Archive for the ‘Nofollow’ Category

Let’s say you have 50 or 100 or 1000 old blog posts on one or more sites that were sponsored articles.  You were paid up front for a short time advertorial essentially.  That was years ago and those posts haven’t brought any revenue to you since. 

Plus, the FTC has changed the landscape of online marketing and now you have to go back and consider adding some new form of disclosure to an advertorial.  Lots of work for no revenue, all cost, no profit, plus if you don’t you risk who knows what from the FTC. 

QUICK TIPS (ok not so quick) to get those old articles earning money again!

There are several things you can do in conjunction with each other to get those old deep links earning you some money.

• First, realize that what ever work went into those articles in terms of copy, research, writing etc, is long sunk.
• The risk of FTC issues is as real as your geographical address if you reside in the US (If you live in Canada, the UK, the Pacific Rim, feel free to laugh at the FTC all you like.)
• Now, go over to Skimlinks.com and sign up for an account. 
• They essentially turn old deep hyperlinks going out from your site in to current working affiliate links if there is an affiliate program through their collection of multiple networks traversing the world. 
• They aggregate affiliate links through multiple networks at commission rates that are often higher than you can get individually. 
• Get your account up and going and load the javascript onto your site. 
• If someone clicks on one of your old deep links and buys something, you get a commission.  $$$
• Pretty easy for just copy/pasting some javascript in your footer!
• Skimlinks is a good option, BUT for advertorials, it will likely only convert if you had kick ass copy on a page that draws a lot of natural search results. 
• If your copy was written for 2006 and not 2010, it might not convert so well no matter how good it was. 
• If your page hasn’t drawn a new hit in 2 years, well then its really not good for much of anything, almost.
• SO, identify your articles that you want to target.  For example, I recently went through an old blog, I filtered for all articles that still had a CountTrakula.com link in it, an old PayPerPost tracking mechanism, then I further filtered for articles from 2006.  THESE WERE OLD AND TIRED! But some of those posts still have some power,
• Some have lots of incoming links
• Some generate traffic!
• So next, you need to install the Redirection plugin into your wordpress site. 
• Don’t have your blog on WordPress?
• Move your blog over to WordPress and stop fooling around. 
• Now, start redirecting those old links to either your home page or a category that is relevant for the post.
• Essentially you are salvaging those backlinks.  yes they are over 18 months old in my example, but a backlink is a backlink.
• I had a few hundred to do myself, not a job for one sitting.  So make sure you have a good audiobook to listen to or TV show to partially pay attention to, and then start copy/pasting/clicking away
• Once your redirects are set up in full or either in a batch, go back and check your redirection logs. 
• 
• Look for old posts that are logging actual redirects to your home page or categories. 
• If you have an old advertorial bringing traffic to your blog for ‘drug rehab’ and you don’t have a better destination for that traffic on your blog,
• then log into one of your affiliate programs and search for a new affiliate program that has a high conversion rate for ‘drug rehab’. 
• Get the link for the program, then go back to your site, and replace your redirection destination link with the affiliate link! 
• Now all that traffic that was coming into your blog for an advertorial and likely bouncing away, screwing up your stats, and not doing anything for you is getting pushed to a high converting affiliate program where it might actually do that Google searcher some good and
• make you a commission!  $$$
• Pay attention to your redirect stats.  If it stops bringing people in, then change that redirect to a new 301 redirect back to your home page to salvage backlinks.  This puppy is harvested!
• If for some reason you like the traffic on that particular topic, but don’t want to send it to an affiliate landing page cold, then write up a NEW blog article that covers that topic or category. 
• Then change that redirect from over to your new article.
• If you are smart, make sure the article includes an affiliate banner to something useful, or at least some chitika or adsense ads or something.  I don’t want you to starve! 
• Sometimes a Rewrite may work too…
• You will not want to rewrite every article, but every now and then your original article may be pretty damned good and still relevant.  If so, polish that puppy up, and republish it with a current date.  Remove the old sponsored/advertorial references and OWN that new article yourself.  Find some new way to mix advertising on that page for that article, especially if it is pulling in traffic! 
• Plus, if it is pulling in traffic, do something on that new re-written post to really try and lock in those readers to subscribing with you.  You already know that it is bringing people your way, do something good for them, and try and get them to come back or stick around.
• A large percentage of your old advertorial articles from years back will not be relevant, will not have traffic and will only bring you minor backlink boosts.  That’s ok, don’t sweat it, at least you removed the liability stemming from the doubt over the FTC’s poorly conceived and executed new rules. 
• For that 10% that can do something for you, well more power and a little extra revenue to you! 

