Many webmasters found their blogs had either moved up or moved down. Some found their blogs knocked off the Google entirely.

This week, Google has introduced yet another update: The Google Penguin update.

Have you noticed a significant change in your traffic over the last few days? If so, this may be Google Penguin at work.

If you’ve noticed a drop in traffic or want to inoculate your blog against potential harm, read this article carefully.

A Word on Google Updates

Google has always been vigilant about regularly updating their search algorithms to prevent spam and improve the quality of search listings. However, in recent years and months they seem to have definitely picked up the pace.

The changes recommended in this article come directly from Google. They’ll help you recover from this update; but will also go a long way towards protecting you from being impacted by future updates as well.

The #1 Thing to Look Out For

The Google Penguin update was designed specifically to attack linkbuilding techniques that Google perceives as spam. It’s designed to get behind various linking schemes and penalize the sites that are using them. Schemes that may be affected include:

• Three way linking schemes. The “I’ll link to you and your friend links to me” schemes now not only don’t work, but could actually harm your site.
• Multiple C-Class IP schemes. Trying to build a bunch of your own sites on multiple C-Class IP addresses has a high likelihood of getting you penalized with this recent update.
• Web 2.0 linking. If you’re creating a whole bunch of web 2.0 articles and using them to form a sort of a “web” of links to bump up your site, this is also easily detected now.
• Link wheeling. If you’re buying a bunch of low quality links, sending them to throwaway sites and using these intermediaries to link to your main site, hoping that the site in between the links helps “filter” the bad karma, you’re out of luck.
• Article marketing. In the Google Panda update, many webmasters who used article marketing suffered. In Google Penguin, article marketers are likely penalized even more.

What Else Google is Penalizing

Google has upped the ante on other techniques they’ve had an eye on for a while. These include keyword stuffing, cloaking, doorway pages and duplicate content.

Even if you’re not using blatantly blackhat tactics, there are still ways this new update can affect you. These include:

• Archive and category page duplicate content. If your category pages and your archive pages take “snippets” from your blog, Google will consider these pages made of duplicate content. Avoid getting penalized by making your archive and category pages “nofollow.”
• Too many ads. If Google sees that you’re ranking well or ranking quickly but have your ad stuffed full of ads, you may get penalized.
• Too many affiliate links. Avoid putting affiliate links on your site until you’ve built up a little bit of an audience and some authority in Google. Better yet, promote affiliate links through your email newsletter and don’t place them in your main site.
• Targeting irrelevant keywords. Avoid deviating too much from your main keyword. If you have a website about “fishing tips,” it’s fine to write about the weather for fishing, buying fishing gear and fishing techniques. However, you should probably avoid talking about boat repair. If you do talk about something that’s significantly off topic, just post the post without doing much backlink building for that page.
• Exact match anchor texts. Are all the anchor texts coming into your site exact match? In other words, if you’re trying to rank for “fishing tips,” do most of your anchor texts have the words “fishing tips” in them? If so, Google will pretty quickly figure out that those links were deliberately built rather than natural. Aim to have only about 40% of your anchor texts with the exact keyword in it, 40% with related keywords and 20% with something completely unrelated.

Key Takeaways from Google Penguin

There are a few things you should takeaway from this latest update.

First, avoid shady SEO services and tools. If you hop on the Warrior Forum and find someone who’ll buy you 20 .edu domains for $50, you should probably think twice.

Next, focus on content. Google is getting smarter and smarter about detecting deliberate linking techniques. Instead of focusing on rankings, focus on the end users. That’s how you get genuine links, great links and real rankings.

If You Got Hit, What Can You Do?

Matt Cutt’s anti-spam team has released a feedback form you can use to let Google know if you believe you’ve been unfairly hit. You can find this form here.

Realistically, your best chances of getting back into the Google game is to re-evaluate your current link building and content generation strategies. Fix any inadvertent mistakes you’re making and stop using any unnatural link building techniques that could raise Google’s red flags.

Your chances of getting back up in the rankings through Google’s spider liking you more is a whole lot higher than Matt Cutt’s team stepping in on your behalf.

