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Thread: Linking Gone Bad

  1. #1
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    Linking Gone Bad

    Seems like greed can make anything go evil. For years, I have used "Linkreferral" to help promote my site and it was a good start. Of course I had to review some lots of other sites but as far as I know, it was all legal and above board. I got some fairly bad reviews until I truly learned to ignore them. Many of the reviews helped me improve my site and it received traffic from other sources also. Today, even after not visiting Linkreferral very often, my site rates among the top with them and I still get some traffic. Don't know if any of you have ever used them and if you feel differently about the site. I still get updates and today I received this one that caught my attention.

    How SEO Greed Can Ruin A Perfectly Good Linking Strategy

    This one is pertaining to Rap Genius

    Capture.JPG

    By now, you are likely aware of the Rap Genius “Tweet In Exchange For Anchor Text” link scheme, hencefore to be known as TieFating.

    Barry Schwartz reported last week on John Marbach’s exposé of the popular music site, Rap Genius, which had started an “affiliate” program in order to get links pointing to their website. After it was exposed, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, said, “we’re aware and looking into it.” The site was then officially penalized for link schemes.
    So we have a new word in the crazy world of cyber schemes: TieFating

    Good or bad, here is the response from Google:

    Google Has Officially Penalized Rap Genius For Link Schemes

    I won’t rehash the details here, as you can read the original story to learn more, but the thing that struck me most was that none of it had to play out the way it played out.

    What happened is a perfect example of a potentially useful linking technique being ruined by a poor — or perhaps greedy — choice of implementation requirements. It’s obvious to any mildly experienced link builder that Rap Genius was after improved search rank based on the anchor text they required bloggers use in the links they inserted into their blog posts. Code was provided for copy/pasting. Various song titles and artists and the word “lyrics” were included in the anchor text.

    It’s a open and shut case of bounty-based rank seeking by promising “massive traffic” via a tweet in exchange for a keyword rich anchor text link. On this, we should all agree. If you don’t agree, and you feel this type of linking strategy was not intended to manipulate Google, please feel free to explain why in the comments below.

    It Didn’t Have To Happen
    What’s so ironic about this situation (in addition to the not-aptly named Rap Genius), is that this could have been a very useful and powerful content promotion tactic had it just been implemented in a different way — and this goes not just for Rap Genius, but for any site.
    Read more...

    As the world of internet marketing grows, the gurus will always find more ways to scheme the public and the big guys like Google, Yahoo, FaceBook and many others. Seems they are always one step ahead and we have to catch up. There is a very fine line between legality and actual crime in cyberworld and we will see more crossing the lines in the future, IMO and every SEO will be looking for ways get by with crossing those lines.

    Rap Genius is now back in the good graces of Google but their traffic plummeted during the disgraced period.

    Rap Genius: 'We're Sorry For Being Such Morons'

    Nearly two weeks after essentially being banished from Google for gaming the search engine, brash rap lyrics website Rap Genius says that it's back in Google's good graces and that links to the website should return to Google's top pages shortly.

    In a mea culpa published on Saturday, the website's three co-founders wrote: "[W]e owe a big thanks to Google for being fair and transparent and allowing us back onto their results pages. We overstepped, and we deserved to get smacked.”

    "To Google and our fans: we’re sorry for being such morons," they wrote.

    Traffic to the site, which is almost entirely dependent on appearing on the first page of Google when people search for song lyrics, was decimated after a Google engineer discovered Rap Genius was encouraging bloggers to throw random links to Justin Bieber lyrics in their posts. Such links are meant to get Rap Genius to appear higher in Google's results, but asking other websites to insert links unrelated to the site's content is a big no-no for Google.

    To win over Google again, Rap Genius culled together a list of 177,781 webpages linking to the site and systemically asked domain owners to delete links that Google deemed unnatural. (All the technical details can be found here.) Co-founder Ilan Zechory told The Huffington Post by email that it should take a couple of days for Rap Genius to be fully reinstated.

    Rap Genius on Google ban: ‘We overstepped, and we deserved to get smacked’


    Was this enough to stop others from trying the same thing, using different tactics are maybe improved ones?? I doubt it. They are always looking for ANY way to get on the top lines of Google and many will find it whether it is legal or not. Will Google catch them or the other search engines??
    Don't get ripped off!! Stay informed!

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    Re: Linking Gone Bad

    Now here is a person you can always trust to keep you straight - NOT!! - my message today from Kent:

    Hi Scratchycat,

    Task:

    Submit your website to RSS feed directories.
    Getting your feed submitted will help the trust
    and authority of your site.

    Once your feed is accepted by a directory, every
    single post you make on your site will receive
    high PR auto backlinks and potential traffic.


    Freelancer:

    SEO_Alchemy
    fiverr.com/SEO_Alchemy

    For $5, he'll submit your RSS Feed to over 90 RSS
    websites and ping directories. Full report is provided!


    Software The Freelancers Use:

    SEnuke
    Magic Submitter
    Backlink Beast

    In the next email, you'll discover how to quickly check
    backlink reports (from freelancers) that contain
    THOUSANDS of urls.

    You'll never have to manually check for backlinks
    again....


    Kent Mauresmo
    Read2Learn.net
    Don't get ripped off!! Stay informed!

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