Penguin Update - Don't build any backlinks now

Google Penguin Update came out few days ago. I am a member of few IM forums, and still now people's websites are dropping from the SERPs. And I am talking about whitehat websites, which survived the Panda update. The only common factor seems they all engaged in some whitehat link building like article marketing, book marking etc. Until it becomes clear what is triggering the Penguin penalty, I think it will be better for us here at Wizzley to stop building backlinks to our articles for the time being.

Though Wizzley has not been hit, I hope the Wizzley Team is keeping an eye on the issue. May be they will be able to tell a safe way of building backlinks to our articles, if it's necessary.

I am sorry, but while you are right about the cause, your conclusion is completely wrong.  Backlinks are still important to link related material together.  Backlinks show Google that other sites support yours, and not creating them is not a good idea.  Instead, you should be linking related content together, within a site, and from site to site.

lakeerieartists: 01. May 2012, 10:56

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I am sorry, but while you are right about the cause, your conclusion is completely wrong.  Backlinks are still important to link related material together.  Backlinks show Google that other sites support yours, and not creating them is not a good idea.  Instead, you should be linking related content together, within a site, and from site to site.

Thanks for your reply, am open to suggestions. I also believe we should interlink related articles within Wizzley, but am concerned about external backlinks. Do you think book marking is still a good idea? Google can detect genuine book marks and "fake bookmarks". And for linking related articles from other sites, are you recommending using other revenue sharing sites like squidoo, infobarrel etc? Because I think article directory links do more harm than good these days.

I am talking about linking together related content.  So if you write an article on Wizzley, and an article or blog post or anything somewhere else and they are related, link them together.  That is a related link.

I do not believe that meaningless bookmarks, and articles generated just for backlinks are worth your time anymore unless the articles have substance and value on their own.

Interlinking related content and promoting your articles through social bookmarking should still be okay.

As to other backlinks, Google has always been very clear on that issue:

Write unique, useful, shareable content that other people (voluntarily) want to link back to. Those links build authority.

Actually, I think article marketing has never been all that "white hat" in the eyes of Google, because it's you----not your audience---who links back to your sites.

lakeerieartists: 01. May 2012, 10:56

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I am sorry, but while you are right about the cause, your conclusion is completely wrong.  Backlinks are still important to link related material together.  Backlinks show Google that other sites support yours, and not creating them is not a good idea.  Instead, you should be linking related content together, within a site, and from site to site.

Paula, you are confusing internal linking like in linking your related Wizzley articles together with back link building aka building artificial links to your content from another site aka outside of Wizzley! The first one is good, the second one is a big NO-NO since time!

Kushal is right 100% DON'T BUILD ARTIFICIAL BACK LINKS NOR USE WIZZLEY TO DO SO Google is big time on the war path about this and the carnage reported on the IM forums / groups I am a member of is major. I haven't build a back link since one year, actually closer to two years, and my sites and income are doing just fine. This can't be said of those people that did do back link building and are reporting loss of traffic / rankings / income all over the internet ...

brl: 01. May 2012, 16:32

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And on my Wizzography I list all my Wizzles.  Bad?  The only common thing the articles have is the author.

 

I can only comment on that, this is called internal linking (inside one domain) which is fine ;-)

No Sam, I am NOT confusing external and internal linking.  What I said was that it is okay to link related content together within a site (internal linking) and between sites (external linking) if the content was valuable, worthwhile, good content. 

Therefore, if I have a blog, and a Squidoo article, and a Wizzley article that are all on gardening tomatoes that are different and add value to each other, I should link them together.  I am not talking about artificial backlinks just for backlinking sake.  That is what Google is getting rid of.

My personal opinion is that bookmarking is a waste of time, but if you are actually bookmarking to save the bookmarks, go ahead.  If you are doing it to create backlinks to your pages, don't bother.

brl: 01. May 2012, 16:32

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What about sites like Pinterest?  I have a board there for all of my articles here and pin them as soon as I publish them.  Should I take them down?

There's a site similar to Pinterest called Springpad I've been experimenting with too.

It doesn't seem like either of them are bringing me noticable traffic so I wouldn't mind taking them down at all if it would help in the eyes of Google.

And on my Wizzography I list all my Wizzles.  Bad?  The only common thing the articles have is the author.

brl, for sites like Pinterest, Facebook. Google+, which are interactive social media sites, the best way is to not overdo it.  Put up an article related to a current discussion or one every once in a while, but don't put up every article all the time.  That is spamming the site, and not only will Google frown on it, but so will all of your friends who you are spamming.  I would not necessarily take down what you have, just change your practices going forward.  These types of sites are multipurpose because people use them to share with their friends, etc, and your backlinks there get mixed in with all of those type of links.   However, Google is not going to downgrade Facebook or Pinterest right now, they are too big.

