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July 31, 2008
There have been many discussions and comments about the use of WordPress, wrapped around a BANS store versus simply using the phpBay plugin and doing it all in one shot. I want to use this post as a way of explaining my current methodology and direction in the building process.
Please consider that when I develop a website, affiliate or otherwise, I want to do it for the long term. I am not going to spend the time and effort building a site that skirts guidelines and makes a few bucks, for a few months.
You see… several months ago, I had this awesome BANS website that was performing like crazy! I had HUGE visitor counts from Google search and literally, that single site was earning enough passive income for me to focus on nothing else if I chose to! Yes… it was like that! It even had a PageRank 4 and more than 1000 inbound links… many from similar websites!
As you can see by the above image - I had built the entire thing inside one main CMS, Build a Niche Store. That’s not a bad thing… as a matter of fact, I still have several more BANS sites that are doing very well and used the exact same process on them! The bad part is that Google did not like my site on manual review! How long will it be before they dislike the others?
Googleor the GoogleHead who manually reviewed the site, dropped a match on it and burned it to the ground!
Not much I can do… I wasn’t insured! We all know affiliate websites are HIGHLY FLAMMABLE, heck, there should be a warning label somewhere… Once the fire starts, ANY unique content is burned just as bad as everything else because I had no firewalls in place to prevent the spreading of the Google Fire!
Why Not Just use phpBay?
This question has been asked of me several times… I will not tell you that I won’t, or you shouldn’t use phpBay. I’ve just not tested it well enough to know! I do however know that phpBay is a great way to create pages just like BANS, quickly and easily. If you create standalone pages, you still have to mix in unique content or they are at the risk as any other affiliate page.
If however, you decide to write unique content and mix listings into that content with the phpBay plugin, I fear the same issue as above. If or when Google or any other engine decide to penalize the users of the plugin, your content will pay the price as well. After all, you are parking highly flammable goods next to something you can never replace, your own content!
Building an Website with Fire Insurance
You can never be fully protected from a fire and when it happens to one of your affiliate websites, the only thing you can do is try to prevent it from spreading and minimize the damage. In the example above, I had placed ALL my unique content within all my highly flammable affiliate product listings… poof.
The way I am starting to build my sites going forward is quite different than most affiliate websites, but I am doing it with a goal of protecting my content!
Some of you will actually call me crazy for building a site like this as it runs completely against the grain. Heck, some of you may even click on the unsubscribe button… but one thing I learned from the past year is that we have to protect ourselves from the powers to be at Google when it comes to playing by their rules.
As you can see in the image above, I am going to completely segregate each section of these new sites and may even block search engines from even indexing them - the jury is still out on that decision! If for some reason, Google or another search engine decide they no longer want to list any website content that has regurgitated affiliate pages, my unique content should be safe! Sure… they MAY take it out at the same time, but if I do everything possible to minimize the risk, my chances of survival are much higher!
I read an interesting comment on one of Matt Cutts posts about linking…
If a visitor needs to click on an affiliate link within 8 seconds of landing on your site, its nothing but Poo!
New Goals
What are your thoughts on segregating the unique content from all affiliate type pages? Will they stand the Google test of time, or be Burned to the Ground in a Manual Review?
This also brings up one more question…
Note: I changed the wording on the poll from Whitehat versus Blackhat to: Unique versus Easy. I don’t support any methods that are Blackhat per say, besides… I dont think I could do it! LOL
31 Responses to “Google Burned my Website to the Ground!”
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I can’t argue with this approach.
Google-based SEO is primarily about providing a quality user experience. Even though they say their goal is to automate the search engine 100% we know they aren’t there yet and sites are manually reviewed and penalized.
If you want free, organic, visitors then you have to make a site for visitors and then monetize it.
BANS as a storefront is great but it is not an optimal user experience. So far all my sites have been 90+ percent eBay listings and the rest content. Maybe. Some of them are pretty thin.
I’m working on a site now that will target some keywords and be 100% content. After I get traffic I will then try to monetize. Basically it’s the opposite of BANS.
what about bulletin boards?
would they be an insurance against these fires from google?
they are great content and updated frequently if the site takes off and attracts some visitors?
yes content is king HOWEVER, I disagree with the statement :
“If a visitor needs to click on an affiliate link within 8 seconds of landing on your site, its nothing but Poo!”
