Paid Links - Don't Ask, Don't Sell
by Kevin Henney, filed under:Following Matt Cutts' recent announcement that Google will allow users to report paid links, Andy Beard has taken the bold step of submitting his own content to Google's webspam team, in the hope of getting some official statement out of Google. I certainly hope he gets a response, but it seems unlikely.
The disturbing truth is that the only noise out of Google about paid links comes from Matt Cutts' "personal" blog postings. And Matt's stance on the need for machine-readable disclosure of paid links seems to contradict everything Google has ever said about building sites for people, rather than for search engines.
There's obviously a considerable gray area regarding what constitutes a paid link, and Andy's post does a good job of listing many cases where a link may be motivated (directly or indirectly) by financial gain. If Google is serious about identifying and penalizing "paid links," and would prefer that webmasters avoid them, it would seem that the obvious first step is define what constitutes a "paid link." But rather than offering such a definition, or at least some clear guidelines, Google seems content to remain silent while Matt drops hints and spreads FUD.
It's also very troubling that, while no precise definition has been offered, the only "paid links" Matt seems to be concerned about are the cheap ones. Buying links for a few hundred dollars (through TextLinkAds, PayPerPost, ReviewMe, etc) is bad. But links gained through multi-million dollar corporate partnerships are okay.
Currently there's a live link to Google at the bottom of every page of Adobe.com. Are we to believe that this is simply an editorial endorsement of Google by Adobe, and that it has nothing to with the partnership between the two companies? That would be an odd coincidence, since Google's ubiquitous presence on Adobe.com began in in May of 2006, just a month before the announcement of an agreement to distribute Google's toolbar with Adobe software (terms of the deal were undisclosed).
Maybe trading links for financial compensation is okay if it part of some larger business dealing? What about a more clear cut case? Andy says:
Companies are allowed to buy links from the Yahoo directory, which is well known to confer a large amount of trust to a domain, and has been propping up Google's algorithms for years. Will we soon see Google state that the Yahoo directory should be made nofollow for all paid inclusions? Matt Cutts has previously stated that the Yahoo directory is OK because there is editorial review.
So it's alright for Yahoo to sell links because of their "editorial review." Certainly the paid reviews that Andy submitted to the webspam team required much more editorial review than the Yahoo directory can afford to give to the many sites it receives, so if Google's stance on the value of "editorial review" is consistent, Andy should be in the clear.
But then, Matt Cutts doesn't speak for Google, according to his blog's disclaimer, so we're left to wonder about Google's official stance on "paid links." Hopefully, some day soon they'll tell us plainly, rather than making us read between the lines of their employee's personal blog. Is that too much to ask from the company that pledged to "Do No Evil?"
You Don't Need a Professional Web Designer
by Kevin Henney, filed under:At least according to BusinessWeek. 
They're running an article called No Geeks Required, all about how small business owners can realize big savings by designing their own websites. They claim that "a variety of services make it easy for the tech-impaired and time-challenged to get a site up and running," and then go on to profile 3 business owners who've had success with these services.
It's interesting that BusinessWeek neglected to link to any of the self-made sites that they profile, and I took the time to track them down and have a look. Normally, I don't use this space to critique anyone else's work. But since the creators of these sites are not professional designers, and they're claiming in an widely read magazine that my profession is unnecessary and overpriced, I'm going to consider them fair game. Lets take a look.
Wow! Imports
According to the article, the owner of Wow! Imports used a do-it-yourself service at Register.com to create her site. "I stayed up all night cutting and pasting and did the whole thing in two days", she says. Take a look at what two sleepless nights can produce.
Clearly the work of an amateur, but not too bad. The pink-gray gradients are "interesting", though the header and footer seem to be completely divorced from one another, separated by a sea of empty space. I actually hit refresh and then tried a different browser, because it felt like there was a background image that wasn't loading, but it appears to be done that way "by design". The company name in the header is just plain text, instead of incorporating the logo which appears elsewhere (the logo is also a do-it-yourself design, I assume). Visually, it's unimpressive, but of course that's largely a matter of taste. Taste, though, is one of those intangible things that a professional brings to a design.
Beyond the visual appearance, other problems lurk. The pages carry non-descriptive names such as "page2.html" and are needlessly buried in a subdirectory. The page titles, largely identical across the site, are ridiculously long and stuffed with keywords. For example, the front page title contains 33 words and is 228 characters long. The products page has almost all of it's text hidden within image files. None of these things are helping the site on the search engines, and the spammy title tags may even be hurtful.
Dream a Little Dream Events
Next up is Dream a Little Dream Events, created with software from Homestead. The owner originally tried out the site builder at Register.com but found that "everything looked weird". (note: this site has since been redesigned since this story was originally posted)
I wasn't surprised to find this the most visually appealing site. A company that plans weddings and designs invitations should be expected to have an eye for design, and the site is tastefully put together. There's an odd use of white space at the top of the front page, and a few alignment issues, but that's forgivable - these are amateur sites we're talking about.
Once you get past the visual aspects, the site doesn't hold up so well. The navigation is done with javascript, which is bound to cause problems for search engine spiders. This probably explains the fact that the front page has a Google Page Rank of 3, while most of the internal pages haven't even been indexed. If I could only fix one thing on this site, this would be it. Search engines can't send visitors to your site if they can't crawl it.
