When Buying Links Will Put Down your SEO Efforts

This is the time that buying links will surely have a devastating effect for your business. The last Google update is all about this specific topic and you can even read it all over the web in most SEO blogs you can find out there. The good thing is if you are going to buy a link from a trusted high PR site, you better work out an agreement of some sort to avoid getting penalized by Google.

Some of the available schemes to avoid getting penalized by Google through taking back your website PR are:

• Removing the link to TLA and e-mail them that you will have another name for the affiliate link leading to their website.
• Remove common affiliate link keywords like "advertise here", "buy a link here", "advertise on this site" and other related old affiliate linking keywords. Make something new out of your semantics as what you have learned in SEO and optimizing for the search engines.
• Be extra careful in labeling your links like sponsored listings etc. etc.
• Install the new plug-in that TLA has announced will be used to avoid getting penalized by Google.
• Remove all websites linking to you that have TLA on them. Of course you can try and send them an honest e-mail and tell them about everything.

These are just a few of the measures that you may want to imply on your website in order to get back your PR or at least to maintain the importance of your website in the eyes of the search engines.

Staying with TLA and Maintaining your Google PR

Linking and Rule of Thumb

It has always been a rule of thumb that links should always be treated as one of the holy grails of SEO and yet many of us continue to disobey this very basic rule. I cannot remember anymore how many times have I been subjected to seeing links get traded or sold by owners of sites who don't seem to bother about the negative effects that it could put up and generate in terms of link building campaign and popularity.

The TLA Syndrome and SE Responsibility

Although at this point in time, the latest Google update made many internet business faces and SEOs frown to an extent that they look like someone you cannot approach with the face of a tiger ready to eat you in whole, still, the disobedience continues. Remember that there is no turning back when this kind of devastating effect happens to you and your website.

The point here is, even if you or me can still do something , about this latest pin down by Google on the PR of sites that sell links. Even if one of the most prominent among the most prestigious is TLA, there is no doubt that there are other ways of selling links and getting the advantage over the others with the use of PR. Pr by the way is the most highly regarded in the selling links business and this is the root of Google's newest algo regarding the latest update that happened.

Even if there were literally billions of money lost in this link selling industry, Google doesn't seem to care. They still managed to let the world see that selling links is not the way they want things to be in terms of SEO advantage. This means that this will be put in the history of both the internet marketing and the SEO arena as one of the major setbacks that rocked the whole internet industry this year.

This also further proves that Google has the power to do what it wants us to do and by this virtue, we all then should abide by the rules. I can really see nothing wrong with this but and I am actually looking forward to seeing things go back to its rightful stats when the smoke is out.

After all there is nothing wrong with making us realize that we cannot always do what we want to do and this is because the search engines are here to let us know about it and that Google is just the instrument on letting us know that we are not in the right tracks.

John Chow Sees it This Way

Retaining your green bar can now be done even if you sell links according to the great JohnChow. This is by virtue of understanding what Google wants us to understand "no-irrelevant linking" and "improper use of links" to gain advantage over others. (my own opinion)
Relevant Links and Maintaining PR

This is actually a tip coming from John Chow and allow me to give my point of view based on my own opinion about this important matter regarding link selling and maintaining PR. One thing you can do to maintain PR while selling links and not feeling the devastating effect of the Google PR update on the next season is to make your links as relevant as possible.

Removing your Link to TLA

Removing your link to TLA could work for you as many webmasters who are earning from selling links made this same important move after they felt the might of the latest Google update. By removing your link to TLA, you can be sure that Google will not see you as one of the culprits of propagating the wrong distribution of links through link selling.

The reason for this is because Google knows that TLA is the biggest common factor in the link selling industry and scheme, so chances are, if you remove your link to TLA ( which is what many webmasters did) . A good substitute could be the "redirect method" or the "nofollow attribute" use according to John Chow.

Labeling the Links that You Have

Search engines have a way of knowing that you have links that they see as part of selling links scheme when you label your links. By leaving your links unlabeled, you can avoid this particular disaster. What I am talking about is the common way of labeling links like sponsored listings etc.

The New TLA Plugin

In case you do not know it yet, TLA has a newly released plug-in that you can use to possibly help you or maybe at most avoid this same fate on the penalty imposed by Google on people who are up to selling links in exchange for money. This hopes to cure your worries and doubts regarding selling links.

So if you are still using the old TLA plug-in, you better go and get yourself the new upgrade of TLA. Tip: "If you want to see who among your partners and neighbors are running TLA, do a search for function TLA ads".

Social Bookmarkings, SERPs Domination and Content Issues

Social Bookmarkings and SEO in the Philippines

Social Bookmarking sites, who uses this for marketing efforts these days? Well, they're today's most popular way of getting to the top of the SERPs without even a link to your webpage. Webmasters resort to social bookmarkings and see this as some sort of addiction by virtue of self proclamation, integrity in the SERPs and egoistic preferences aside from the SEO advantages and effects of maximizing their use. Proof that indeed, webmasters from the Philippines and in many other parts of the world love seeing their websites on top even if it's not a direct link to theirs.

What could these social bookmarking sites really do? This post is a study of the common behavior of the paradise Philippines webmasters to open up an opinion on the trends with link building and search engine marketing (SEM) and (SEO) search engine optimization.

Some would even call it a marketing effort as the traffic will boost you up as you see your webpage appear at the top of the queries in the results pages of the big three search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN like magic.


SEO Philippines Webmasters and Social Bookmarkings

To some here in SEO Philippines, social bookmarking sites are a kind of tool to employ in order to gain advantages over competing pages for the top of the search terms of a target niche. There were naturally organic effects of these social bookmarking sites to rank high in the SERPs even if it's not really the actual link to your webpage.