The reason I disagree is because sometimes visitors aren’t looking for reading material, all they want is to shop, find the product they’re ready to buy and be done with it.
Now, having said that, if you’re going to have a site with affiliate products it should be products that aren’t easily found on a hundred other sites already. If it is then you better have some good content. In other words, have a really really good sub niche.
First and foremost - Thank you for the quick comments! Its good to see people using the feed as well as the email subscription option!
I added a poll to the bottom of the post in regard to two types of affiliate sites, one for long term growth and the other for quick cash. Please vote… I am curious to get the pulse of the reader base…
In regard to the forum or bulletin board question, since all content is user generated, it holds the same benefit as a blog.
MANY popular forums are very profitable - but also have the attention of search engines.
Sorry for the noob question but you would do this using folders or different domains? Like:
http://mainsite.com
http://mainsite.com/bans
http://mainsige.com/amazon
or would you use completely different domains?
http://mainsite.com
http://banssite.com
http://amazonsite.com and link them together?
Mark,
Will you be providing examples of each type of site if you decide to do the comparison? I’m not exactly sure I get what you mean from your image/description.
Rochelle
@ Rochelle - That is my plan…
View the images like a mall versus a standalone store.
The mall - is a site that has a core (The mall itself) made up several anchor shops (JCPenney, Kohls, etc) that each pay rent to the core for being there (earnings)
If one of the anchor shops should happen to burn down or get hit with bad press… it does not have such a drastic affect on the mall as a whole. It still has several other anchor shops to keep it going!
If on the other hand, BANS and Noble (Nice play on words huh?) is a standalone store and fire runs through it… its all gone!
Mark
GBPackers hit it right on the money! Build your site with resourceful, unique content, get the traffic, THEN monetize. Build the site first and then work your affiliate model into it.
Its the same with a Wordpress blog for example. With any niche, you have to create content - at least 25-30 posts in my opinion before you start heavily getting backlinks and promoting your site. At this point Google loves you for 2 reasons: Frequently updated with unique content, and lots of backlinks pointing to your site. This is when you step in a slowly start to blend your ads…
If this process happens too quickly, Goolge no likey!
Mark, your thought process is good, but I’m afraid that some of the details make absolutely no sense to me. So either I misunderstood what you were saying, or you didn’t explain it enough, or you actually aren’t making any sense. :D
Here’s what I mean:
You say that you’re concerned about using phpBay because if Google decides they don’t like it, then your site could be removed just like your BANS site that was removed. So instead, you’re going to build a BANS store along side your main content. Not integrated with the main content, but rather off to the side.
Okay, so what does that have to do with BANS or phpBay? Why couldn’t you use the same approach with either tool, or any tool for that matter?
WordPress as a CMS can be configured so that pages only link to the posts/pages you want to link to. You can have it create directories with content, and those directories can be excluded in a robots.txt file to avoid spiders. You can set meta NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW tags on any page you want. Etc…
So I’m just not getting what your strategy has to do with phpBay. If you want to separate your eBay affiliate listings from your content, who cares what tool you use. Just separate them already. So you have a domain and put BANS underneath subfolder. Or you have a domain and you use phpBay to list auctions on WordPress pages underneath subfolder. Same difference.
Please tell me where I’m wrong… Thanks!
Hi Jon -
What you are saying makes perfect sense to me and is actually in line with my post. My reference to using phpbay or not, is a users choice… which I am not trying to influence one way or another. Heck, I use it myself! :-)
My own preference is to use BANS, since you set it up once and walk away from it. To block the entire /BANS/ directory is a single entry in the robots.txt file… and I never need to worry about it again. Integration between BANS & WordPress is a 3-4 file project that takes roughly 1-2 hours to complete from start to finish. 10 Minutes with a few of the templates already done!
The only risk I wrote about in using phpbay, (IMO) was if you use it within the content of a post, which actually minimizes the risk. However, if one or all of the engines decide they dont like phpbay, your content gets burned and thrown out at the same time.
You could! You could even add a forum, bulletin board, classified area etc, Thats the entire point… making sure the affiliated content is not mixed with your unique content is just an added layer of protection for your hard work. The search engines don’t want to index duplicated content that can skew the serp’s. They also dont want to send visitors to your site based on the indexing of that duplicate content. They would rather send it direct to the source.
