Are paid links bad for your pocket ? Google Adwords is!

There's been a lot of rubbish talked across the net in recent week by the followers of SEO forums and Google watchers about the negative value of paid links. This has come about due to the hypocrite denizens at Googly stating that paid links violate their quality guidelines.

Quality guidelines? What a joke! after all Google wouldn't exist today without the paid link model. Do they think that Adwords links are quality? Obviously not if you and me are not allowed to follow their example of earning from our websites.

To cap it all they think that the global definition of who should link to who and on what basis should be defined by them. They've even invented their own (rel="nofollow") tag that you , the web creator, are supposed to use to indicate to Google search bots that the link is paid. Yes Google, don't follow this link because I got paid for putting it up there, just like you did!

What a joke! Like all the millions of people out there with websites and no knowledge of googles 'best practices' are going to get deindexed because they're selling links to someone who emailed them asking to pay.

So just what is Google trying to say?

That paid links are bad? That paid links are poor quality? That you are not allowed to earn from your website and have a place in our index?

What a load of Bull from the world's largest purveyor of paid links - incidently we've never bought links off of Google and strongly advise you not to do the same.
PPC campaigns are the biggest rip-off ever invented (which Google didn't but was very quick to buy into), and a drain on most marketing department budgets around thne world, with very poor ROI except for the few that dominate big keywords with their buying power.

So should you buy links?

The straightforward answer to that is......

You don't have to. It is very easy to create links on many sites favoured by Google using content distribution held on third party platforms throughout the world of social media sites.

In other words create your own.....

Create you own mini networks and link these to one another. Link all your content on third party platforms to itself and your money site.

Many webmasters are using Google's nofollow tag to keep control on how Google passes PR, keeping all the link juice within their own mini black-hole sites (no outbound links), or to deindex non-money pages on their sites by pointing all the PR juice at the pages that people buy from.

Perfectly legitimate use of a stupid tag invented by Google that has done more harm than good in weedling out paid links.

At the end of the day trying to discount paid links is as stupid as having a ranking system based on links which can and always will be manipulated, and not on quality scores for individual pages which are not weighted by the number of links that an individual or group can create to a node.

Oh yeah Google didn't anyone tell you that Page Rank is DEAD - both as a concept and as the little green bar full of disinformation that Google puts out.

Remember the Internet is just a collection of content stepping stones with links between them. Without links there is no NET.

Should we really let Google decide the shape and syntax of the net?

Especially when virtually every page of top ten results that Google serves up, particularly in Financial Services, show sites that all indulge in massive link buying campaigns, whether its from Google or Yahoo or Digital point blogs or whoever!
Truth of the matter is, the no follow tag and Google Webmaster guidelines has just led to an explosion of interest in SEO from newbies trying to out rank each other.

The big boys and Google have it all sewn up for the money keywords - now that's equitable and quality - NOT!

Get Real Google and focus on valuable CONTENT!

Follow The System - create links and buy links from relevant sites including directories. Relevancy is the only measure that will count in the long term!

SEO for Universal Search - Korean War?

We've talked about convergence of platforms and personalisation before but here's a quick recap

"Google is clever and has seen the future, and just like all the major TV networks, media corporations, phone companies, cable companies, broadband suppliers, phone makers, flat screen manufacturers, personal data devices, GPS and of course Microsoft all know that one thing is coming....

CONVERGENCE

Convergence means that you'll have your own personal preferred desktop displaying universal search items for your personality (determined by your search patterns, your buying patterns your social networking and your bookmarking or approving of STUFF), and you'll carry it or have access to it everywhere in the world with you, using any or all of those devices mentioned above and many many more!"

We've just stumbled across a very interesting film of Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaking a while ago in Korea.

Korea is one of the most technologically converged nations and is a testing ground for future Google multi level platforms.

What struck us was the message that nobody will own their personal data but it will all be hosted remotely in this 'amazing cloud' of information services, that will decide for you what you want to see and hear... and of course... Google will provide all this wonderful stuff for you... because it knows what time you visited the bathroom yesterday...and of course Schmidt Knows that the majority of the sheep around the world will buy into the Big Brother scenario.

There's a lot of interesting stuff in the 26 minute talk regarding using and exploiting social networks, which are a major Google testbed in Korea.

