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However the rest of us would very much like to see the end of that other spam that accumulates on the web.

One major influence in creating all this rubbish was Google with its search view that the number of inlinks to a web page could be a measure of the importance of that web page. Once every one knew that, the name of the game was to create as many other inlinks as you could. Even though this was against the Google Terms of Service, for a time it seemed to work. The view that inlinks are what counts persists and is as strong as ever even though Google has been improving its ability to root out the spam-producers.

Now Matt Cutts, a Googler with some authority on this topic, has written a very clear explanation of what they’re doing about spam. This was triggered by a new service to create “Undetectable” spam. The follow-up to that is well described by Loren Baker in a post, Matt Cutts vs. V7N Links : Matt Wins. Another sign of the times is that Wikipedia seems to have gone the “No Follow” route in adding this tag to all its outlinks. So these will no longer count as inlinks conferring authority in the Google search process.

One would hope that the message will get around and the mindless creation of inlinks or the search for irrelevant reciprocal linking will cease. Unfortunately too many people currently waste too much time and money on these pursuits and spoil the scene for the rest of us.

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Barry Welford, President of SMM Strategic Marketing Montreal works with business owners and senior management on Internet Marketing strategy and action plans to grow their companies. He is a moderator at the Cre8asite Forums and writes on current issues on the Internet and on the Mobile Web in three blogs, BPWrap, StayGoLinks and The Other Bloke’s Blog.

Hiding Links Isn’t The Smartest Thing To Do

In looking at the service offered by V7N, it appears they plan to make money the old fashioned way: by Googlebombing for it.

Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal covered the Contextual Link product being offered. V7N includes this talking point that likely raised plenty of SEO eyebrows:

Such links would be wrapped around specific anchor text and pointed at a particular site. Inbound links contribute to the way sites are ranked in search engines, and in this case more is definitely better. V7N quotes Aaron Wall on this: “SEO is links and links are SEO.”

Link buying and exchanges have been around for quite some time. It’s difficult to see how V7N would be able to execute this much differently. If the links their participants display are straightforward <a> links with no giveaway attributes or JavaScript, those would be difficult to see.

Bring a hundred or a thousand of them online at once all over the Internet, all pointing to a site (or more likely various landing pages within a site) and it seems like someone like a Matt Cutts would notice. His take on V7N included an observation that site publishers should keep in mind:

V7N also spurred Matt down Memory Lane, all the way back to 2002, when another undetectable spam attempt caught his attention. It involved a data-recovery company using multiple doorway pages with redirects to its main page.

Matt explained that to the company when they asked why they had been penalized in Google. After that, the story takes its humorous turn. The company sent Matt’s email to their search optimization pro, who replied to Matt instead of his client.

The SEO claimed to be working on a new way to make his doorway pages look real. They would be “undetectable to spiders, and humans, hence 99% bulletproof.”

That nearly caused Matt to injure himself laughing. Not to mention finding the 1 percent of the SEO’s scheme that was not bulletproof:

V7N said in its blogger signup page that they pay $10 per text link placed in blog posts. If V7N does this at a slower pace, in order to avoid having their clients penalized for a sudden influx of link love, we do have wonder just how search engines would catch this program in action.

UPDATE!: Loren Baker has updated his coverage to note that V7N has removed their ‘undetectable’ claim. Sounds like The Fear of Matt Cutts has hit home.

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It On the surface there’s a lot to like about the new V7N system for both advertisers and publishers. Yet I still have reservations about the system in general for both those buying and selling links.

Why the Program is Good

The system is pretty simple and could described as a cross between Text Link Ads and Pay Per Post. An advertiser pays $20 for a link and a blogger gets paid half of that to place the link on their blog. Advertisers get the benefit of the link being a contextual link and bloggers get paid for simply adding a link to a post.

Some of the advantages of the system to advertisers according to v7n:

• Contextual Links @ V7N provides contextual links
• Contextual Links @ V7N are undetectable to search engines
• Contextual Links @ V7N are purchased, not rented – the links are permanent

All good things and at $20 a pop the kind of links being offered are certainly a good seo spend. These are the kind of links we all want. They display many of the signs of a quality link. Most site owners are aware of the difficulty of find links and now for a reasonable cost you can have as many as you want.

v7n seems in no danger of running out of buyers or sellers, something that programs like Pay Per Post and ReviewMe are reportedly having trouble with. With the numbers of potential advertisers and bloggers v7n has access to they should be able to match links with posts for maximum benefit.

The main advantage for bloggers would seem to be a very easy way to monetize a blog. You sign up for the program get contacted when an advertiser fits your blog and shortly after publishing the link are paid. Nice and easy and certainly why people are lining up to be included as evidenced by these threads on Digital Point and V7N.

Look through the DP thread and you’ll even see publishers being paid within minutes of adding the link.

John and Jeff are two bright guys and know a lot about what makes for a good link. They seem to have set up a program that can bring many quality links to a site for a reasonable cost.