As to your own Wizzography, list some of your articles, and let people find the rest through your profile.  Again, not necessary to change what you have, just don't need to continue listing all of them going forward.

May I suggest the following;

Don't get too concerned or wrapped up with what Google does in terms of Panda, Penguin, Spamkill, OMG, or any other 'name' they apply to an algo update. They will be updating every day, every week, every month, all the time.

We have seen the outcome of stressing too much about this on another site.

My suggestion is continue what you are currently doing and don't go guessing (guessing as in if I stop using articles to link and start exclusively linking through bookmark sites as an example) , if you start making wild changes to your pattern, you will end up stressed and doing the wrong thing.

The best track to follow is to work towards YOUR goals and outcomes, not Google algo changes.

Actually I think backlinks may be even more effective, at least in the short term, than they ever were. You can also blast your competitor out of the SERPS but getting him spammy backlinks. Its a frankly, far too interesting time to be in the MMO game at the moment. 

@Kangaroo - kinda guessing that you have another form of income? This is a big a deal as I've seen in 5 years online. There are people who are going to go bankrupt over this, with all the consequences of that, its probably not far-feached to say that Penguin will see people dead. 

Wild changes are just what a lot of people are doing - pretty much they are going black hat or going home. I haven't decided yet, and my morales wouldn't let me do the negative SEO thing,  I'm certainly breaking other parts of the Google TOS just to make some money this month though. 

Many of us have built businesses using free traffic from Google, that game now seems to have permanently changed. Whether any of us have the skills to do something else in the same space remains to be seen. 

And its not just MMO spammers, plenty of decent sites have been caught up in it, plus many real-world businesses. This is Google declaring war on anyone who is not a big brand paying them lots of money for advertising. That's been the case for a while now, but this has really stepped it up a notch. 

@Lissie,

Yes I have other income streams. The original Panda update showed me that one needs to diversify and do so quickly. It also showed me that if one is reliant on the whims of Google updates, I could see a situation where I am totally ruined in a single day and may NEVER recover. I am not sticking to just hedging my bets on that and haven't since February last year. It is too risky and I don't want all my years of work down the drain in one hit/update.

My work across all the content creation sites I use slowed dramatically so I would be able to concentrate setting up my other projects. Projects that Google may or may not have an effect, but nowhere near an impact that would say affect my Wizzley articles.

Other aspects of online work have affected me dramatically though and one of those is social networking. I only use Facebook for close friends/family. I don't use Twitter, Google+, Pinterest or any bookmarking site either. I haven't spent the time looking at how that aspect can give me the traffic that clicks on ads or buys Amazon products from me as yet. Its a conundrum to me and I havent the foggiest what to do with that.

In terms of algo updates, don't get me wrong, I understand these are critical and very important and their long term ramifications for us are potentially huge. They can have a short term negative effect that's dramatic, but over the next few months, I am taking a slow careful approach. If I make a dramatic change, that has still potential to stuff it all up in the short term and ruin me in the long term (in terms of content creation, my own sites and article submissions).

To me the basics haven't changed - Quality information, quality backlinks, thorough and careful consideration of keywords.

Google loves 'P' animals

@Keem - I agree that article marketing hasn't really been white hat, and that, for example, if you publish ezinearticles (I'd actually suggest using a friend publishing these on their account not your own account) content that is really good, useful, potent copy, that this is ok (so long as it stands on it's own and is good content and doesn't duplicate/rewrite what your linking to but rather enhance- add value to your wizzle) that this is good practice.

Technically it is still not white hat because it's not a voluntary link but with precautions it's good back-link building (and not too many pointing to your page either, they are watching for speed of link building i.e. if they were all on different sites at the same time published and pointing links that looks bad!)...

@Sam interlinking your wizzles or even other peoples wizzles is not bad, Google sees this as internal (same site) linking which is actually good for research flow- they wouldn't penalize you for what I consider more like internal navigation linking if it's not done incorrectly (i.e. in moderation and HIGHLY relevant content linking together)... they do, however not like link exchanges i.e. from external sites or irrelevant links exchanged (irrelevant topics or like chef said, how I was linking to hubpages profiles with my previous (abandoned idea) comments migration...

@brl With Google on the warpath and not knowing exactly how they are viewing your own sites, even pintrest, links- I'd play it safe and pull them down. It would be better to just let people naturally pin your pages and hope for the best... as for linking to all your wizzles on your Wizography, that shouldn't be a problem, although I'd limit it to a few not all of them personally, as someone mentioned before, too many external links- even to wizzles, doesn't look good, and we all know the road to hell is paved with good intentions!

