So here is deal. Bloggers in my niche (most of my friends and readers) are in terrible spirits right now because of PageRank and paid links. Just about everyone I associate with online is pissed off at Google because they don’t accept blogs and sites into their index if the authors choose to sell text link ads and sponsored posts. My fellow bloggers and friends feel that the end is near, and there is “No Money” to be made anymore.
Let’s look at this issue from another perspective. In fact, let’s forget about Google all together. Let’s focus on you in comparison to the guy with all the money (the advertiser). As bloggers, we all work our ass off to get to the top. I know I do! Within hours of writing a blog post, it gets indexed in Google and I get instant traffic. If you are failing to achieve this, then you need to let me know and we’ll work on that, but for now that’s a separate issue.
So, here you are… blogging you ass off to get ranked and ranked well. Then you have the rich guy, the advertiser, who says “screw it! I don’t want to work hard like these other guys… I have money, and I am going to pay my way to the top!”.
How is that fair for you? I don’t know about you… but I don’t have a lot of money. Blogging is my job and it makes an average salary. I don’t have money to spend on advertising. Instead, I use social networking and free search engine marketing to get traffic to my blog.
Now, how does it make you feel… knowing that you work your ass off to get listed and ranked in the search engines and then have some guy come in and pay his way to the top and knock you down?
What do you blog about? What niche do you associate with in order to make money? How does it feel knowing that someone can just march on in and totally knock your ranking down because they have money and you don’t?
Google isn’t about screwing you over. Google is about “Protecting You” from the people who have money and want to use it to out rank you. I think if you sit back for a minute and take this all in, you will soon realize where I am coming from.
Here is a video that I made that speaks more about this and gives you a nice example of what I am talking about. I am not here to burn any bridges with my readers, I am not here to make enemies, I am simply here to help you break free from these misconceptions that Google is out to knock you down… when in essence they are here to help you. I hope you enjoy the video and I look forward to your comments.
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Date/Time: 10-31-2007 08:09:33 Comment #6187
I haven’t thought about it this way. Interesting point of view.
Date/Time: 10-31-2007 08:53:37 Comment #6189
That’s an interesting interpretation… but it misses one point in my opinion: Google does NOT stop the advertisers, but the small bloggers. AS is not a very lucrative income model for longtail sites, but for Google - I think it’s more about protecting their own business model, which is completely okay - as Google is a profit-oriented company. But it’s definitely not about protecting “small” bloggers.
Date/Time: 10-31-2007 11:39:48 Comment #6190
@ Adrian,
Thanks for considering my point of view. I appreciate it.
@ Ritchie,
I agree with you about Google protecting their own business model; however, their system caters to a wide range of people including the “small” bloggers. Google helps people with all their needs. If you are an advertiser, they provide an awesome way to advertise, if you are a publisher, aka “small blogger”, they provide an awesome way to score traffic. Google does protect the small blogger by providing a controlled structure on how advertisers can advertise and how content can get indexed in their engine. It’s those that choose to “Game” their system that create a situation that can make Google a less relevant search engine.
Here is another thing to consider… “what search engine do you use to find things?” … if you use Google, there is a reason for it. And if Google said, “Ok… we give up, we’ll accept sites into the index that have paid their way to attempt to rank to the top, and we’ll also accept the sites that enabled this to happen” the result you will soon discover is a “Less Relevant” search engine… soon thereafter, you might make Yahoo your homepage.
Google is a business and its their job to protect their business model, their advertisers, as well as the content that is listed in their search engine. Without these systems in place, their index database would be nothing but a huge spam pool of trash.
Date/Time: 10-31-2007 11:40:13 Comment #6191
Gary I like this post and have to agree with where your coming from.
Regards,
David
Date/Time: 10-31-2007 11:51:38 Comment #6192
@Garry, I think these are excellent points. Sometimes everyone gets caught up in the hype, and they don’t stop to look at the other side of an issue.
@ritchie, You may be right that they are not stopping the advertisers, but that is not the issue. They are stopping people from buying PageRank. And this will help anyone who is working hard to have traffic from the SERPs.
Date/Time: 10-31-2007 12:13:53 Comment #6194
Excellent point, Garry. (Hey, I should probably buy excellentpointgarry.com for you!)
Anyway, that gives us a better understanding of why Google thinks the way they do. Up until now I didn’t see why it was such a bad thing for people to buy links such as TLA, well, bad if you cared about PR. I’ve decided to drop TLA from the two blogs I had it on, not just because of that, but also the lack in customer service I’ve received lately. I may use them on blogs I don’t mind as much, but not so focused on it for now.
Date/Time: 10-31-2007 12:29:26 Comment #6198
@ David
Thank you so much for your comment and compliment. I am very glad that you are able to see my point of view. That’s way cool.
@ David C.
Well said man… I can’t help but consider how I would feel if someone just paid money to push my ranking down in the SERPS. I have worked hard to achieve my rankings in the search engine. I don’t have a lot of money, and because of the systems in place, my content is protected for others who try to buy the spots where I rank naturally.
@ Mark,
After reading your comment, I feel great about doing the post and video. Mark you are a very open minded person and I am sure we don’t see eye to eye on every single thing I write about… but I can count on you having an honest opinion about things. So, now knowing what you have shared with me in your comments secures the deal. If I can close out my day, knowing that I have helped just “one” person, then I have done my job. Granted, as the days, weeks, months go by it seems like I am helping more… which is awesome too!
Date/Time: 10-31-2007 15:32:35 Comment #6205
Great video, Garry! And I must say - you’re a cutie!
Date/Time: 10-31-2007 21:32:50 Comment #6210
I like your approach too!!
