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Thursday Thoughts #1 – Backlink Solutions
NOTE: If you’ve arrived here due to an Aweber email that was sent to you today, I sincererly apologize. That email went out in error, and sent you to a blog post that, ironically, is now *very* much outdated.
Once again, I’m so sorry for the error on my part! There’s new stuff coming to the blog soon.
-Mike
(Welcome to the inaugural edition of Thursday Thoughts. This feature, published every Thursday (really?) will include current topics of the online world and how they relate to passive niche building, or any other random thoughts from the internet marketing sphere that might be too short for a full post of their own. I hope you enjoy!)
On Tuesday, March 20, 2012, Build My Rank (BMR) announced that Google had de-indexed their entire blog network.
For those of you who don’t know, over the past couple of years BMR had become the “go to” source for backlink building of all kinds of websites (predominantly content-based sites).
First off, major kudos to them for immediately coming clean with their users, speaking to the issue, and giving pro-rated refunds. It’s incredibly difficult to lose your business overnight.
But make no mistake, their business was born to implode at some point. They were a victim of their own success.
Combine this with Google’s announcement that they will soon be going after sites that they deem to be “overly SEO optimized”, and you might wonder what’s the point of building passive niche sites any longer?
Consider this:
Quality NEVER goes out of style. Yes, technology isn’t perfect. Yes, sometimes big changes mean that good people are accidentally and unfairly caught up in the changes.
It doesn’t change the fact that it’s hard to lose the end game overall if you are putting a quality product out there for all to see.
Part of the reason that blog networks like BMR have been so popular for so long, is because search engines are still too rudimentary to truly and consistently determine quality sites from garbage sites, which forces the quality sites to play in arenas that are ill-suited to them in order to compete for attention.
These arenas include backlinking in various ways that are….how should I say it…less than ideal. 
While a number of people are in various stages of depression/denial about this latest round of changes, I’m more excited than ever about the prospect of building successful passive niche income sites.
Why?
Because the latest round of changes (once everything settles down) should mean that your niche sites will be better able to compete based purely on the quality of the information provided…
…as opposed to resorting to tactics Google dislikes so you can compete with poorly written websites currently outranking you with loads of complex backlinking schemes.
It isn’t Utopian (yet). You will still have to use backlinking programs to compete (for now). But our lives will get a bit easier in the months ahead. We should be able to use more methods to backlink our sites that are truer to real life situations than we’ve been able to in the past.
Backlinking techniques like blog networks are not dead. They’re just being driven deeper underground. But ultimately, people who focus intently on quality just had their lives made a bit easier in the months and years ahead.
What do you think? Do you agree? Do you think I’m off my rocker?
Let me know in the comments below.
Category: Marketing
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SteveWyman
Hi
Nope your not off your rocker. The principles are sound. But its a bit like asking people to not speed. Unless theres a system that can effectively stop it then it will happen. Its human nature.
Indeed the fact that we always strive to achieve more faster and easier is what has driven the human race up the food chain (ok we’ve done a huge amount of damage in the process but you get the point, I hope).
I would love to create a website with 50 pages of content that are superb and have the site rank at the top of google and make me a living. Outside of low competiton niche areas that simply doesnot happen.
I’d like Matt Cutts (who read this blog
no doubt) to show me 10 sites that have nevr had any manipulation interms of direct linking OR the use of incetives to create soical links etc that rank in the top 10 for competative terms.
However Im not suggesting the tide is not turning IT is. The future has to be a move away from black or dark grey techniques such as direct paying for acess to blog networks or high pr etc. Towards a way of creating great sites with resources AND creating an enviroment where Google CANNOT penalise us for the links that we have encouraged.
regards
SteveWyman
Sorry meant to include this links
http://searchengineland.com/too-much-seo-google%E2%80%99s-working-on-an-%E2%80%9Cover-optimization%E2%80%9D-penalty-for-that-115627
worth listening to .
nick
Great post Mike-I certainly hope this is the case. I just don’t like the idea the game goes to the person who knows how to game the system rather than the person making a great site.
Here’s to top rate content.
Nick
neale
I have always thought, google would get around to dealing with link networks when it had finished with larger problems. I’ts only a question of time before the playing field is truly leveled. Which will in the long run make it easier for those of us in it for the long haul. Several sites had recently overtook mine in the serps all were thin, new and had a lot of back links… a few months on my sites are back at #1 with no work on my part “because the others have lost weight” Quick fixes are getting harder and harder to find.
neale recently posted..February 2012 Earnings Report
Mike
You’re absolutely right Neale.
In fact, I’ve been thinking very deeply about this for the past few days. More and more, I’m finding that I want to mostly stop playing the backlink games, and just build big, beautiful sites full of amazing content that people will want to link to naturally. I love niche sites – that will never change, but maybe it’s time to consider building niche sites that are a little bigger, and maybe not build quite so many.
I have some ideas in the incubator. If they come to fruition, you may see some changes/evolutions here late next week.
Gary
Mike,
I’ve played with “all the tricks”… building sites with a push button, rss feeds, outsourcing content, article marketing, blog networks…. on and on.
All have come and gone… the ONE CONSTANT is quality content. It is always in style. How you define “quality” and the SE’s define “quality” not be the same. But truly, that does not matter.
We’ve been “taught” that a nice 500-600 word article is the sweet spot. From what I’ve found the best length is whatever it takes to fully cover the subject. That includes text, images, video.
Now, I write or cover keyword “topics” and “themes”… not focused on 1 or 2 keywords. The quantity of “search terms” a “quality” page is found on is pretty amazing.
I not longer spend any time on backlinks, the game changes too much… I publish that game has stayed the same!
Just for giggles I looked up, a “thorough” article of mine – about 2200 words. I know… that’s way too long for many clicks.
The page attracted 37,000 plus direct search visitors over the past 12 months, from 2097 keywords and made 4 figures.
Not all pages will fair that well. One of the things we have a tendency to forget is that pages need to “mature.”
When I publish an article I pay no attention to it for probably 6-8 months.
My approach is a little different. I tried the “300″ domain game. Why not publish in the NICHE of your choice just make sure your niche is large enough.
Then, instead of a site that makes $3 per day write more content that makes the $3 per day.
Agreed you may need to build 10 sites to find the NICHE but after that FOCUS.
Also… expand your thoughts on the topic.
Subscribe to every RSS feed in your market and be the GO TO person for info.
That should give plenty of ideas to write about.
Time to shut up!
Gary
nick
Nice comment Gary. I was reading about something similar a while ago. Rather than the approach of being found for ‘my’ keyword, you don’t have one keyword. Creating a great piece of content means that you will automatically be found for several different terms over time, and sometimes many different terms (as in the example you gave).
Even with very limited experience, this seems to be the case. I wrote a couple of posts for one of my sites and they are getting picked up for quite a few different terms, non of which I was particularly looking for.
To me, this encourages me to create more content in this niche which isn’t keyword targeted and see what happens.
Looks like finding that balance between creating good content and encouraging/making it easy for people to share it is the way forward. now finding exactly how much gentle persuasion is enough without getting into google’s bad books is another thing altogether….
Nick