Penguin

Update: If you’d like me to do a personal review of your Penguin-hit site, please click here. I’ve done several reviews, got a great handle on how Penguin works, and have received great feedback on my reports.

Google released a new algorithm update on 24th April. Initially it was called the “Webspam” or “Over Optimisation” update and was tasked with penalising sites that had been “overly optimised”. The update has since been named “Penguin“, perhaps in honour of the Panda update which started last year and has been updated several times since then.

Sidenote: the most recent Panda update was 19th April, so if your sites lost traffic, it would be important to find out exactly when you lost the traffic to see if it was a Panda or Penguin update.

So, what did Penguin do, exactly?

Well, from what I can work out, having spent quite a few hours reading what others have written and also investigating my own sites, it seems that…

Penguin targetted websites that were overly-optimised for specific phrases, both in their backlinks and content.

Whereas Panda looked at websites as a whole, and either penalised the whole site, or left it untouched, Penguin has come from the other direction and focussed on specific keyword phrases. Initially there were suggestions that Exact Match Domains (EMD’s) had been targetted, but it now seems that webmasters who were using EMD’s were also likely to be optimising both on-page content and link building around that EMD keyphrase. Indeed, the mere fact of having an EMD means that links that were URLs would contain the EMD keywords. So, even though it wasn’t EMDs specifically that were the problem, the fact that EMD’s contain keywords pre-disposed websites built on EMDs to the risk of over-optimisation. When you then consider that having an EMD meant you probably wanted to rank highly for that keyword phrase and were therefore more likely to be doing the keyword phrase over-optimisation which Penguin was targetted at, you can see why it looked like EMD’s were the target.

What I Did On My Penguin-Hit Sites

Several of my sites using EMD’s were hit by the Penguin update. Having taken a close look at them, I saw that I’d “donated” links from some of my most powerful websites, using the same anchor text as the domain name. My guess is that this was the trigger for the penalty, so I’ve edited the anchor text to be similar, but no longer identical, to the domain name. Jerry West speculated that the content of a website could also help trigger the Penguin penalty. Although, he also listed uneven anchor text distribution, low quality links, internal duplicate content, duplicate title tags, slow site speed and a high number of internal 404′s.

My guess is that having a high percentage of links containing the same anchor text, especially if it matches an EMD keyphrase, is the most important criteria in getting a Penguin penalty, but it can’t hurt to take a look at the content of the website and “detune” it if it looks to be overly-optimised for a keyword phrase, particularly if that keyword phrase is the same as the EMD. If you have anything else “wrong” with your site, such as slow site speed and poor quality content, it can only help if you get those things fixed.

Google cannot directly penalise EMD websites because an EMD is a strong relevancy signal for any specific keyword. However, based on a combination of overly-optimised links and bad content or site errors, Google have now shown that they are willing to hit such sites with a Penguin!

Blog Network Deindexing

One of the things people seem to have discounted with this Penguin update is that if you built any links from the blog networks, those will not be counting towards your ranking anymore. When the blog networks were deindexed, there was a huge outcry from people whose blogs were deindexed. Presumably, the loss of “credit” from any links built using blog networks will happen at some stage, and that may already be playing a role in any ranking falls. We simply don’t know if the effect of the deindexing of the blog networks has played out yet on sites which are still indexed, but lost links from the deindexed blogs.

Just for completeness, Google is offering a form for people who think their website was hit unfairly by the Penguin. Personally, I wouldn’t use it, but would try to understand the Penguin update and solve any problems myself. But, if you think you genuinely did nothing wrong and got smashed by the Penguin, this form is your place to let Google know.
 

What do you think? Was your website smashed by a Penguin, or did you escape a penalty? Let me know… I’ll leave comments open for a few days…

It seems that Google got tired of black hat linkbuilders (those nasty people who create links to their own sites, so that’s just about every single webmaster in history) using the “private blog networks” where you can syndicate content containing backlinks to your websites in exchange for either cash or credits. The subsequent wailing and gnashing of teeth could be heard from behind computer screens in every part of the world.