There's also a problem with the images on the site. Large images are used, with the scaling left to the browser. This causes larger pages, longer download times, and badly rendered images (most browsers are terrible at image scaling). Beyond the on-site images, there are photo galleries hosted with a different service on a separate domain. The galleries have a different design and no link back to the primary web site, and no contact information for the company. If a visitor finds the company via the photo gallery pages, they have no way to find the actual company site without resorting to a search engine.
Parking Padding Solutions
Finally, we have Parking Padding Solutions, created with Microsoft's Office Live. This is also a second attempt, after the first try with Yahoo produced a site that "wasn't as professional-looking". (note: this site has since been redesigned since this story was originally posted)
This site manages to avoids most of the structural problems of the other two, so it appears to be well indexed by the search engines. Visually, though, it falls far short of the "professional-looking" image the site owner was going for. The logo and graphics are clearly amateur. Every element on the page seems to have a border applied, which only accentuates the lack of padding in some table cells. Viewed the Firefox, the design falls apart, producing horizontal scrollbars no matter how large the browser window is. In Internet Explorer, the right side of the page is cut off for users with a screen resolution less than 1280 pixels wide. I suppose that's fine if your target market is people with huge monitors.
Professional Design Matters
Despite their problems, all three websites are largely functional, and I have to applaud the efforts of the do-it-yourself designers. I only want to point out that you do get what you pay for, and that all of these low cost sites contain problems that a professional would know how to solve. Further, these sites were selected by BusinessWeek as examples of successful DIY sites, we're not hearing from those who have given up in frustration.
Although all 3 site builders are apparently satisfied with the fruits of their efforts, I believe that these are examples of businesses that have succeeded in spite of their websites, not because of them. How many potential customers didn't get in touch because the site looked unprofessional? Or because it wouldn't work in their web browser? How many clients never even found them because their pages weren't indexed by Google?
Making Article Marketing Work
by Kevin Henney, filed under:I just happened across a post by Matt Jones, who's asking if Article Marketing is a Waste of Time. Matt submitted 20 articles to a couple of popular article directories and was less than impressed with the results (2 incoming links from low trust sites). Submitting to free article sites is one of the most commonly mentioned ways of building links and traffic for your web site, and I've even heard it touted as a means of search engine optimization. I think it's a complete waste of time.
Who Republishes Articles?
Think about the type of links you're going to get by submitting to article directories. Do any of the reputable sites you read post this type of content? The reality is that sites republishing free articles are generally of very low quality. Sites that regularly publish quality, original content aren't going to water down their pages with this sort of duplicate content. Instead, your article is going to end up on Made for Adsense sites with a lot of other republished content. Those aren't the links you want, and they're unlikely to drive much traffic either.
If you must submit to article directories, make sure you're writing new content to submit, and don't publish those same articles on your own site. At least that way you won't be hurting yourself with duplicate content. But if you're going to go through the trouble to write fresh content, there are better uses for those articles that can garner links from quality sites. Like most things worth doing, though, it does require a bit of work.
An Alternative - Guest Blogging
Instead of writing up your article for the free directories, consider writing it for a particular site as a guest author.
Find a few blogs that write on similar topics and contact the authors. Let them know that you're trying to get more exposure for your blog and you'd like to write an article for their site. You'll find many authors who are open to the idea if you make it clear that you're going to provide them with a quality article, meaning:
- Provide original content that will be published only on their blog (nothing you're going to publish yourself or submit to directories).
- Your writing should meet the site's editorial standards. Think of this like an audition, and a chance to attract new readers. Make it some of your best work.
- Solicit feedback on the article's topic. Be flexible (within reason).
- Show some links to your best blog posts to demonstrate that you can write a good post. Once you've done this a few times, show links to the other site's where you've written guest posts.
- No blatant self-promotion. No affiliate links.
Publishing on other blogs in this fashion is definitely more work. You have to write an original, quality article for each site, and you have to do the legwork to set up these guest blogging opportunities. The payoff, though, is that you can obtain quality links from trusted web sites. If you enjoy writing articles and want to be read by a wider audience, all while building quality links, you might find this method well worth the effort.
UPDATE: In the comments, niche marketing blogger Andy Beard recommended the Article Marketer service as a viable method for article distribution. They even have a free service available, so if you're interested in trying your hand at article marketing, it's worth a try.
Sometimes "free" is worth every penny
by Kevin Henney, filed under:The Consumerist reports on a recent complaint from a Lyco's customer who lost 2 years worth of her personal email. The customer in question hadn't logged into her free account for 30 days, which is grounds for deletion according to Lyco's terms of service, and found that Lyco's customer service was anything but helpful.
I'm not suprised to find so many people drawn to the free email services that are available everywhere on the internet. We all love a bargain, and most of these services are extremely easy to set up, even for those with little internet experience. Few people consider the drawbacks until disaster strikes. And once their email has been lost, they're shocked to receive subpar customer service for a service that hasn't cost them a penny.
With so many online services offered for free, it's easy to forget that the rules of the real world also apply to the internet. You get what you pay for. If you just need a personal email account for occasional correspondence, and you don't care to much about the level of service you receive, free email accounts are a great deal. But if you really rely on your email service, or you're using it for business, a real email account on your own domain is well worth the small cost.
