I just finished watching the movie The Internship, a comedy about two out of work salesmen who try to get an internship at Google, and it got me thinking. As many of you know, Google has discontinued the Google Authorship program, and is getting very aggressive about link spam (see my article Is Linking Dead for SEO? for some commentary about that). The fact is, Google is at war… at war with spammers,… Read More »
One of the biggest benefits of Google Authorship was the fact that the actual content creators, the authors, finally get the recognition they deserve for their hard work. Before Google Authorship, the focus was always on the website and the company’s brand, not the author. In fact, oftentimes authors were lucky to even get a by line on things they created. It is not uncommon for authors to write hundreds… Read More »
I see a lot of new websites make this mistake. They launch a new membership website, forums, double opt-in list or other website that requires people to signup and receive an email to verify their account. But because they did not do a gradual launch, Gmail and other mail providers freak out at the sudden influx of verification emails, and either shuffle their emails into spam, or worse, block their emails entirely. Then,… Read More »
There used to be this theory that if you poured money into the top of the economy, through loans, tax cuts, and direct investment, the money would trickle down to the bottom of the economy, to the workers, the stay-at home moms, and the children. While there are arguments about whether or not that theory was ever effective, in today’s economy it simply cannot work as the only way to… Read More »
Most people think of wealth and money as finite things, but in reality, wealth is infinite and it is actually possible for everyone to be wealthy. The reason why this is true is because wealth is actually created by producing value and the movement of money. To give you a demonstration of how this works, let’s simplify it down to a smaller number of people and dollars. Let’s say we have… Read More »
I had an interesting experience this morning while researching Rackspace for an article. Apparently if you go to their website, you automatically agree to a whole set of terms of use, including provisions that state that you can only link to their home page, and that you are prohibited from using their logo. Now, come on. I know that it is in the best interest of any corporation to protect… Read More »
Yes, it is okay to pay bloggers, but depending on what they are blogging about and what jurisdiction they are in, there may be some disclosure requirements. For example, if you are asking them to review or write positive things about a company, product or service and pay them, some jurisdictions require that it be disclosed that it is a paid advertisement or otherwise indicate that the article was sponsored… Read More »
Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, has publicly and repeatedly stated that guest blogging for SEO purposes is dead. We are already seeing that Google is taking an aggressive stance towards link spam, especially on guest posts and link farms. One thing that really hasn’t been touched upon, but is lurking in the background, is guest blogging for the purpose of increasing your Google Authorship reputation. As Google… Read More »
In order to help search engines like Google & Bing understand the weight and importance of links on a page, and to reduce link spam, perhaps we need to start labeling the purpose of the links on our websites and blogs. In a previous article, we talked about “Is linking dead for SEO?” and Matt Cutt’s statement that guest blogging for SEO is dead. Search engines are finding that using… Read More »
In a controversial and much talked about post by Matt Cutts, entitled “The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO,” the head of Google’s Webspam team declares that guest posting for SEO purposes is dead. In his post, which has been edited several times for clarity, he attempts to clarify that Google is targeting spammy links only, but leaves the door open for linking for legitimate purposes. Google is in an… Read More »
