What’s the difference between great link bait and spam?
Complaints to Google from sites you outrank seems to be the most important factor. Consider the two widgets below. The first sites ranks #1 for "online dating" while the second has been banned by Google for using spammy, off topic widgets after Google received some complaints about them. The second site has essentially been smoted from the index.
OK Cupid
Your Score: Read Minds
We’ve discovered your super power! Hope you like it…
You’re a psychic and you can read minds! But please don’t read my mind right now, because I’m imagining you naked. Of course, you’re probably already used to people doing that. Ah, the joys of being a psychic. At least you’ll always ace interviews and pass your college exams with no problems.
| Link: The Discover Your Super Power Test written by reikiwriter on OkCupid Free Online Dating , home of the The Dating Persona Test View My Profile(reikiwriter) |
JustSayHi
In fairness to Google, the folks at JustSayHi did stray into the dark side. After they ranked number 1 for most dating terms, they started promoting other domains with their widgets. They crossed the line with Google’s TOS. On the other hand, after a couple of failed re-inclusions, they decided to start over with a new domain and rebuild an entirely white hat site at One Plus You using the same quiz widgets. It turns out that Google considers the One Plus You quiz results widgets to be Spammy and Off Topic when they include the anchor text of "Free Online Dating".
The challenge for marketers is to know where to draw the line between very effective link bait and spammy, off topic link bait. As long as the algorithm rewards targeted anchor text, marketers will continue to find a way to get people to link to them using preferred anchor text.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Perhaps a better solutions is to own two domains. When you purchase links, use a dummy domain such as ‘mysite-link.com’ which would always redirect to ‘mysite.com’. If google bans mysite.com at least it won’t ban all the purchased links, or visa-versa.
Google understands the redirects, so there is absolutely no benefit to this approach.
I dont know…how does the saying go??Between a rock and a hard place? Well this is how Google makes me feel. If a simple complain from someone you outranked can de-index you, then wont that start causing some serious issues?
About the redirects. From what I read, google won’t penalize the redirected site. So, in the approach above with the mysite-mylinks.com site, they won’t blacklist the mysite.com domain. The reason is that people would abuse it to harm their competitors. For instance, if I were to want to put my competitors out of business, I would create a site that points to my competitors then spam via the mysite-mylinks.com site to get the mysite.com site banned. So, I still think the redirect method would work, at least from what I’ve read.
Oi guys
I read this in some essay somewhere and thought it was funny.
” Becoming a member of a Christian dating service is not considered immoral, as long as the person understands the rules of dating in Christianity. A search for a good Christian dating service produces uncountable results — there are too many to choose from. However, it pays to exercise prudence while contacting and signing up to these services.”
Christians have rules for dating? Since when?