Question for readers: Have you noticed a difference in your traffic? Did Penguin affect you?

- Derek

When used properly, Fiverr can help you generate a ton of backlinks to your site and help you boost your rankings very quickly.

If you’re not careful with Fiverr however, you can get burned. You could end up wasting time and money and even get your site penalized if you’re not careful.

What is Fiverr and how do you use it to build backlinks successfully?

How Fiverr Works

Fiverr is a website where online services are sold for $5. Everything on the site costs $5. Whether you’re hiring a writer for $5 or hiring someone to build backlinks for you, it all costs just $5.

On this site are a wide range of people offering backlink building services. Everything from .edu links to social media profile links to Reddit submissions and more. Of course, in order to succeed with Fiverr, you need to be very selective about which services you use.

The #1 Rule of Using Fiverr for Backlinks

The #1 rule for using Fiverr for backlinks is to never link to your primary site. By and large, Fiverr links are low rather than high quality. The idea is to pass link juice through intermediary pages, which then link to your main site.

For example, let’s say you have a website about “Fishing Equipment.”

You might build four different sites, on different domains: Fishing rods, fishing reels, fly fishing and bass fishing. Ideally you’ll even be on different servers.

Then you’d use Fiverr to build backlinks to each of these sites. Each of these sites will increase in PageRank, Link Juice and other factors. Your smaller sites will then link to your main site, as well as other sites on the internet (so you’re not just linking to your site.) You can make money with your smaller sites as well if they rank for lower traffic terms; though your main goal is to increase your main site’s rankings.

Use a Variety of Link Tactics

Fiverr sellers offer just about every kind of link building tactics in the world. Some sellers will offer to get you just one legitimate PR3 backlink for $5; while others will offer to build you 3,000 PR0 to PR1 backlinks from directory submissions and blog commenting. Some will do it through Reddit, others will do it through link wheels. Some will even get you .edu and .gov links.

Don’t just use one of these tactics. Instead, use a wide mix of them. There are several reasons for this.

First, different tactics work better for different sites. By mixing it up, you increase the likelihood that at least one of your mini sites will rank. Second, it diversifies your risk. If Google suddenly decides to go after social media profile links for example, only one of your mini sites will be affected.

Diversifying your links also makes it look more natural. No natural website gets 3,000 backlinks from just article directories. Instead, other websites get a wide range of different backlinks from different sources.

What Kind of Links to Focus On

Try to focus on sites that are related to what you’re doing and are not doing spammy links. There are people selling links on all kinds of different websites. Try to get backlinks from those that own websites in a similar niche to yours.

It’s often better to opt for paying $5 for just one moderate quality link, rather than for 1,000 junk links. Some sellers will even write a unique piece of content for you, insert your link in-context and post it on a moderate PR website.

Putting it All Together

Don’t expect results from doing just one backlink. Instead, expect to spend several hundred dollars on Fiverr building backlinks. If you’re spending $300 a month on Fiverr, that’s 60 orders a month. If you’re getting an average of 3 backlinks per order, you’re getting 180 links a month, 2,160 links a year. That kind of link volume can very quickly get you strong rankings, especially if you’re taking the time to pick out the higher quality link opportunities.

Any questions? I’ll be happy to answer in the comments. Also, what do you guys think of these advanced kinds of SEO topics? I usually try to talk about purely white hat tactics, but wanted to try giving you guys something a little different this week. Let me know what you think.

Cheers,

- Derek

photo credit: B Rosen

In 2011, the tectonic plates of the internet marketing landscape shifted.

The underlying fundamentals of many strategies, including SEO and social media have changed.

Marketing in 2012 is going to rely much more on customer connection than tactics.

Of course, having strong strategies is important. It’s just that many of the strategies and tactics that marketers have come to rely on no longer work.

Here are 5 such tactics. At one point in time, these tactics were cutting edge. Today, they’re completely outdated.

Avoid: Screaming Salesletters

In the early days of internet direct marketing, the mentality of online salesletters were an extension of the mentality of direct mail.