The most enjoyable part here is that these social bookmarking sites have a way to gain the top stop even in the most competitive keywords you can think of. There is My Bloglog, Bumpzee, Digg and the newest in the family of social bookmarking sites - StumbleUpon. They dominate the search results, displaying even the oddest results on top over the more optimized pages and even the original ones with optimized keywords.

So what's the catch here? Simple, the search engines see these social bookmarking sites as a top priority in ranking pages and therefore, you must be careful to use this as it will not help at all in your efforts to make it to the top of the SERPs for a time if you use this tactic.

Social Bookmarking Theories

There were actually many theories and experiences that lead to thinking that these social bookmarking sites indeed help in a webmaster's search for gaining the top spot of his keyphrases in no time at all. This is actually a wrong impression about these social bookmarking sites as all they can do for you is to introduce your webpage or website in the world of the search engines and the users who are searching for the terms that you are targeting.

Try clicking the links that the search engines are seeing everytime and indexing on the top pages for a search term and you will see that it is not actually your webpage that ranks high but instead it is the webpage where your webpage is in which is the page of the social bookmarking site itself.

So, overall assessment will tell that even if you are on top of the SERPs, you don't have any guarantee that your site will be visited by the people who are searching for the terms that you are targeting. Instead, it is actually the social bookmarking site itself that has all the advantages and the benefits in terms of SEO while you get the Illusion of being on top of the queries and the index results of the search engines.

Illusion over Reality in SEO Terms for Social Bookmarking Sites

In SEO terms, regarding the use of these social bookmarking sites, they really do not give so much advantage as what webmasters really see in many tips and suggestions in forums and SEO blogs and SEO tips. Instead, what they give us is the impression that we can only have what we want through make believe that we are on top over others while the truth is that we are nowhere and will always remain nowhere as long as we are under the umbrella of these social book marking sites.

Let us all realize the terms and then analyze the effects of giving social bookmarking sites the priority that they don't even deserve for what they offer.

Link building is not a circus of make believe, it is a concrete art of giving yourself a concrete link and end up in the end of real and organic advantage of getting on top of the search. More so, SEO nor SEM is no arena for temporary illusions but should always be based on an organized way of building up links and getting to the top in reality.

This is actually the very same reason why I don't go much for these social bookmarking sites. I don't see them helping me technically in the long run and i any other way I try to see it but I believe that they give us happiness in terms of blogging and wanting people to get a glimpse of our minds and our own unique interests in life.

I do not hate social bookmarking sites, I just don't prefer them being labeled as one of the tactics to use in gaining page importance or ranking in the SERPs or in any other way related to SEO or SEM. I see them as a simple way of getting your website introduced to the searching public by way of natural organic characteristics of these social bookmarking sites to rank with a term or keyword.

Technically, I would not give nor suggest the use of it in terms of gaining rankings with the use of SEO for a webpage.

IPs and Immunity Issue Affects SEO Efforts to Build Links

IP Addresses and SEO

From a forum at V7N today I read about a specific question in a thread relating to IPs and how they may affect the SEO efforts of SEO webmasters. Since SEO here in the Philippines is in its booming stage, I would like to personally, even if I am not the authority to discuss about IP and how they can affect the SEO efforts that webmasters use in link building, particularly.
IP Address and Forums

IPs as we all know are the first consideration in almost all forums since the issue of spamming had gone up from the brink of just a few guys who use it in the early days of SEO and gaining advantage over competing websites with respect to search engine results pages or the organic result of a search.

Forum Accounts and Getting your IP Banned

In forums alone, if you are using the same IP address even if you have registered different accounts and are actually two or more different persons, you will instantly get banned for some period on the first offense and totally on the second attempt. The reason for this implementation is because these forums are trying to avoid getting spammed again and again. Even if spamming is actually a minor case of black hat SEO, still, this will not help any efforts to make the forum threads as healthy as they should be for the benefit of the regular members, users and the visiting readers. This specific occurrence triggered the moderators and owners of forums to avoid multiple registration using the same IP address.

IP-Based Account Registration is Effective in Running out Spam

Also, to avoid decreasing the search engine trust, the forum moderators found their way to make some changes wherein they base the accounts of a person who registers therein using their IP address and if that same person or another person tries to use the same IP address to register another different account on the same forum, then he gets banned with the person who registered originally as first and prior to the second one and so on.

How Google Sees Your IP with Respect to Spamming

So far, this is how it works for the IP issue of getting banned in forums and as a minor basis for Google trying to limit building up links that come from the same IP Address. This also led Google to become immune from indexing the same IP site links and therefore, it will be most likely that even if you have a million links going to your website but came from the same IP address, it will only be deemed useless or at most trigger the immunity of Google for indexing your website's links and at maximum, could even get you banned in their results pages for spamming their index and manipulating the search results.

Google Paying Tribute to the Great Tenor in Pavarotti

I saw yesterday how Google made tribute to the late Luciano Pavarotti by giving him a place in their Google search logo putting beside the popular icon the image of Luciano Pavarotti. This was yesterday while I was searching for my regular keywords when I found out that Google is putting some emphasis and respect to the late great tenor of the world of opera singing.

Pavarotti died at 71 with so many honors beside his name and Google does not want any larger than giving their logo a touch of the great tenor with his image beside the tycoon among the three search engines. This made them loose a little of their time using the short slot to put some nice recognition to the best in the tenor signing community in the world and the name is Luciano Pavarotti.

I admit that even in the world of SEO and SEM or search engine marketing, Luciano Pavarotti is a great icon as well as Google itself and they indeed succeeded in making themselves humble the achievements of the great tenor with a little image appearing in the Google search logo.