The Google Body Slam
by Warren
(NY)
If you haven't been building quality sites then you could end up with your site slammed and your ranking affected.
Now not all junk sites have been affected but a lot have. I’ve noticed a few in my niche that are still hanging in there. The real question becomes though, is this something that you would want hanging over your head all the time?
What is it that you can do to protect yourself and your site? Getting Google slammed is painful. It is felt in your pockets.
Google’s latest changes (although no one knows for sure) are thought to have focused on a couple of things. 1. Duplicate content and 2. Backlinks.
Your Content
It has never been a secret; search engines have always voiced the fact that they want to show quality content. Copying content from other sites, throwing it up and ranking worked in the past but just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Now if you have built one of these duplicate content sites you may be wondering what does it all mean for you. As I mentioned earlier, not all sites have been affected at this point in time however when they do catch up (when not if) it will simply mean losing rank and authority. Not the end of the word but it will definitely hurt.
The only thing that really concerns me; what if your original content has been used by someone else? A paragraph here a paragraph there all strung together on someone else’s site. I would hope that this does not adversely affect your ranking but you never know. We know that the Google’s algorithm is good but is it that good?
Content Spinning
Most of us, at some point or another, have used spun content. What does the new change mean for us? In my mind the real question is, to what degree have you spun this content. Was it 10%, 20%, 90%? The lower the level of spinning, obviously the more you are at risk.
It is not that hard to reverse engineer spinning. Supposedly this has been incorporated into Google’s algorithm. Even if it hasn’t yet, it can’t be too far off.
How to avoid this whole mess? Write original content.
Backlinks
The other item that I’d like to mention briefly is banklinks. Supposedly, Google’s algorithm is now also focusing once again on backlinks. Yes I know, you have probably heard this before but there is a twist. The focus now is on social media related backlinks.
Think about it, what better way to judge a sites popularity and usefulness than from a social media standpoint. If you are not using Twitter, Facebook or some sort of bookmarking software, now is the time. I provide a few good recommendation for social media tools on my Set Up a Blog page.
Now don’t go out and start bookmarking/spamming every social media site out there. You can start building links but do it naturally over time. In addition, it is important for your links to come from different users, i.e…have different anchor txt, different tags, and come from different IP addresses. A bunch of links from the same IP address and the same user becomes obvious.
Remember, nothing wrong with working hard, just work smart also!!!