Why All isn’t Good
So if the system seems to be so advantageous to both advertisers and publishers why do I have reservations about it?

From the perspective of an advertiser I’d like more control over where my links end up. $20 is not a lot of money to spend for a link, but still I’d like to have the option of being able to say no to certain sites. For now you pay for your links and they end up where V7N decides. You have to trust their quality control in choosing bloggers.

The V7N response to this question is on the faq page for the contextual links program.

Only high quality web sites are accepted into the V7 Contextual Links program. Our staff review publisher web sites for number of outbound links, types of outbound links, PageRank and search engine saturation. If a site is selling links to bad neighborhoods, we do not accept that web site into the program.

I do question that only high quality sites will be accepted. I’m sure many will be great blogs, but I’m also sure there will be less than quality blogs that find their way in. There will be a good deal of disparity between the highest and lowest quality blog that is accepted yet the price of links on all sites is still $20. And while V7N can sell the links as permanent there’s absolutely no control over the permanence of the links. Nothing could stop a blogger from selling thousands of links over the next few months and then closing shop.

From the perspective of the publisher $10 isn’t exactly a huge payout. It sounds like a lot compared to contextual advertising where payouts per click are often under 50 cents, but getting $10 for a post with a link is not a lot of money. Create a new post every day of the month and you’re talking 30 posts or $300. That’s good money to some, but hardly the stuff of a successful business model. A well trafficked blog could more easily sell space in a sidebar and get paid $300 or more per month.

Another thing I can think of is having it discovered you are selling links where it had been assumed you were giving honest recommendations. For some that could break the trust a site has worked hard to build with its visitors. You could say who’s ever going to know and you may very well be right, but read on.

Dare I Mention Ethics?

Talking about ethics in the context of seo has become a touchy subject. There are some who think unless you’re squeaky clean and wear a sparkling white hat you’ve broken rules of ethics. There’s an opposite camp who now wants to attack anyone who even raises the issue of ethics in the context of seo at all.

However, V7N itself raises the issue by stating:

Contextual Links @ V7N is ethical. By selling link placement instead of paid endorsements, we sidestep the moral issues and bad publicity that follows with paid blog posting.

Methinks the fact that V7N feels the need to tell us the program is ethical and that they sidestep moral issues might be an indication that they themselves question how ethical and moral it might be.

Questions of seo ethics often revolve around the idea of doing something against what Google would like us to do. Google does not own or control the web and no one is bound to do what Google would have us do. There’s is nothing wrong with buying or selling links. It’s certainly not any more or less ethical than paying for a full page ad in a newspaper or buying time for your commercial on one of the tv networks.

Google does however, have every right to determine what will or won’t carry weight in their algorithm and like it or not Google will continue to be part of the discussion over paid contextual links. Jeff Behrendt himself is billing the new system in part as a Google Killer and almost seems to be saying that taking Google down is one reason we should all sign up for the contextual links program.

We all know the Google stance on paid links. They don’t like them. Google has been recommending for some time that site owners add a nofollow to paid links on their sites. If it weren’t for Google would there be a reason to hide who is and isn’t in the program? I could argue that the entire worth of the V7N system hinges on the non disclosure agreement that advertisers and publishers enter into. One does have to call into question the ethics of a program where you can’t ever admit to being a participant. Nondisclosure doesn’t automatically make something wrong, but it does allow for the questions to be raised.

Virtually Undetectable

V7N says the links will be undetectable as being paid links. I’d say they’ll be virtually undetectable.

How hard will it be for a search engine to find out if the links are paid links? Very difficult. How can a search engine tell that an ordinary link is there only because someone paid for it to be there? It’s just a link after all no different than most other links they’ll encounter.

Difficult does not mean impossible, though it can probably never be determined with 100% accuracy if a link is paid. However pretend for a moment that a site is found to be part of the program and is selling links. A search engine might decide that all links leaving that site are to come into question. It could de-weight every link out of the site.

And even with a nondisclosure agreement it won’t be all that hard to find sites participating. Again I call into question how high quality the sites accepted as publishers really will be. People can’t figure out not to click on their own AdSense ads, you think they’ll get the concept of not letting it be known they’re selling links? Most will keep the secret and many others will be scared by the $1,000,000 penalty for letting the cat out of the bag. But people have done much stupider things and how about the first angry publisher who feels John and Jeff aren’t getting them enough links. Will that $1,000,000 threat hold up in court?

Search engines collect a lot of linkage data. With a few seed sites they can probably track many of the sites on both the selling and buying side. And both the V7N and Digital Point threads where people are lining up to get in are already giving hints at the seeds. True the specific URLs aren’t being mentioned, but how many of those same people will have the blogs in their forum signatures?

NDA or not in time some of the publishers participating will be found out and once they are so will some of the advertisers. The larger the network of advertisers and bloggers the harder it will be to find most, but harder does not mean impossible. Sites that link to each other do begin to form neighborhoods that can be detected.

