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Went Hot: February 18, 2008 - 2:55 pm
Posted By: annie7 88 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Other Online Marketing
8 Comments
Went Hot: February 18, 2008 - 2:55 pm
Posted By: annie7 88 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: Other Online Marketing
8 Comments
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Comments
I know I will be flamed for this, but I will say it anyways.
Branding is overrated.
I can think of one affiliate program in particular I've promoted for blackhat, and they recieved a considerable increase in type-in traffic is I was doing this promotion. And yes, those converted to sales. Simply because the users were seeing the site so much, it became a brandname. And that is the owners' conclusion by the way, not mine.
I'll take traffic over branding any day of the week(so long as the traffic is targeted, which mine is). Hey, if I'm lucky, I may become a brandname because of the traffic.
While link spam and such many do bad for a store(although it should be properly filtered so no one but SE visitors ever get to even see the store), the average internet user doesn't know a blackhat redirect when they see it.
It is certainly true that the average surfer doesn't recognize the redirect, but what good is building a brand while increasing the risk that Google will Smote Thy Domain into non-existence.
If you are a slash and burn affiliate, you can certainly make a killing while running the exploit du jour. If you are an affiliate manager and you allow/accept these tactics for short term revenue, you are contributing to the pollution of the Internet. That's the point of the Ten Commandments. It isn't Ten Tips to Make Money Online.......
@Jonah: From the article
"While it is easy and tempting to pour money into any channel with a positive ROI, you may be cannibalizing your brand in the process. Even if your strategy is making money and your brand survives, you are funding parasites who devalue the communities that support your business."
I was pointing out that this is not a threat to branding, and that the first part that statement is moot.
Also from the article.
"Spambots can not only cause your site to be banished by search engines, they leave a huge footprint across the web and can tarnish your brand with a stink that can't be washed off!"
Yet another point about branding. No one directly link spams out the domains of the true company, and no regular user can identify BH. So yet another moot point meant to scare people.
Also, one more thing(I really wish I could up my font size for this): THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH AUTOMATION! THE ISSUES ARE WITH HOW THAT AUTMOMATION IS APPLIED
And you will NOT get banned just for automating... Look at sites ranking way up there for any competitive term. If they have 500,000 backlinks, is there any question automation was used? NO! But chances are they were applied PROPERLY. I have a sneaking suspicion that very few commercial companies have gotten anywhere near that number with exclusively manual link building, and random people saying "Omg I love this site about..."
And there's nothing wrong with that. Apply it wrong, you're in a hot seat for pain. Applied right, it's fine. And it does not dirty the internet.
SlightlyShadySEO,
Anything you do manually on the net may or may not be spam or "blight". Anything you encourage people to do (like linking to you) may or may not be deceitful or shady. It's a two-way street.
But there's absolutely no way your kind of automation can be any good.
Sure, automation done to your own property, within your own property may indeed be extremely useful.
Automation affecting other people's property or public space, done for your private gain CANNOT EVER be a positive thing. Regardless of how many people actually notice.
Do it if you want, it's a free medium. But at least have the stomach to acknowledge that you are contributing to the rubbish heap of the net.
Alright Sza. Let's say I have a list of pligg(digg clone; the architecture of sphinn actually) sites.
I can auto post to them.
The website in question is about gardening tips.
My script logs into pligg sites, looks for any category with with the word "garden" in them, and posts to that.
What's the issue? It's relevant, interesting, and probably is exactly what I would do if I were doing it manually.
Or for that matter, let's say I don't do the category scan. Let's say I build a list of relevant ones, and put them into a script that posts the story.
Is there really any downside? That's called responsible application of automation.
It saves time and money.
SlightlyShady
Sorry to disagree, but I do so adamently.
Running a scrip to create links in posts on someone else's site is SPAM. Simple as that. It is not responsible or ethical. It is not at all interesting. It is possibly relevant, but I am skeptical. As for whether using automation to create links across the web will get you banned, I can only express my opinion. My opinion is that this qualifies as a SpamBot. These links shouldn't count and using a SpamBot can get you banned. (Paging Matt Cutts or Adam Lasnik)
Now, if you ran the script to create outbound links from your site to other sites with the topic gardening, that would be ethical, but I doubt you would allow a script to select all of the outbound links on a page.
Manually going to different sites, reading the posts and inserting links to your site along with a relevant comment is ethical, but it might be a violation of the TOS of the site. It certainly will cause the webmaster to quickly adopt a nofollow policy on links..
Now, as for the Brand issue, I believe there are a few marketers who disagree, but I say that building a Brand is essential. If you don't believe that, I can't change your mind.
Jonah
Note that I was saying this in reference to things like pligg sites(social news) and online directories, or even article submission sites.
Using a bot is not a problem. Once again, it's all implementation. Directories, social news(espeically niche); these were created with the purpose of linking to places. So intelligently applied(category macros), I see no ethical dilema. Implications come where you add in blogs/messageboards and the like. And I have my own methods for dealing with that while creating as little "blight" as possible(Note the blackhat on the avatar).
For the "banning" comment, I'm sorry, but no. Applied inteligently and into the proper categories/niches, it probably won't. Honestly, they're still crappy at busting NORMAL spam that doesn't fit within the niche. Why do you think Google has a manual spam reports? It's the same reason they have "no-follow"s. It's to make for things they are terrible at algorithmically solving. So short of a manual spam submission(which won't happen if you're intelligent about categories), you're clear.
For the last part, branding. Branding is important. Not so much to me(as someone who does primarily affiliate marketing work), but to owners of companies. But what I was stating is that "blight" and blackhat work(like cloaking) don't affect branding because the afverage user has no idea what blackhat is, or how to identify it. For them, a brand is whatever site they see over and over again. That's it.
Obviously we disagree, but I wish to stress I'm trying to be as respectful as possible while getting my points across. Just in case I didn't pull it off properly haha.
Well, I do agree that well implemented, subtle use of automation won't get you banned IMMEDIATELY, but if I also think that the affiliate manager needs to police their affiliates.
Again, this is Ten Commandments for White Hat Marketers. As for the Dark Side, it is always the temptation...