I’m a small time blogger just barely starting to make a bit of small change.
I get hardly any search engine traffic and I am not considering buying links but I do want to learn and soak up advice so that one day the search engines send me traffic to my sites.
I also got my first ever pagerank and it was a 3 which was pleasing
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 02:58:32 Comment #6216
@ Tish,
Thanks for the compliment!
@ Forest Parks,
I have got some good news and some GREAT!!! news for you. First off, I see you as a PR4 not a PR3. Secondly, Google loves you! I can tell that by how quickly your content is getting indexed in the SERPS. Lets look at a few things and see if we can’t get that search engine traffic to spike up a bit and the also lets see if we can’t squeeze a few more dollars per day out of your Adsense.
First off, it seems Google indexes your content fairly quickly… as seen here 22 hours. Not bad! Next thing… do a search on my blog for title and meta tags for blogger.com blogs. Search bar is at the top of my blog. You need to switch your title around to show the POST TITLE first and then the TITLE OF YOUR BLOG second. Currently its the other way around. I would even go so far as to even drop your BLOG TITLE off completely. Third thing is your BlogRush being on the top left corner is screwing up how DESCRIPTIONS in the SERPS. I would suggest removing BlogRush from your blog or relocating it (I’ll touch on that below again too!)
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Next, lets look at making some more money:
People read left to right… so your Google Adsense Leader Board is great! This looks nice. However, your BlogRush is also the second thing I see… and being a first time and unaware visitor… I would quickly leave your blog via BlogRush. You are basically sending too much traffic away from your blog via a system that doesn’t pay you money.
I would do one of two things. (A) Replace BlogRush with a Google Adsense 160×600 Text only, or (B) Replace BlogRush and widen out your sidebar to accommodate for a Google Adsense 200×200 Text Only.
If you choose option A, I would then add the 200×200 Text only into your post and make it so that your content wraps around your posst. *Go back to my home page and scroll down a few posts, I just wrote an article that teaches you how to wrap content around Adsense Ads.
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Overall, your blog’s health is doing great. Google loves your blog, you are a PR4, you have pages in the index. You just need to make your pages that are indexed look more appealing to people who see them in the SERPS and secondly, you need to execute better traffic control within your blog. If you want to make more money, pave the path to the things that make you money from your blog. Limit the options that people have while surfing the page and closely control your EXIT DOORS out of your blog.
I hope this helps… thanks for stopping by and thanks for dropping the comment.
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 03:00:53 Comment #6218
opps… one last thing about the leader board… align that sucker to the left so that it is flush with the left side border of your template…
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 06:56:59 Comment #6221
Wow thanks so so much. At present I make no money from Adsense. I can’t remember the last time anyone actually clicked on an ad
so hopefully this will work.
I don’t fully understand how to do the meta tag stuff but I’m working it out now.
What do you think about putting the RSS icon on the left?
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 09:00:47 Comment #6222
Hi there again.
I can’t add the wrapped google ds t my posts easily as I use Pay Per Post these days and know I can’t have them so I will amend my template soon.
Also I can’t get your search bar to find anything about the meta tag things.
I did however find a tutorial on your blogspot blog (through Google) but it doesn’t seem to be the thing I’m looking for.
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 18:36:02 Comment #6240
You put across a really interesting point of view Garry. I applied for Text Ads about 4 to 5months ago and was still waiting on being approved for a bit of extra income, however I’m given up on that idea before the recent events, but after those, I’ll be staying well clear even if I do get approved now.
One thing that has popped into my mind on the back of this, where do you think Google will stand on the “U Comment, I Follow” on our blogs, do you think they’ll say that those are ‘invalid’ links next?
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 19:46:07 Comment #6243
Zath,
With Wordpress by default, the rel=nofollow is applied to all the links in the comments including the link for your name. This was initially done to protect you back when it was hard to control spam. However, with all the spam protection programs available for WordPress I don’t believe rel=nofollow is needed for my blog. I closely control the content and links that get accepted into my posts via the comments.
The whole dofollow movement is ok, except for the rebellious attitude they give out against Google. Once again, rel=nofollow was put in place to protect the search engine as well as the individual web author… not the other way around.
I sport a UCOMMENT and IFOLLOW stating that links in my comments are machine readable as long as they are relevant and that I myself follow and visit your blog. If you look closely as my source code you will see that there are many sections in my blog that are NOFOLLOW. I pay close attention to my incoming as well as outgoing links.
Date/Time: 11-2-2007 01:29:53 Comment #6248
Thanks for clearing that up Garry, only reason I started thinking on that was that my Pagerank was unchanged in the last update and it just made me consider my links, I must just not have enough to move up.
I’ll stick with my ‘U Comment, I Follow’ support, cheers!
Date/Time: 11-2-2007 02:21:05 Comment #6250
Just make sure you go about it in a constructive way. A lot of the DOFOLLOW crowd are against Google and the REL=NOFOLLOW. I totally respect Google’s policies and have taken it upon myself to be the judge of which links on my blog are machine readable/crawlable and which ones are not. When the REL=NOFOLLOW tags are removed from a blog but placed in the control of good hands, it can really provide a very resourceful feed for search engine bots. Unfortunately, it is those that choose to “game” PageRank that cause this movement to get a bad name.
Date/Time: 11-2-2007 02:24:05 Comment #6251
Also… PR3 is fine… and is really all that is needed for your posts to rank well in the SERPS. Take a look at the videos I have been doing and also I would love to have you watch David and I on RadioBlogTalk. We will have a new show (or attempt to… lol) every Monday morning. Visit, RadioBlogTalk.com and subscribe to our YouTube Channel!