Instead of writing a huge blog post on the topic, I’m going to link to multiple sources of information I’ve been reading over the past few days….

Dr Andy talks about the demise of Build My Rank, and how “well in excess of $2,000″ he spent there is now worthless because the backlinks are no longer indexed at Google. 

Another victim, Authority Link Network, lost 5,297 blogs from its network in one week… according to this blog post.

The overall picture is summarised at Linkbuildr and Michelle’s From Idea To Empire where she has interviews from Dave at Linkvana and Daniel from AMA.

Ed Dale has his take on the action, as does Dave Kelly (language warning!)

Mike Liebner (the owner of Blogging Underground) has an interesting take on it … Lost some links – so get some more! Mike thinks that the Google action wasn’t targetted at blog networks per se, but at low-quality blogs and sites.

Let me know what you think of this latest Google storm in the comments, below… [comments will be open for a few days]

FTC

Ahh, it’s a long time since I’ve used the word “bizop”. I don’t consider that I sell bizops to anyone… but is that how the FTC sees it?

The FTC have just released new guidelines for what is and isn’t a bizop. As of March 1st, 2012, if what you sell falls under their definition then you have to abide by some onerous new disclosures of information when trying to sell your bizop to your audience, or face the consequences.

I found out about this today, so wanted to bring you the information I have. It seems as though providing teaching materials (ebooks, videos etc) or coaching does not fall under the bizop definition. However, in my opinion, offering reprint rights or PLR rights may do… and are more likely to if they’re accompanied by any claims of income that the buyer could earn.

Here are some links to further reading if you’re interested…

The FTC document (Business Opportunity Rule) PDF.

An interpretation of the document by the “Internet Marketing Law Center” – PDF.

More information and a discussion at Small Biz Trends.

A Warrior Forum discussion on the changes.

What do you think? Are you concerned? Leave a comment below. Comments will stay open for a few days.

In a nutshell, Google is probably going to roll out more instant answers in response to questions typed into the search bar. It already does this, to a limited extent. If you type in “8 * 4″ into Google, you’ll see a page showing “32″…

Presumably, the next step is to attempt to parse the meaning of a question and immediately give a specific answer. For example, “what was the score at White Hart Lane last night”?

The reason for this new move seems to be to head-off the use of voice-activated semantic searches done by Siri on Apple’s iPhone4. As Google uses Android, it has some catching up to do in this area. Another clue is the purchase of Powerset by Microsoft in 2008, thereby giving it the potential to do semantic searches at Bing.

But what does this mean to us?

Well, it’s yet another set of keywords that will be “off limits” to webmasters. If Google directly answers the visitor’s question while they’re on Google, meaning they never see a traditional search results page, there’s no chance of a webmaster getting traffic.

What will the impact be?

Who knows how many questions Google will try to answer directly? Whatever the size of the query sub-set, it will be another percentage loss to webmasters. You can add it to all the “universal search” results such as Places, Maps, Shopping, Videos, Brands, News and others that clutter up the organic search results. 

Of course, with 66% of searches online still done at Google, it’s their ball, and their ballpark. If webmasters want free traffic from Google, they have to accept that Google can change the rules as and when they like.

content-facilitator

Duncan’s latest project is “Content Facilitator“, which is a blog network along the lines of Article Marketing Automation, Blogging Underground and others. However, there are several twists to Content Facilitator which set it apart. Firstly, it’s not a pay-per-month system… you actually earn credits by publishing members content on your blogs or buying them with cash. You then use your credits to get your content posted to other people’s blogs in the network. At the moment the system only works with WordPress (self-hosted, MU or MS) via the XML-RPC publishing protocol, but other systems that use XML-RPC such as Blogger / Drupal / TypePad and others will be added soon. Secondly, Content Facilitator doesn’t accept spinnable or spun content (see below).

available-content

To publish content from members and thereby earn credits you just need to allow XML-RPC publishing at your blog, then enter the details in the member’s area of Content Facilitator. There isn’t much content to publish at the moment, but that’s sure to pick up soon… especially as Duncan is offering free signups and $50-credit coupons!