Big red headlines. Screaming benefits. Big, bold benefit statements.

The main goal was to catch a stranger’s attention, whether they were browsing a magazine or opening the mail.

Today however, internet marketing isn’t dominated by people who can scream the loudest. Instead, it’s built by people who know how to build trust and credibility.

Good copywriting is still important; but it’s much, much more important for marketers to be able to build trust in the long run.

Extremely loud salesletters can actually damage your brand and credibility. Marketers today are faced with the challenge of balancing high-conversion writing and writing that doesn’t alienate readers.

Avoid: Outbound Only Marketing

Gone are the days when you could get by on just outbound marketing.

Today, marketing really has to be two ways. Instead of just sending out status updates and emails, you should also actively cultivate reader participation.

Get people to comment on your updates. Reply to their comments. Get people to comment on your blog. Then reply to their comments.

Cultivate a two-way street of communication, instead of just putting out information on your end.

Avoid: Discarding External Communities

There are several linkbuilding tactics out there that depend on getting links from communities. Trying to get backlinks from these sites without respecting their communities is not only frowned upon by the communities, but is no longer an effective tactic.

For example, Wikipedia is a community run website. Marketers who try to bury their links in Wikipedia articles not only disrespect the community, but will have their links instantly removed.

The same is true for many other sites. HubPages for example has HubScore, which automatically NoFollows any links by authors that don’t already have high authority. Sites like Reddit and Digg have built in voting mechanisms that prevent abuse.

The bottom line is this: If you want backlinks from community based sites, then participate in and add value to the community.

Avoid: Low Quality Backlink Strategies

There’s a tendency online for marketers to focus on low quality backlinks rather than high quality backlinks.

Why?

Because it’s much, much easier to get 50 backlinks by submitting content to article directories than it is to get a real endorsement from a reputable site.

Unfortunately, Google knows that.

The value of low quality backlinks today are at an all time low. Many websites that relied on low quality backlinks lost their rankings in the Panda update.

That’s not to say they have no place at all. It just means that if you’re going to use low quality backlinks, make sure it’s just a small part of your strategy, not the main part.

Avoid: Focusing on Strangers

Many of the most talked about marketing strategies, like SEO or PPC, focus exclusively on how to get strangers to your website. How to get new traffic.

While this is certainly an important part of a marketing strategy, it’s actually much more important that you focus on existing readers and customers.

Someone who’s bought from you is 7 times more likely to buy from you than someone who’s never heard of you. Someone who’s visited your site already is also much easier to convince to return than it is to get a new visitor.

Don’t just focus on getting new traffic. If you don’t have a solid retention strategy already, now’s the time to create one.

Marketing in 2012 is very different than in 2011 or 2010. The internet is a fast changing vehicle. Stay on top of the latest changes in the industry and you’ll leave anyone who’s still playing by 2011 rules behind.

- Derek

photo credit: shlomp-a-plompa

While it’s true that content is king, bloggers very often underestimate the role SEO has in blogging success.

Even when they do SEO, a lot of bloggers only optimize their main page. In reality, each and every post needs SEO attention.

Doing so will help you rank not just for your home page, but for all your other pages as well.

Most successful bloggers will agree that the vast majority of blogging traffic doesn’t come from home page rankings. Instead, it comes from many blog posts.

Here’s how to SEO each and every blog post for the maximum amount of traffic.

The 50/50 Rule

As a rule of thumb, you should spend half your time writing and half your time on SEO and marketing. In other words, if it takes you an hour to write a blog post, you should also be willing to put an hour into promoting that blog post.

A well written blog post that doesn’t get any exposure is simply no good. On the other hand, exposure without quality content is worthless as well.

In order to succeed, you need to have both high quality content and a promotion strategy that will get your content in front of your target audience.

Use the 50/50 rule to make sure you’re putting enough time into marketing.

Basic On-Page Optimization

Your blog in general should be SEOed. You should have your permalinks set, your title tags reformatted so the site name is on the end, etc.

However, each individual post should also receive some on-page optimization.