Bonus – if you do leave old deep links in any old article, make sure you put a rel=”nofollow’ tag on it if you hadn’t already.  Might as well please Google while you are at it. 

I have been expending a great deal of effort testing plugins that offer some form of management over nofollow links on a WordPress site.  I’m looking for something that will enable me to specifically select a page or Post by the Post ID and mark that page or post to always receive a nofollow tag whenever I link to it within my blog.

There are several plugins that help to provide nofollow tags for things like Categories, Tags, Archives etc. 

The only one that seemed to do this reliably was the tool that came with Headspace( author homepage), although it missed a few from time to time as well.  Anyway, I can’t recommend any of these because they did not do what I was looking for, but I can help you take a look at what I have searched through and experimented with myself.  If you find something better, let me know and I will happily cover you or your site in a future article with a link (absent the nofollow tag).

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nofollow-case-by-case/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nofollow-reciprocity/ I even tried to add permalink/deep links to the code on this plugin, but it seems to only work at a domain level.  (I think it strips out the / character which is used in deep links)

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nofollow-links/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nofollow-links-in-posts/ I liked the concept of this plugin, but it wasn’t what I was looking for

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/noindex-archives/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nofollow-archives/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ultimate-noindex-nofollow-tool/ This one seemed promising according to its description and admin page, but it didn’t seem to work at all when I tested it out.

http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/identify-external-links/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sem-external-links/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-automatic-links/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/platinum-seo-pack/ Seemed like a good plugin, but the nofollow capability didn’t quite cut it.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/replace/

There are several different types of website and blog content scrapers and many different activities that they use.  Some are harmless and some could be harmful to your websites health. 

Some but probably not all the types

1. Copy and paste all your content onto their site with no credit
2. Copy and paste and unreasonably large amount of content onto their site with no permission but with a link to your site as attribution
3. Copy a paragraph of your content (or maybe a few sentences) and a link to your article saying something like -> “Here’s another great article about botox complications and hemorrhoids! “
4. Running a short syndicated feed of your material (Headline, excerpt and link to your article)
5. Building an entire news or blog site dedicated to doing number 4 with all the news and blog sites in the world (think
6. Google news or Google Blog search) –
   1. Note. I am not passing judgement on Google for this behavior.  Google has been sued for this several times.

Any of the above (not counting Google news and the syndicated feed) can trigger a potential comment in wordpress with a trackback link in your comments that points to the permalink that referenced your site.

If you allow that comment to go through, you are allowing a nofollow link to point to that website.  You are not passing juice, but nofollow links are indexed and you could be mixing your site with a blacklisted neighborhood on the internet.  This could be very bad for your website health.

I recommend marking scraped trackback comments as SPAM, just to be safe at a minimum, remove the link from their trackback, and maybe just show their url address in text form.

If you consider your readers perspective, if they come to your site first, and they then click out from a link to a scraper site that has a link in your comments,

1. you are losing readers to a scraper site
2. Your sites credibility is harmed in the eyes of the reader as a crank website is pointing at you
3. They may see something very vile on the other end or even pick up a computer virus or something if they are scraping not to steal your content but to pull people away with your content and give their computer something nasty!

