Mar 30, 2011

My Two Cents and Google’s Changes

You may or may not know this but in February Google made big changes to how they rank websites that is going to impact your success online .

The search engines are making changes all the time. Most of the changes are not very noticeable. The recent changes were pretty big changes to how websites are ranked and the impact has been fairly noticeable across the industry.

I'm happy to say that our clients have not seen much change in their search engine rankings. The reason is because we've been focused on quality from the beginning.
Let me explain what these changes mean and why it doesn't really concern me in the least.

The search algorithm changes made by Google have one purpose and one purpose alone and that is to filter out the junk.

Essentially, they have made links from junk article directories and other websites worthless for increasing your rankings.

Frankly, I'm not surprised.

Nearly 2 years ago I said in a number of articles that generalized article directories were going to be the new link farms. Years ago, the big craze in link building was to create linking pages or link directories simply for the purpose of creating links .These pages had nothing but links on them and people would trade links.

They would e-mail you and say hey “I'll create a link for you if you create one for me.” Google quickly caught on to this and in fact this practice is now against their terms of service.

Participating in link trading schemes or link farms will quickly get you banned from search engines.

Over a year ago I forecasted that links from most article directories would soon become junk and worthless links as well.

The reason being because they were not being used to provide valuable content to the web surfer but simply for creating back links. What made the problem worse is so much of the bad and spun content being produced.

You have all these websites out there trying to sell back linking services and article marketing services and they don't have anything good to say to sell their program except for promising big volume for cheap.

Getting hundreds of articles or thousands of back links for cheap might make you feel like you're doing something to market your business but it's a waste of time. Those articles are interested out there and not provide any value in terms of helping your search engine rankings or creating traffic.

They say stuff like “We will submit your articles to thousands of websites and generate you tens of thousands of back links each month for only $47.”

Frankly, that type of online marketing has never been that effective but in the past it has helped people generate decent search engine rankings.

Those days are over.

If you're out there spinning articles, creating junk content and then blasting it out thousands of websites that are unrelated to your niche, poor quality or that have been created simply for the purpose of link building you are now going to lose.

Not only will your content be a waste of time because it will not generate traffic but the links are not going to help your rankings either.

Recently a client asked me why there is such a huge drop in the number of sites that we were submitting their articles to through Total Content Domination.

The answer is simple. We have responded to the Google changes and made an effort to filter out sites that were deemed to be poor quality. We have removed from our submission system websites that we have deemed to be poor quality and not valuable in building your business.

We have always focused on only submitting to high-quality related websites but recent changes have been even more aggressive in light of these changes.

I've been saying it for years and I'm going to say it again.

Getting great search engine rankings and getting traffic from your content has very little to do with the quantity of your back links.
One high-quality back link from a site or from content that is related to your niche and that has a decent page rank is more valuable than 5000 cheap back links from junk article directories and blog networks that are being created for no other purpose than building back links.

If you're participating in link building programs like that do so at your own risk.

There has never been and there still is no shortcut.

Focus on quality articles that provides valuable information and submit to high-quality web 2.0 sites, blogs and higher quality article directories that have editorial standards.

If you do these things and you do them consistently month after month your search rankings will improve and your natural search traffic will consistently increase as well.

To quote Sonia Simone of Copyblogger.com

“The world is not waiting breathlessly to hear what you have to say about losing weight with acai berries, making big money as an affiliate marketer, or how to join your Secrets of the Breakthrough Millionaire Insider Guru Mastermind Platinum Club.

Me too content gets ignored. Scrapped and remixed junk won't cut it. There's too much good content that you need to compete with. And there's no magic system that can replace sitting front of your keyboard and producing something that somebody wants to read. (Or partnering with someone who can. – [like Total Content Domination – I added that part. ? ]) “
I could not have said it better myself.

I can tell you another hard truth as well.

You cannot come online, build a website and start sending out content and building back links for 30 days or even 60 and then stop and think that you can build successful business or website.
The search engines reward those who are in this for the long term and who are committed to providing quality content consistently month after month year after year. There is no shortcut and if you cannot continue your content creation and link building consistently long-term then you're not going to make it.

Keep doing the right things and you'll be rewarded. Sadly, most quit way too soon. They expect fast results and when they don't get that they throw up their arms and say this doesn't work.

Do your research. Don't take my word for it. Content and link building is the best way to build a consistent stream of quality traffic that will serve you long-term and will grow like a snowball rolling downhill.

And when you have quality traffic that is produced from good content you don't need a huge amount of traffic to make good money online.

This is absolutely true  - you can have a six-figure business online with 100 targeted high-quality visitors per day. On the other hand, you can have 5000 visitors a day from junk cheap traffic sources and never make a sale or delete. Obviously, there are many factors that come into play when most of which had to do with your website, lead generation device and sales copy but my point is quality content generates quality traffic that is much more valuable than the other option. In fact it is the only thing that works.

Sincerely,

Dustin Cannon

Automate Your Online Marketing With Quality Content and Link Building That Integrates Social Media at www.justarticles.com/contentmarketing/
Dustin Cannon

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