When a spider visits the site, it will be indexing unique content. The visitors and traffic will be driven, based on that unique content.
If they decide to shop in a BANS store, phpBay store, Amazon store, or any other type of store, it won’t be because the search engine sent them based on what they consider a doorway page, or a page that was created simply to attract them to an affiliate program.
Just like I have seen very well done BANS stores, I have seen the same with phpBay. I wont link them here… But many of my own stores were done just as well, yet still dropped during a manual review.
I know you read the BANS forums and I am sure you scan several others as well… The trend is that more and more people are talking about being dropped from indexes every day. Many of those DID write unique content and mix it with their listing pages.
I wont even say with 100% certainty that my new method would survive a manual review… but as long as I focus on delivering unique content and block the duplicated content from skewing any search results, I feel my chances are much better.
Mark
Mark, Keep the graphics coming. I understand better with them.
First, will I be able to use the Chimera WordPress Theme/BANS in this new concept?
Second, I have been looking for a way to easily integrate BANS, an Amazon store and orange links that’s easy to use for my customers. I despise using banners to move my visitors. You may be headed in the right direction here.
Third, I have four niches that I would like to tie together with one blog, yet run the sites separately. I would like to be able to run this group in such a way that one or two sites can get sandboxed or deindexed and not affect the others……..much.
Mark,
Thanks for clarifying your positions. Makes more sense now. I am concerned that your method–as you said–still might not withstand a human review.
I personally think the problem we’re starting to see with the mass deindexing of affiliate sites entails affiliates that have storefronts that emulate an actual retailer’s storefront. Which is pretty much what BANS and a typical use of phpBay gives.
I suspect that Google doesn’t see value in affiliates having “storefronts.” After all, why would a customer want to deal with an affiliate storefront, only to be redirected to a merchant’s storefront? At least that’s how Google might very well be approaching this. It’s certainly a plausible explanation.
Their webmaster guidelines state unequivocally that affiliate links are fine, as long as they contain “added value” for the visitors. I suppose in their interpretation of that, an affiliate “storefront” is not added value.
Their guidelines specifically list “product reviews, ratings, and product comparisons” as examples of added value.
That’s why my new projects are focusing on blogs with exactly that… product reviews, ratings, and comparisons. For example, on my test “cordless drill” blog site, I am experimenting with the concept of reviewing different drills. Then at the bottom of the page I use phpBay to list eBay auctions for that specific drill that was reviewed. A person could just as well use BANS as the publishing platform. Just add your review text to the content portion of the store page. I just personally find it easier to publish that content with a platform like WordPress.
(BTW, my cordless drill blog really isn’t one of my actual money making blogs. It really is just a playground, at least for now.)
Anyway, thanks for bring up this topic Mark. We’ll all have to try various things and learn what Google is and isn’t going to approve or disapprove, and at least we can share our experiences and results through blogs like yours!
@ Paul -
Yes, Chimera is perfect… as is any theme.
@ Jon -
I couldn’t agree more with what you say! Google are dictating exactly how they want to find the web, based on their opinion of what users may want. The “Storefront” type of affiliate sites we have come to love, for ease of deployment, or whatever other reason, may have seen its day pass… I fear the real reason was due to over-saturation in the serps.
What concerns me MOST about them right now is the fact that they started their own affiliate network and they have investors to keep happy!
Google, after dropping a site from the index for “quality issues”, was very quick to let me drive traffic with Adsense, which makes no sense to me at all… except to say, we won’t list you, unless you pay!
BUT… thats a completely different topic… filled with sarcasm and paranoia!
Mark
Mark,
Forgive the stupid question but if we were to no follow a bans store on the side of our wordpress blog, then doesnt that mean that the store pages wont get indexed and therefore wont show up when people do product searches and that means no sales? Sorry if I missed something here, but I just dont get it. Yes, I understand you can drive traffic to your site using the wordpress posts and then what, hope that they check out your store pages and buy something?
Thanks for explaining further! :)
@ Tammy -
As much as i hate to say it… you are exactly right! Your questions is not stupid at all, but the indexing of the BANS pages is exactly what I am trying to avoid.
Driving traffic to the site will be done through the content of the blog posts… targeting specific visitors, those in the mood to buy.
