Google vs Paid Links and Publishers Caught In The Crossfire
With my last post, I got quite a few of my readers feeling terrible. “If I can’t sell links then what can I do to make money online?” or, “Text-Link-Ads is the only program that has truly shown great results” or, “It’s not fair that I can’t write paid or sponsored reviews, this is my life!” and the email/IM submissions go on and on…
I want to clear some things up and point out to everyone: You have a choice. There is a fork in the road. You can go left or right, the choice is up to you. However, if you choose to take the road of selling paid links and writing sponsored or paid reviews, you very well may hit some pretty deep and muddy pot holes along the way with your relationship with Google.
As a follow up to the post I made yesterday, I want to provide you with some videos I was able to dig up on YouTube. This will hopefully allow you to make a more informed decision on your venture as to whether you choose to continue to sell paid links or sponsored/paid reviews or not.
This first video is Matt Cutts. This video was recorded and uploaded about three months ago. Today, I am seeing the effects of what is being said in this video.
This second video features Kris Jones from Pepperjamsearch.com and Michael Gray from Wolf-Howl.com both are professional SEO experts. It is their job to help clients and customers rank well in search engines, including Google. In this video they both speak highly of TLA and their level of effectiveness for advertisers.
Third video here features Darren Rowse and Aaron Brazell who both speak highly of TLA and how effective their service is for publishers.
Recorded one month ago… Again, Matt Cutts sums up their policy in about a minute. His message is clear as day.
Public Perception – Caught in The Crossfire:
“…now, with their program, they put a lot of emphasis with your PageRank…” and “if your PageRank is a lot higher you can monetize your site better by selling paid links than if your site has a lower or zero PageRank…” and “… hopefully when my blog gets a higher PageRank, I will get approved…”
Popularity: 1% [?]
12 comments
First of all, let me say that that video was recorded well before Google started threatening a slap down on sponsored links. At the time, I used TLA on my blog. It was easy money, it was a simple way to monetize and if you have good PR, then you have a better chance to make more money.
While, it’s still that way, the writing has been on the wall from Google for some time. I took down TLA a long time ago. At b5, we still have TLA on many of our blogs and while I’m not in the calls between our sales staff and TLA, I know we’ve been pushing them to apply nofollow to links. I think that’s only fair. Hopefully, with the bloodbath we’re seeing now, TLA will heed that warning.
So the video is old and outdated but not moot. Yes, TLA is a great way to make money. Yes they are easy to use. If you don’t care about PR (and many people don’t), using them is a fine solution.
However, for people who need their PR to be natural (as opposed to penalized) for whatever reason, TLA is probably not a good solution. The jury is split so folks need to make their own mind up.
Hey Aaron,
Man you are right… TLA is easy money. That is why it has gained so much popularity. It’s a great program (if you have no concern for ranking in Google). But that also has a double edge sword because if you don’t have PageRank, you don’t get accepted nor do you get to continue with the program. We all understand that. And what seems to be the trend: Google is reducing the PageRank of sites who aren’t in compliance with their quality guidelines. In short, Google will render your site useless to TLA and you will no longer be able to sell links for TLA.
As far as the video being old… man, I hate to say this, but I really have no choice, since you made it a prime focus on your comment.
The two videos of TLA are six and seven months old. However, this issue of selling links stems back as late as 2002. Additionally, Matt Cutts started placing a mainstream public awareness in 2005. With your level of experience and skill, just as Darren, Kris, Michael, and many other high profile A listers, you guys knew coming into this that TLA was a direct violation of Google’s quality guidelines. This was ignored and support for the program was carried out by participating and not offering any public warning about TLA and the publishers/authors future with Google. I am guilty of that too… however, I was less aware. During roll out phase of TLA, all the main stream heavy weighted promoting bloggers had a choice to spread awareness about the program and give publishers/advertisers a choice whether to participate or not. But it didn’t go down that way. TLA was promoted as one of the best ways to make money online and or to advertise online and people joined… lots of people joined.