We checked out Schmidts background on Wikipedia and the interesting thing is that he has major background knowledge of distributed systems i.e. client server applications and now he's espousing the ultimate model of thin client with Google at the helm.

One strange commment which needs some thought and analysis is the fact that Schmidt sees all content as advertising - this is a lesson for all marketteers new and old.

Watch Eric Schmidt and listen carefully to get a top down view of the structures your marketing effort MUST include:-

Google: No Brand No Ranky - For Now

The 'Buzz' on the SEO wires at the moment is sudden awareness by many so called Guru's that Brand is the all important factor in securing a top rank spot. A lot of so called 'thin affiliates' are running scared because their spammy content free sites are targetted for extinction.

They have been for a while actually!

Where have they been?

If like us you follow the ups and downs for the most important keywords in your chosen sector, in our case financial services and insurance, you couldn't have failed to notice that the strong offline brands were floating to the top for all the most competitive keywords.
For the last two years SEO without a strong brand has proved to be pretty ineffective for the top keywords while retaining good results for the long tail keywords.
A large percentage of the conversion is in the long tail so the emergence of brand as the most dominant factor in obtaining high page rank for key words such as car insurance, has left the back door open for the more niche and long tail seo merchants.

So is it still possible to compete with the massive brands and get top rankings for holy grails such as 'car insurance'

We believe it is POSSIBLE and if anything it will probably become easier for a lot of good Seoers once they understand the forces in play that allow you to attack keywords with modern google loving links, create buzz, brand enhancement and authority building - as opposed to those methods that have led to the old established brands floating to the top.

There is the one caveat of - you do need resources that cost, but the payback is tenfold!

You have many advantages and yes - the Internet has never been a level playing field!

Megaliths are slow to respond like dinosaurs, there is usually nobody at the helm, the marketing department doesn't talk to or communicate ideas to the IT department enough.

You need to take advantage of their inability, unwillingless, inertia or large scale arrrogance that stops them being leaders in 'creating buzz' and being market drivers.

In the time it takes you to write say ten articles for blogs, article distribution, squidoo lenses , etc, hypermoneycomparer.com will have to have meetings upon meetings to implement some small change - move swiftly to exploit this weakness and keep abreast and ahead in creating social media buzz and links from the most Gooogly loved places.

These megaliths don't usually know how to create buzz or conciuosly even try to using social media, although many of them have always engaged in dubious SEO practices, they are often so big it that when they commit misdemenours, it usually doesn't hurt them. (There are a couple of famous cases of where companies such as BMW and GoCompare got penalised - it made Googly rethink its algo)

This is what you are up against:

Megaliths will create buzz naturally through their size and established affiliate programs and link network.

These brands are often household names through their TV advertising.

These brands are good generic domain names, for example

Money Supermarket - Noun / Noun
Compare the Market - Verb / Noun
Go Compare - Verb / Verb

Which combination do you think has been the most successful?

Steps to take to compete on the old terms:
Here's how not to do it :

Buy links especially from as many blogs as you can - most of your hypermoneycomparer.com sites do this consistently!

Create a large affiliate program promtoting brand

Spend lots of money on Google Adwords

Alternatively stay lean and mean and ahead of the game - follow the advice in The System and it is possible to establish yourself as a leading brand in a very short period of time.

Remember these brands were small once, I personally know a lot of the guys that founded these monsters - every one of them was built on Brand promotion - concentrating on the old skool offline way and it has worked!

At no time were any of them leaders or possessed any particular special quality in the deliverance of financial and insurance comparison products - many of them were just plagarism well executed or not - but they all managed to deliver the brand message and like in the real world - thats the only thing that wins out big time in the end!

Apparently Google now reflects This

Does Adwords spend play are role? - Yes in exposure and brand deliverence to a large audience whether they click or not.

Some of these megalith brands now spend millions every week in Adwords.
It now appears that whatever misdemenours they may commit on the SEO front, they tend not to get punished in the SERPS any more, mostly because of the power and size of their adwords spend and the relationships that are built up when account managers communicate with Google over hundreds of keywords across the board.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY and time trying to increase visibility using these PPC schemes. there are other more effective ways to spend your budget.

Brand does not equal quality. Just because its a big name it does not by definiton equal quality, unless quality is the thing it markets. Major brands can be attacked by specialised niche offerings with punch, that deliver exactly what is says on the label!