To get your content on other people’s blogs, it has to be unique and unspun. Quite how Duncan expects to be able to tell the difference between unique content and well spun content, I’m not sure. But the rule of the Content Facilitator is that the content must be unique. You can use your credits to publish a piece of content once or multiple times, it’s up to you. Each piece of content can have two backlinks, maximum. Each time a piece of your content is published, you’re charged credits.

So, is Content Facilitator any good? Well, its early days, but seeing as there’s no on-going monthly fees, it seems that Content Facilitator would be an excellent addition to the backlinking tools of any webmaster… especially if you have some old blogs sitting around where you can publish content from the system and earn free credits!

Free Credits With This Coupon!

Sign up (for free) and use the coupon DistributeMe you’ll get $50 of free credits!

One of the first new products I’ll be releasing this year is called, “Profiting From Niche Websites“. When I ran a poll of which Internet-marketing topics my subscribers most wanted to learn about, it came top of the list.

But, instead of just releasing an e-book, I’m going for a different way to create and release this product. I’ve got a “raw” version of the ebook, which I’m initially going to offer to 50 people along with coaching via email. After the coaching has finished, and people’s questions are answered, I’ll use them to improve the ebook and create a final version which will be offered to a wider audience. People who sign up for the raw version and coaching will get the final, polished, version for free.

It’s a win-win situation because I get to hear specific questions people have about profiting from niche websites which I can use to improve the “raw” version of the ebook, and the people who sign up for the coaching get cut-price access to me to get their questions answered via email, the “raw” version of the ebook AND the final, polished version.

If you’d like to be one of the 50 who get “Priority Access” to the “Profiting From Niche Websites” product, along with the email coaching, please watch the video and sign up here.

niche-reaper

In the last blog post, I mentioned a service by Martin Avis called Amazing Gold Mine. You can read my Amazing Gold Mine Review here. In a nutshell, Martin gives out a spreadsheet of the best products to promote on Amazon for easy affiliate commissions. But what if you wanted to broaden your viewpoint from individual products to niches? What if you wanted to know how competitive different niches were, with the easiest ones to target being pre-selected for you?

NicheReaper does that for you. It analyses about 20,000 keywords per day for how competitive they are and how valuable they are. Not only that, but it also checks how many keywords are in a niche and analyses the profitability of the overall niche. If, for example, you were interested in selling electronic toothbrushes, it would be useful to know the competition (based on backlinks and PageRank), search volume and possible clicks for a top-five position. NicheReaper does that as well as letting you know whether or not exact match domains are available for the individual keywords. Individual keywords AND whole niches are ranked for profitability by a colour-coding system (green, amber, white), so you can tell immediately whether any given keyword or niche is deemed profitable or not.

NicheReaper is not often open to the public, but for a short time you can get access by clicking here. There’s great training available as well as the results of over 5 million keyword analyses to make choosing a niche and building a profitable website are it a doddle.

Amazon-GoldMine

The Amazing Gold Mine by Martin Avis is a paid online service where Martin uses his own scripts to sift through all the product data from Amazon to find the products that are the best to promote as an affiliate.

There are four different lists of products maintained by Martin… “Golden Nuggets” and “Bargain Basement” lists for both the USA and UK versions of Amazon.

The “Golden Nuggets” consists of products that have high popularity, high price, deep discounts of over 25%, top star ratings (more than 4.5 out of 5) and least 10 reviews. When products match all of the criteria, they are included in that week’s Golden Nugget spreadsheet for Amazing Gold Mine members to download. An example would be a Breville Juice Extractor which normally sells for $400 being discounted to $300, having an average star rating of 4.6 and 636 reviews. That’s a perfect product for affiliate’s to promote, and shows how useful Amazing Gold Mine is for existing Amazon affiliates, or those wanting to start promoting products on Amazon as an affiliate. The current Golden Nugget list for the USA has several hundred products to choose from.