@lakeerieartists - I understood what you meant, I don't know how sam got that wrong :), I don't think that bookmarking is a waste of time, however, but it's all about moderation. Personally I'd rather have a friend bookmark one of my sites on say stumbleupon or Reddit, but I wouldn't use my own accounts or even my same IP (i.e. having Michelle do it from her account). I've seen some massive traffic hit from reddit and SU, it was actually where a lot of my millionaire "hub" back in the day got it's initial surge of traffic and that lead to more "natural" backlinking and other people bookmarking the page... but I suppose each of us have different experiences...

@Kangaroo_Jase - Amen brother, I have to agree for the most part... If you write good copy, drop a few good articles on other 2.0 sites and link to them (I use other people who want content who have great i.e. HP, SQ sites, as they love the free content (potent content too) and are more than happy to give you a back-link for it- safe than sorry I always say.

@Lissie - Although I agree with Kangaroo_Jase, I also agree with some of your statements- but personally won't worry about it- I'm just going to take this time to get my articles written and up- although you have a much more vested intrest in backlinks than I do so I can see your side and likely in your position would take simular steps, possibly :)

@ryank - You make good sense! The thing is people are simply impatient and doing things in ways that get them punked by the big G, for example building a wizzley article you should let it simmer a bit before doing ANYTHING in backlinks- let the people showing up do that leg work at first, it's more natural. If you want to put up an EZA article put it up but DON'T link it to anything right away. I like to put articles on EZA a bit like putting them up here (but no formatting needed), just do it and leave it alone, let it simmer, let them all simmer a bit, then go back later after a few months and link one to your wizzle, then another (different wizzle) later and so on... if you take your time you can do this so it looks more natural and Google won't trip...

Nice thread!

Jerrico

Everybody, don't take any notice of anyone else - nobody knows if Penguin has done what G wanted it to do. G has even given you the opportunity to tell them if they have done you wrong on this update. I'm pretty sure the fallout will cause some rethinking. But don't take my word for it.

Now for something else not to take notice of:

All links should be links to do one thing and one thing alone: to pass traffic through the link.

If a link does not pass traffic then it is worthless.

You and you alone can determine if a link has merit. Only you (and of course the omnipotent, omnipresent G [and other big search databases]) know if traffic arrives at the destination you intend.

IMHO the only criterion of any merit for a link is how much traffic flows through the conduit.

If it passes traffic then it is a good link. If none passes through then consider what to do with it. End of!

Whether links are 'Panda or Penguin' targets it matters not. 

Stop wasting your time (if you ever tried) creating links in profiles, social bookmark sites, etc etc unless you have found that they send traffic. Forget whether the anchor text is the same or different unless you find that different anchor text brings better traffic results. Forget everything else except when the result causes more traffic to flow to where you want it.

Forget about pleasing Google: please yourself with extra traffic from elsewhere.

It is much easier to think of places to cause extra traffic flow than it is to determine 'the best place to place backlinks' - forget about the word backlink - remove it from your vocabulary - just think link, and place them in appropriate places to cause both traffic flow and a better audience experience.

Less is more, as they say.

Lissie: 01. May 2012, 20:59

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You can also blast your competitor out of the SERPS but getting him spammy backlinks.

May I ask where the evidence is for this?

Jerrico wrote: "The thing is people are simply impatient and doing things in ways that get them punked by the big G, for example building a wizzley article you should let it simmer a bit before doing ANYTHING in backlinks- let the people showing up do that leg work at first, it's more natural."

Not true IMHO - building links to cause traffic to flow is natural and should be done whenever it is appropriate - never more appropriate than as soon as it is published. Do publishers let a book simmer for weeks before publicizing it - of course not!

Create links, as many as is possible, but create them with the mindset that you are using links to drive traffic. Never use them to create what is erroneously called a backlink. Putting links anywhere and everywhere, when they have no likelihood of causing traffic flow is the recipe for disaster. Once there is traffic flow is when additional natural links occur. It is then that the merits of the content are determined by the audience and socialed, linked to etc. 

There is a difference between legitimate promotion and blatant spamming - never spam (it's time consuming, a waste of time, and will come back to bite you in the bum!), but ALWAYS promote, and as soon as possible.

Jerrico wrote "@brl With Google on the warpath and not knowing exactly how they are viewing your own sites, even pintrest, links- I'd play it safe and pull them down."

@brl - only remove them if you find that you do not receive any traffic from them. Pinterest is a legitimate social media promotion tool. The only people that should take the advice Jerrico gives on this, are those that are using the service to spam their content.

humagaia: 03. May 2012, 08:51

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Lissie: 01. May 2012, 20:59

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You can also blast your competitor out of the SERPS but getting him spammy backlinks.

May I ask where the evidence is for this?

Have a look here http://www.seobook.com/negative-seo-outing