites you want to run your ads on, as well as the ad positions. I think Adwords have this option if you choose CPM. I am not 100% sure as it has been years since I have used them. Indeed Adwords is 1000s times more trickier than SEO. ;)

      For adsense, the better CTR your site has, the more you earn, and to have a high CTR, the number of pageviews should not be too high compared to the ad clicks. I use a third party software to limit adsense clicks and pageviews per visitor, and that works fairly okay, although installing the script itself is no fun, and may not work on all hosts! ;)

      Nice to chat with you, btw! You also write longy stuff like me! :D

  49. Arindam

    P.S, I might try that PSP stuff. You never know. As for content, let us see if it can be scraped from good ol’ Wikipedia (kidding) ;)

    Now, is not being a bad guy so much fun lol :D

  50. ManieE

    I also want to do a few Adsense sites sometime, I have been reading all this stuff about guys (or girls) making a bunch of small niche Adsense sites and then makes a few dollars a day on each site. Maybe it could work….

  51. Mark E Thurston

    Yeah, I do tend to go on & on. Lol. A site built for adsense is not my style. Placing adsense in places were you know people are going to go away anyway without buying a product or clicking thru to an affiliate site is about the extent of my placements. (Or when the adsense misses my niche so doesn’t pull anyone away til they are done with my site; such as making the PSP error.)
    I don’t need to email you to see the site you talk about, there is one or more in almost every search. ;)

  52. Arindam

    Yeah, I almost always keep adsense at the very bottom of my pages. Ya know why? That is a part usually visited by “tyre-kickers” lol. My affiliate ads are usually above the fold! ;)

  53. ManieE

    Good idea to put adsense at the bottem, maybe I should try it. I normally don’t do adsense as I don’t want vistors to click away…

  54. mtb

    I always put adsense at the bottom of the page. It looks less intrusive and spammy.

  55. Make Money With A Blog

    Great Site Arindam!

    I use Angelas packets as well and they work better than using any other links. (Well, almost)
    I am big on getting consistant backlinks and doing whatever I can to be sure they are quality. That being said,
    sometimes you just need to allow some random and maybe less quality ones to keep things looking the norm.

    Trying to keep a site to perfect or high quality just seems to throw off the search engines. Im sure that some of the built in protocals for the search engines are to measure a random mix of everything.

    1. Arindam

      >>Trying to keep a site to perfect or high quality just seems to throw off the search engines.

      That is great news for me as most of my sites are neither perfect nor high quality. :D

      I doubt bots can accurately “measure” the quality of a site; if they could then you won’t see the top junk sites in the top 10 results of Google :)

  56. Steve1943

    @Arindam
    >> I doubt bots can accurately “measure” the quality of a site;

    I have seen reputable statistical evidence of Google marking down sites with “over-optimised” on-page factors.
    So bots may well be measuring that aspect of quality.

    But the idea that bots can measure content is largely fantasy and Google propaganda IMO.

    However, a human reviewer can very easily assess quality and Google certainly uses this to stop splogs and MFA sites exploiting Adsense.

    I did once see published some internal Google procedures for link evaluation, so human review presumably also impacts off-page factors. But to what extent can a few good men can review the zillions of new pages published daily………..?

  57. 7 Simple Steps to Keep Angela’s Backlinks Alive | Arindam Chakraborty.com

    […] In the past I have also written a long boring article on the same topic. Read it here only if you wish to get bored […]