The “Bargain Basement” list, on the other hand, focuses on the biggest discounts. To get on the bargain list a product must match the following criteria… high popularity, huge discounts of over 80%, top star ratings (more than 3 out of 5) and at least 5 reviews. An example product from this list would be a Whirlpool thermostat kit, normally $60, selling for $3.98, a 87.8% discount, with a 4.6 average star rating and 23 reviews. Naturally, the commission on such sales will be smaller than products on the Golden Nuggets list, but there are two huge benefits to promoting the deeply discounted products… firstly, they are very easy sales because of the low cost and huge discounts… secondly, people on Amazon often buy more than one item at the same time, which you also earn commissions on. So, if someone buys the Whirlpool dryer filter but also orders a replacement washer dryer, you hit the jackpot! As with the “Golden Nuggets” list, the latest Amazon USA ”Bargain Basement” list has several hundred products to choose from.

Also included in the Amazing Gold Mine member’s area is a “10-Minute Amazon Profits Plan” walkthrough and 16 videos showing you how to get your Amazon affiliate business up and running.

Can you guess the cost of the Amazing Gold Mine membership? Perhaps $97 per month? Guess again. At the time of writing, it’s just $12.97 per month. Take advantage of this price before Martin comes to his senses and at least doubles it!

When you get the lists of products from Amazing Gold Mine, the first thing you need to do is check the search volumes for the different products to help decide which to promote. Checking the volumes of multiple products can be a chore. Fortunately, Martin has just released a PDF walkthrough guide for using a spreadsheet in conjunction with the Google keyword tool to automate many of the steps. It’s another example of Martin providing great customer support. You can download the PDF here.

The Affiliate Cash Snipers product is server-side software which you simply access with a username and password. After logging in, you create “Interactive Filter Widgets” to promote affiliate products from one of several merchants such as Amazon, Wal-mart and JCPenny.

Amazon-Example-Widget

The widgets are modelled on the drop-down menus that are commonly used on merchant’s websites to help customers find the products they want to buy more quickly. (see the example from Amazon, right)

You can place the widget, which is basically an interactive advert, on any webpage… either your own, or someone else’s if you have permission or buy the advertising space. The widget contains your affiliate link, so any sales resulting from clicks to the merchant will generate affiliate commissions for you. I made a diagram showing how the concepts works. The idea is that the interactive ads get a better response than banners, and because the visitor has made selections about the product they want to buy, and they land on the specific page for that product, there’s a better chance of a sale being made and affiliate commissions earned.

affiliate-cash-snipers

The best part of the Affiliate Cash Snipers system is that all the server-side coding is totally hidden from you. In the video, above, I show how simple it is to create a widget to promote telescopes on Amazon. After logging in, you just select Amazon as the merchant and drill down to the required category, then decide whether to include an image in your widget or not and a few other customisation options. When your happy with your choices, the server gives you javascript to copy and paste into a website. The sniper I created was done in just a minute or two, and I put it online for you to see at Affiliate Cash Sniper Example. You can see a picture of it, below…

Instant Product Engine

In the past, I’ve made thousands of “easy” dollars selling products I had resale rights to. Offering extra products to existing customers and subscribers is an easy way to make bonus profits… and resale rights are the BEST way to get extra products to sell. Basically, they’re a HUGE shortcut and can save you weeks of creating products and graphics or thousands of dollars in outsourcing costs.

Instant Product Engine is a NEW system from Eric Holmlund and Naveed which goes BEYOND resale rights. It’s an online rebranding engine which lets you rename the product, rename the author and generates brand new, unique graphics for your new product package!