Start with the internal links. Whenever you write a new post, try to point four or five internal links to it. Go back through your older posts, find related posts and put a “Related Post” or “You Might Also Like” link back to your new post.

Make sure you have a keyword you’re targeting and use it throughout the content. Include it in the title tag if you can, but don’t do it at the expense of content quality.

Make sure the keyword is in the permalink URL. Shorten the permalink URL so it’s not overly long, as it often is if it just ports your title into the URL.

Building Backlinks to New Posts

The most important thing you should do for SEO is to build backlinks to each and every post, individually.

Getting ranked for a specific longtail keyword is much easier than getting ranked for a broad keyword. By helping your posts get ranked, you vastly increase the chances of your posts ranking, even if it’s for lower volume keywords.

A few easy ways to get backlinks to posts include blog commenting, forum posting, Squidoo lenses and article marketing.

Building just a handful of backlinks is often all it takes to get your content to rank. Try to build 5 to 20 backlinks for each and every post on your website.

Using Metrics to Increase Traffic

As your site gets traffic, make it a habit to see which pages are getting ranked. Use your analytics package to see what pages are popular and what keywords people are typing in to get to those pages.

Once you’ve found a few keywords that are already working for you, put a little more effort into helping your pages rank even higher for them.

With these pages, you already know Google likes them. A bit of extra attention could be all it takes to go from #5 to #1.

Optimizing each and every blog post might seem like a lot of effort. However, that’s really how SEO for blogging works. The key lies in optimizing each and every post, rather than just the home page.

- Derek

photo credit: xshamethestrongx

Many of the best ways to generate traffic online involve publishing content. Even if you’re a marketing master, you still need to have high quality content to make many of the best marketing tactics work.

That’s where PLR content can help. Instead of having to write this content yourself or spend a lot of money on outsourcing, you can use PLR content instead.

What can you do with PLR content? You can use it to generate boatloads of traffic. Here are a few creative ways you can do so.

Use Them in Yahoo! Answers

Do a search on Yahoo! Answers for people asking questions related to your keyword. When you find a relevant question, post part of a PLR article (or the entire PLR article) as an answer.

This will almost definitely get you the “Best Answer” designation. With enough Yahoo! Answer votes, you’ll be able to link out of your answers with Do Follow links.

Turn Them Into Tweets

Instead of using PLR articles as articles, you can break them out into tweets.

This can save you a lot tweet-writing time. PLR articles will give you great content that you can send to your followers, without having to write it yourself.

Translate it into Another Language

Instead of using the content as is, which likely a dozen other people will do, why not translate it into another language instead?

If you take 50 PLR articles on dating tips and translate that into Spanish, you’ll almost definitely get quite a bit of traffic from Latin America and Spain.

There’s a lot of traffic in other countries that’s being ignored by the vast majority of the internet marketing community. Take your PLR and translate it and you might be surprised at how effective it is.

Create an Auto-Blog

Auto-blogging is a dangerous tactic for your main site. However, if you setup a different site on a different web host and use automatic rewriting software, you’ll be able to do a couple things.

First of all, you’ll probably get some traffic. Check your keyword logs to see what your site is ranking for. If you can get ranked using auto-spun content, that tells you that the competition is really bad. In other words, you can probably rank for those keywords with your main websites.

This is one way to use PLR & software to test out easy keywords before expending real time and resources into getting ranked.

You can also use PLR content to create auto-blogs that link to your website. This can pass a lot of link juice, but can also be seen as spamming – Use at your own risk.

Create a New Wiki Page

Use the PLR article to create a new wiki page. Try to find a small to medium sized wiki that specializes in your industry. Use Wikipedia only as a last resort, as their content police are quite difficult to bypass.

Post the PLR content, hopefully rewritten, on the wiki. Cite your website as a source. This will get you a high quality backlink with very little work.

These are just a few of the many ways you can use PLR content to bring more traffic to your website. Don’t just use it in the “standard” rewrite-and-post fashion. There are many, many ways you can turn PLR content in high quality traffic.