Other Articles that I read before writing this article about content scrapers

• When Scarfing Content Strikes Back – I wrote this back in October of 2007. 
  • I first noticed this issue when writing an article on a satire site.  I happened to include the word botox in a derogatory way about Anna Nicole Smith or something like that.  I then immediately got a pingback from a site dedicated to the B injection and started looking into the issue.  I have seen it on sites ranging from diet pills to SEO to Webkinz and politics.
• Getting Value Out of Scrapers – (I do not agree with this article, but do like the idea of including a link in your feed back to your own site.) dated 1-10-2008
• Fighting Scrapers and Using them to Our Advantage  dated 1-10-2008

Devalue the blogosphere -> Well We can devalue your Algorithm by torching Nofollow

I am not suggesting an open war against the big search engine that has recently dropped cluster bombs on websites and blogs throughout the blogosphere from this blog to the Washington Post to Andy Beard that has documented the saga extremely well to Problogger, who temporarily lost rank and then got it back again after being forced to beg at the alter of the king, to Forbes and many university sites.  They dropped the cluster bomb on us and we are the ones that help them make their algorithms work.  They hit us because we were in fact influencing their algorithm. 

Domain	Starting PR	First PR Update	Second PR Update	Today’s PR
www.autoblog.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.engadget.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
www.problogger.net	6	6	4	6
www.copyblogger.com	6	6	4	6 or 7
www.joystiq.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.tuaw.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.searchengineguide.com	7	6	4	4 or 5
www.searchenginejournal.com	7	7	4	4 or 6
www.johnchow.com	6	5	4	4 or 5
www.quickonlinetips.com	6	6	3	3 or 5
www.seroundtable.com	7	7	4	4 or 6
weblogtoolscollection.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
andybeard.eu	5	4	3	3 4 or 5
www.blogherald.com	6	6	4	4 or 6
www.Forbes.com	7	7	5	4 5 or 6
www.sfgate.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
www.washingtonpost.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
www.technosailor.com	6	6	3	3 or 5
www.9rules.com	8	8	5	4 5 or 6
blog.nafurai.com	3	3	2	1 or 2
courtneytuttle.com	3	2	1	1 2 3 or 4
www.SunTimes.com	7	7	5	5 or 7
TheGadgetBlog.com	5	5	3	3 or 5
Space.com/	7	7	5	5 7 or 8
OneMansBlog.com	6	6	4	5 4 or 6
entrepreneurs-journey.com	6	5	3	3 or 5
The following are site updates which were not hit by a penalty previously for comparison purposes
www.hobo-web.co.uk	7	7	7	5
www.doshdosh.com	4	4	4	6
www.searchengineland.com	7	7	7	7
www.seomoz.org/blog	5	5	5	6
www.connectedinternet.co.uk	6	6	6	3 or 5
More news and updates available from source Andy Beard – Niche Marketing

Take Away the Easy Ride for the Search Engine on Cruise Control

The ‘Big Search Engine’ is on cruise control and has been on cruise control for 5-6 years now.  Their algorithm has not improved and they have attempted to make the websites on the internet conform to their pseudo Laws.

Well, the truth is that they are the biggest but not the only ‘Big Search Engine’ Out there.  Other search engines like Ask are really coming along and the big evil search engine’s days are numbered.  They just can not innovate like they used to.

Become the King of your Content Kingdom

Content is king on the internet but the content producers have not capitalized on their king making powers.  We put companies like the evil big search engine onto the throne because they could find the right content most of the time with their old tools.  But when content started to change the king started to lose power and blamed the king makers, even slapped us around a bit.  Many of us took our whipping like the good little co-dependents that we had become and played by the kings new dictates.

The reality is that the internet is flattening.  People do not need the king so much anymore, because some schmo on Facebook might have a better suggestion for where the right content is.  We are finding better more accurate gateways to the right content.  Its not about an algorithm telling you the right answer. 

1. Its about a person telling you the right answer.
2. Telling you why its the right answer.
3. Its about showing you how to apply the right answer.
4. And Its about you contributing some of your own new wisdom for future searchers that are looking for a rapidly adapting and growing correct answer.

Knock the Crutches Out from Under Neath the King

The King of Search walks with crutches.  These crutches keep the king in power.  The king of search walks on content producers with these crutches, crushing us down, grinding us into the internet sidewalk like beetles and slow roaches and soft chalky rocks.