TLA has always offered a service that doesn’t comply with Google’s quality guidelines. It has been this way since day one… so regardless if this above video was one month old or seven months old… nothing has changed and you promoted a service that can cause thousands of publishers to lose their rank in Google.
Man, you are so right. Somehow it has felt like longer. Knowing what I know now, I wish I wouldn’t have agreed to the video. At the time, I was less aware of the problem. When I researched it more, TLA was taken down and a different stance taken. Advertising is not my strong suit and it never has been so if you want to accept that as an excuse…
Regardless, congrats. You have you moment in the sun.
Aaron,
I’ll be the first to admit, that I personally have made more mistakes as a blogger than most. But, maybe that is how we all learn. Getting up to speed on things isn’t my strong suit. I too promoted TLA very heavily on my blog. I mention TLA and ReviewMe.com many times. I made a mistake too… and I hold myself very accountable. Heck, it was just about two weeks ago, I celebrated that my blog hit a milestone with ReviewMe.com setting the review price to $250. What I now realize is that the foundation of these programs are all based around tricking the Google ranking system.
As far as my moment in the sun… lol, the longer one is in the sun the more they get burned.
I am just a guy from Tennessee who enjoys blogging and has a little bit of time to invest into projects that have lately started to make good money. I mean no harm… and I wish you well with your continued success.
Ah the great paid links debate. I’ve run this one over endless times in my head and still can’t decide my stance. I’m just going to lie low for the time being.
Unless you get some serious traffic from Google, or other search engines I don’t see how this wouldn’t be a moot point? I get less than 3% of my blog’s traffic from Google so I’m not to worried about getting deindexed or otherwise penalized. I’m starting to think that everyone else gets a significant portion of their traffic from Google because of all the concern there seems to be about it.
I would also add this. For a regular blogger, why would they want to get lost of visitors (from Google) if they couldn´t monetize them?
I would rather get 100 visitors (assume you were de-indexed) and make $1000 a month than get 1000 visitors and make $100 a month
Garry, I am not commenting on this post but I wanted to search your site for a previous post (about searches of all things) but can’t find a search box anywhere – do you have one?
Hey GoldCoaster…
Thanks for the reminder… It’s coming! I promise!
What post are you looking for and I will see if I can dig it up out of the grave.
its not fair google penalised the small timer bloggers + directories owner to send out the message. Big corps Yahoo or BOTW directories was let off the hook
we need a new option in town … like you said, google works but it ain’t fun anymore
It would be nice if Google provided a way for searchers to filter out such links in their results, kind of like a “view all results” and “view the lean version”. Would it be allowed and if so possible to make the TLA links nofollow on blogs by adding the attribute? Would that bring things back into alignment? Sponsored posts are another thing. I’ve made some easy cash by writing reviews on things I’m interested in and think that my readers would be too. I can see where Google sees this as a way to inflate popularity for web pages, but there’s got to be a way to allow bloggers not to be penalized while providing a quality search engine.
Adding NoFollow to TLA’s script is a violation of their TOS. Can’t do it or they’ll boot ya… but, eventually when Google’s boots ya, TLA will boot you anyway…
As far as paid reviews goes… They are fine, or at least I am lead to believe so, as long as your blog by using the NoFollow tag on the links in that sponsored post.
Unless this is an independently sold review… most companies such as PPP or ReviewMe.com don’t allow you to use NoFollow (maybe someone can validate that for me?)
All in all… I am done with using third party advertisers. I said it once before (few months ago) and pulled a switch and went back.. but its done… I still use TLA on most of my blogs, eventually I will start removing. I love Adsense… I will always use Adsense.. and lately, I have started doing my own thing… also, affiliate marketing is a very great business to get into. Using social networking as a medium for promotion and marketing can in many ways be more effective than SEM. All in all, using a balanced mixture between both is optimal.
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