I Bought Instant Product Engine

This system has been 3-years in development. I was in beta, which launched about a year ago, so I know it’s spent a long time cooking. I also upgraded from the beta to a full VIP member (see purchase proof, right)

How Instant Product Engine Works

You get access to an online system which lets you EDIT the product name and author name of an ebook-based product. It then generates unique graphics for the renamed product along with all customised files ready for you to download… in under 10 minutes! You get the new product package with PLR rights, so you can sell it and keep all the profits. Not only that, but there are FIVE products in the Instant Product Engine launch offer. Those five products are…

Product 01 – CPA Secrets Revealed

CPA Secrets Revealed is the ultimate cash generating machine. I have taken great care to jam pack every juicy bit of insider’s information into this easy to follow system. I’ve incorporated all of my own extensive marketing experience into this breakthrough system and combined it with the secrets that only the top 1% marketers know

Product 02 – Social Media for Internet Marketers

This product is for those who are not taking notice of the social media phenomenon and are marketing themselves and their business in the same old way, which could result in their abject failure to become the success they deserve to be.

Big business doesn’t know how to talk to their customers. They only know how to pitch and sell. That’s why entrepreneurs and small businesses have a much greater chance of succeeding in the social media realm.

Product 03 – Blogging Ultimatum

New ebook reveals the hidden money-making tactics that you should be utilising with your blog.

There’s a ton of flexibility available in blogs that you’re probably unaware of, and you can utilise WordPress blogs for much more than just a blog… In fact, you can utilise WordPress as a content management system (CMS), and with the inclusion of any number of amazing plug-ins, create membership sites, shopping malls and much, much more.

Product 04 – Content Magnet

Learn everything that you’ll ever need to know about article marketing…from keyword density, link stuffing, to the best article directories to submit to for higher Google rankings…and more

It doesn’t matter if you’re totally clueless about article marketing.THIS is guaranteed to fill you in with the knowledge, guidance, and ability to go from the bottom of the search engines to the very top…And stay there, for good!

Product 05 – Super Affiliate Marketing Strategies

The missing key to success that will transform struggling, broke affiliates into overnight high-earning super affiliate sensations!

This is the perfect guide for affiliates that want to take their earnings up to the next level, and create a long-term income they can rely on. I have taken great care to jam pack every juicy bit of insider’s information into this easy-to-follow system.

Of course, those are only the default names… you get to call them whatever you like… and custom graphics are created around the name you choose!

Why Is Instant Product Engine Special?

Instant Product Engine SOLVES the “giant problem” of PLR… that everyone usually ends up selling the same product, under the same name and with the same graphics. By changing the name, author and graphics with just a few clicks, you get a UNIQUE product package and NO COMPETITION in the marketplace.

The re-branding is done ONLINE, in just a few minutes, with just a few clicks. Click Here For A Video Walkthrough. For EACH product you get…

Products (PDF, worksheet, checklist, process map)
Graphics (customised)
Sales Letter (customised with your product name throughout)
Download Page (customised with your product name)
Squeeze Page, Thanks Page and Short Report (to build your email list)
Template (if you want to add more pages to your website)
Source files for all (Word docs)

Instant Product Engine Is Great Value

This 7-day launch offer is insanely good value when you consider that your other options are…

1: pay ghostwriters to write ebooks , graphic designers to create graphics, and copywriters to write the sales letters!

2: do all the work yourself and invest weeks of your own time.

As I said, this is a great shortcut and, even better, is one that IMPROVES on PLR products by letting you rename them and creating custom graphics based on the new names!

Start your New Year with a BANG with these five product packages branded with your own product name, author name and custom graphics!

My Instant Product Engine Bonus…

Just to make this offer even sweeter, I’ll throw in the following unique bonuses.

1: My brand new “profiting from PLR” video to get you up and running quickly. (value = $47)

2: My brand new “Massive PLR Profits” report for you to sell or giveaway as a signup incentive. (value = $47)

Both bonuses will be ready by the end of the promotion and delivered via email on Jan 3rd.

To claim your bonuses, just…

Empty your cookies
Buy the product… Click Here For Details (make sure the Affiliate ID = scamfree when you order)
Send your Clickbank receipt to fabbonus AT googlemail.com

That’s it. Your bonuses will be sent on Jan 3rd!