Crutch Number 1 – Bloggers Index the Internet so that The King can index the bloggers

The King of search relies on bloggers to index the internet.  Its the biggest dirty secre
t out there.  We made the king, by interpreting the internet into text.  We see something, watch something, surf something and we write about it and that gives the king of search something to index.

When the king came in and slammed bloggers this month, they didn’t change how they indexed things, they just knocked down PR, the thing that enabled bloggers and websites to earn money from their manual indexing work for the king.  The king still relies on our former indexing work and financially benefits from it, while we have had that same work devalued!

Crutch Number 2 - The King forces bloggers to reduce clutter on the internet so that they can more easily Index the Internet

The King has turned content producers into street sweepers!  They force and encourage us to put Nofollow tags on links within our pages.  They do this so that they can index the important from the less import links with their bots.  That’s not really our problem, that’s theirs.  Our goal is to make things good for our readers not for some faceless bots used by the king that slams us and forces us to come begging for more.

Thank You Sir!  May I have another!

Bloggers Rising

So there are two ways that we can help ourselves break our dependency on the King that we helped to create and keep in power.

1.  Torching Nofollow with Disinformation in the Tags – The king requires a nofollow guide to what’s really important on the internet.  Make the results of their requirement useless!

Simply put nofollow tags on the important information and leave unimportant links without nofollow tags. 

• If you run a blogroll or even affiliate links, put nofollow tags on them.  ~ Tip – If the sites are important to you, link to them contextually in articles without the nofollow tags.
• If you link to a major site like Wikipedia or flikr or Facebook or digg or YouTube or any of those sites that are going to get lots of traffic, put a nofollow link on it.  Those sites do not need the boost, they don’t need the juice, they are swimming in juice.
• When you write articles, use lots of links, but throw in nofollow tags on some of those links that don’t need the juice or just put some semi important links in to have a few links running with nofollow.

Why?  The king’s henchmen bots will see that you are following the nofollow rules.  They will think you are a loyal servant and won’t see the disinformation happening, because they are not people smart enough to see through the ruse.

The Result: The content producers information will increase in importance and the king will wane as their results, the actual search results will falter. (Until the king gets off their ass and actually does some work to improve their processes and search engine, or gets beaten by the competition that is working to make significant improvements.)

2.  Ending Your Free Manual Indexing Work for the King – Learn How to Leave Text Behind, move into Video and Audio and watch the king sputter.

Your visitors are looking for information.  They want to find it quickly and easily and absorb it even faster.  When publishers start indexing and interpreting the internet for the evil search king, we do help people find information faster.  However, once they get there, we do not have to show them text.  We can show them slide shows of text, videos with or without sound, even give them audio to listen to on their computer or iPod.

Why?  The King doesn’t have a clue when it comes to video and audio search, but some of the Kings competitors do and they are growing quickly.  This is your wake up call and opportunity to give your readers a more compelling product, make your site stickier and STICK IT TO THE MAN, the evil King himself. People are gravitating to video, because its a medium that they are highly trained in.  They are surrounded by flat panels and LCD TVs and projectors putting out 8 foot wide screens on their living room walls.  Push your message into video and your readers will get it.

The Result:  You readers will be happier, they will stick around more.  With the competitor search engines out there, you will even start to rocket to the top of the results as video gets more emphasis.  Even better yet, it will force the king to improve their own product or suffer the loss of their kingdom and monopoly.

Become the King of Your Own Content

You can become the King of your own Content again, but you have to take the power back.  We all have to take the power away from the usurper King and end our co-dependence.  The great thing about the path to taking control of our destiny again, is that the path to do that empowers the original king makers again.  We do not have to become kings ourselves along the way, but we can end the slavery and benefit from the true value of our efforts, our knowledge, our wisdom and our words.

Personally, I don’t care if the king continues as a going concern or not.  If they improve and do good business, more power to them.  If they continue to trample people and operate like a ruthless monopoly and in true monopolistic spirit generate a crappy result, then off with the Kings monopoly head!