The Google Punishment has been handed out
Some people got slammed, while others stood still. Many of the top bloggers had their PR devalued 2,3, and 4 points!!!! The consensus is due to selling text links! Google gave the punishment in the form of a hand edit.

Some went from PR 6

To PR 4

What does the blogging community think?
Many blog headlines proclaimed, “PR is dead!” Others shrugged off the PR adjustment and told us to focus on the traffic volume. In other words do not worry about PR, worry about how much traffic is going to your site. Did this update effect the amount of traffic Google is sending? If not, don’t worry about it.

What’s my take?
It was known months ago Google would take action against sites selling links. Therefore, I guess this should not come as a surprise to the offending sites. I have stated for years that PR means nothing in relation to rankings in the SERPs.

I have repeated, like a broken record, people should not worry about PR and PR updates and focus on creating quality content and getting more links.

The Broken Record
Once again, stop thinking so much about PR values!! It ‘s just a time waster and will not help you move your business forward, period!

Moving forward.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a diverse traffic sources for your site. If your business is dependent on traffic from any of the major search engines, exclusively, you really need to rethink your business model. You are at risk!

Just like investing, you need to diversify your traffic sources. So when Google updates their algo and you traffic disappears over night, you are not out of business. It’s like having a six legged table. If you kick out one leg the table will still stand because there are 5 more pillars to hold it upright.

Time to focus and grow your Business
Focus on building pillars and not the antiquated Google Page Rank.

Technorati Tags: bloggers, PR, text links, Google, traffic volume, SERPs, quality content, search engines, Google Page Rank

Pay Attention to this updated Google Webmaster News. Please!

In a blog post titled, “Hidden links”, Matt Cutts clearly lays out Google’s view on paid links.

In Matt’s own words:

“If you want to sell a link, you should at least provide machine-readable disclosure for paid links by making your link in a way that doesn’t affect search engines…

Google is going to be looking at paid links more closely in the future…

The other best practice I’d advise is to provide human readable disclosure that a link/review/article is paid.”

So let’s recap.
1. Use “rel=nofollow” or other methods to provide “machine-readable disclosure”
2. Google is going to go after paid links.
3. Provide Human disclosure

Please do not think you can “game” Google. You may get away for a while but you will get busted. Stay clear of black hat seo and keep your site in the serps.

For more on this visit the post directly.

Technorati Tags: Google, paid links, black hat seo, serps

Are paid text links good or bad?

It depends on who you ask? Ask Google and it’s bad. Ask a “white hat” SEO and your answer will vary. I watched a youtube video of Shoemoney taking Rand of SEOMOZ to task over his stance on text links. Basically, he “outed” a couple of sites using text links to increase their rankings, but at the same time he also advises his clients to use text links. Strange? Get the whole story here.

Bottom line for me, Google doesn’t like text links as a way to gain SERP ranking, but they are fighting a losing battle. You can always take your chances… or not.

Technorati Tags: Google, white hat, SEO, Shoemoney, Rand, SEOMOZ, SERP ranking

UC Berkley has put many of their video-taped lectures online using youtube.com as their delivery platform. I found a lecture by Sergey Brin co-fonder of Google, discussing search engines and the Google Algo. He does a high-level history of search, Google’s algorithm and Adsense. This is very interesting stuff. Check out UC Berkley’s youtube page here.

This is the video:

Google’s “mission” at the beginning was, “Search for Kings.” Not to find a king, but create a product what is worthy of a king’s attention. Customer and product comes first! Love it! This is core to a successful business.

Check out the lecture below:

Technorati Tags: UC Berkley, video-taped, youtube.com, Sergey Brin, Google, search engines, Algo, Adsense, Search for Kings.