People will still buy… as your wordpress posts will talk all about the wonderful products in your bans store, which is behind the protection of the robots.txt, thus keeping the duplicate affiliated content out of the search engines, so they can focus on the high quality and unique content in your posts.
Like I said… People will think this is crazy… but once you see it done, it will all become much more clear.
Mark
My sister in law once said…
Every time I google anything all I get is sites with ads.
I told her… how do you think google makes money?
Personally I think Google search sucks and they’re getting worse ever day.
Im intrested in hearing what you have to say about….ok all of the sections…but more on the link directory.
Desmond
In one line…I think you hit the nail right on the head! :-)
I must admit, I’m still a little confused on what you are saying.
If I understand correctly you do the following:
1) create a site under your chosen niche name, be it a blog or something else, that has unique
content related to your chosen niche. This site will be allowed to
be crawled by the bots.
2) create the BANS in a subdirectory of the main site and DO NOT
allow the bots to crawl it
Is this it or do you create the BANS site seperate from the main site entirely, and link to it throughout the content of the main site?
Thanks for the clarification!
^^ Yes its exactly like this. Keeping your unique content separated from your BANS (content/store) pages. Use the robots file to forbid to crawl your store directories.
As long as you put your storepage links in your wordpress with “nofollow noindex” it is all fine ;-)
hint: create a PPC campaign and look at the quality score of your sites, this way you can do some real good optimization ;-)
It’s like walking on fire when dealing with Google. They send Me reports saying there isnt enough AdSense on my sites to make $ then they use the same data to ban sites for to many ads. I’m going to take all approaches to building. Any kind of a one item fade store will be strait up bans, and sites I thing I can develop content for will be wp/bans. I’m also mixing up PJ and epn sites 50/50
As in any business things change, but SEO seems like change is a daily occurrence.
I like this concept. Once established you can also use awstats to help you with keywords.
Now that’s a post that will make you do some serious forward thinking. I am no where near as educated in the world of BANS or Google but understand common sense when I read it.
The themes I take away from your post are “invest” and “protect”.
What is the best investment of my time going forward and how can should I best “protect” that investment while still benefiting from it as much as possible?
If you are not finding any EASY answers to these type of questions I sure won’t.
Great Post!
Mark M.
Mark or ?
My idea is branded content because if stupid Google wants it they can only get it from you. Have you got any ideas how my cartoon sweetie and birdbrain could be used to profit? I mean mickey mouse never quits making money. It’s at http://www.sweetieandbirdbrain.com
Thanks,
Walt
Walter -
Great idea!! Site looks great as well…
But its a completely different type of site… unless I just couldn’t find the eBay listings! :-)
Mark
Mark can you tell us your process for writing unique content?
Desmond
Sure can - I will evcen devote a full post to it on monday…
I use Google Alerts to get ideas. Go to: http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en and enter a phrase related to your niche. One one site, I may use 8-10 or more topics for the alerts.
Google sends you news EVERY time something happens online related to your niche. Read the content then write about it in your own words.
Aside from that… I am trying to work on sites that I have some knowledge in. Its much easier.
Hopefully… you werent looking for an answer like: With my Keyboard! :-O
Mark
That would have been a funny reply….and I might have been upset lol IM so silly…yeah I guess it makes it easier if its something you know about. Also…i know i may be a little bit behind but from your previous posts yu went in detail on how to use bans with wordpress correct? I want to do that now….but I havent built a store since ebay did their own affliate program which I just signed up with last week.
Desmond
This is a good idea, i wouldn’t have thought of doing this. One other idea i’m playing with is creating a completely content-based site, with only 1 or 2 ebay auctions within the middle of the targeted page content. I believe this may add relevance to the niche sites i’m building, but of course i need to wait and see the resuls still. Alos, thanks for the heads up about google alerts, thats perfect for getting ideas to write content!
Why not have two domains one a content site and the other a store and link through your content word links? With the new Wordpress add on that helps control how many times the keywords are used automatically it should be easy. If the Bans site got traffic on it’s own fine, and if it got a hit, so what, we were going to strangle it anyway. But why would Google follow its links back to a purely content blog or site. The best sites out there have affiliate links on them if they make any money. I think they only control how many links they have.
This no follow thing blocking traffic is kind of reminds me of a diode. Pretty soon we will be using a full wave bridge.
I’m going to discuss the whole thing with Sweetie and Birdbrain.
Walt