Final Thoughts

You might think after the last few paragraphs that I’m against this program. You’d be wrong if you do though. I think John and Jeff have launched what will prove to be a highly successful system for buying and selling links. V7N Contextual Links is a brand new system and as with all new systems has some bugs that will need to be worked out. In time they may very well give advertisers a little more control over where their links end up. They’ve already hinted that they will raise prices and thus the payout to publishers.

I also won’t judge this system based on an ethical debate. I think it’s fair to raise the issue, but there’s nothing wrong with buying or selling links in spite of what a certain Mountain View search engine would like us to believe. People were buying and selling links before Google and they will continue after Google. It’s a very natural part of marketing a site.

But again though Google may be misguided in thinking the practice ethical, they do have every right not to place value on links that are purchased. It does go against the idea of considering a link as a citation or vote. And Google has been pretty good and discovering most linking schemes that have come before. They may not be able to tell right away whether a contextual link is being bought and sold, but I see no reason to think they never will. As much as V7N is going to try not to leave one there will be some kind of footprint with the system.

My guess is this system will work for a few years which is more than enough to make it worthwhile to anyone joining. In time it may not work as effectively or even at all, but by then someone will have developed another system that will. One thing is already certain. People can’t seem to sign up as bloggers fast enough and V7N has already raised a lot of money from advertisers wanting to participate. Time will tell how effective the program is, but it’s off to a good start. And since I happen to like both John and Jeff I wish them good luck with it.

Links to More Thoughts on V7N Contextual Links

Announcing Contextual Links @ V7N
V7N Contextual Links : Link Buying Service for SEO & Bloggers
V7N launches Contextual Link Ad Network
The New Contextual Links @ V7N
V7N Enters the Link Buying Business
V7 boasting ethical paid links

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Steven Bradley is a web designer and search engine optimization
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“When submitted stories are consistently reported as spam and users complain via our feedback email about submission spam, we ban the domain. The domain will not be unbanned. The domain would consistently get reported as spam otherwise.”

SoooI thought it would be worthwhile writing a post that looked at social marketing, with a particular focus on Digg.

First of all, some background reading if you feel like it:

• Threadwatch – Growing list of domains getting banned at Digg
• Lee Odden – The hypocrisy of Digg and spam
• 10e20 – List of domains banned by Digg
• V7N – URL banned by Digg.com
• Graywolf – How to be a dirty Digger
• Digg – FAQ

The difference between social marketing and SEO

I think this is core to the issues facing a lot of sites that have been banned by Digg. An SEO strategy is a very flexible thing. You can take your broad strategy for any site (or page for that matter) and apply it to other sites (or pages). Of course, this is an over simplification – there are obviously differences from industry to industry and site to site, but generally, what works for one site can more or less be applied to another site for similar results.

You optimise the same core areas, write content in a similar style and build links from standard sources. It’s a very transferable strategy.

Social marketing has largely been adopted by the SEO community due to the fact that “buzz” and “viral” campaigns can result in some sweet links, which are great for SEO. But more and more, SEOs are beginning to appreciate the traffic and brand value from this form of marketing – the problem arises when the SEO mindset is applied to this emerging channel of marketing.

Simply put – a social marketing campaign needs to be tailored to your specific objectives and although certain aspects are “standard”, each strategy isn’t as obviously transferable as SEO is.

Example 1 – an innocent mistake

A blogger who has been banned from Digg had posted on his blog that he had “only” submitted each of his 30 or so articles to Digg once. Not gonna name names at this point because I do think it was an innocent and non-malicious action intended to “seed” the stories on Digg in the hope that they would “grow” in popularity. However if he reads this and doesn’t mind being named, I’ll happily add in links, etc to his posts.

The problem here is not his intention – just the implementation.

When devising a social marketing strategy, we need to look at the big picture, particularly when exposing our sites to a large community. As with forums or blog news sites such as Threadwatch, there are different levels of issues and etiquette we need to consider. For Digg, I would make the following assumptions:

• They receive a lot of rubbish submissions
• Most of which probably come from the SEO community (or at the very least, people with a knowledge of SEO)
• As such, the Digg community may frown upon SEO flavoured submissions.

So, in this example, submitting every one of his blog posts, the author has applied a SEO mindset by creating a social marketing strategy that isn’t entirely appropriate to meet his objectives. By submitting so many of his own articles, the community system (a combination of human and automated factors) has flagged his domain as spam. The number of submissions as a proportion of the size of his site were so high that Digg has banned his site (as most articles would have been buried).

The point here is that not every post made on a blog actually deserves to be added to Digg. Most blogs cover niche topics and in the grand scheme of things, it’s unlikely that everything you (or I) write will be “Digg worthy” – remember the community out there is much larger than just SEO.

A more appropriate strategy for this type of site (a blog) would be to submit ONLY articles that high quality and are likely to appeal to a broader community, or at the very least just space out your submissions (as submitting an article from your own site as and when you post them could trigger a spam flag).

Example 2 – social bookmark buttons on larger sites

Another domain that has been banned from Digg is the popular business networking site ecademy. This is an interesting one, because it is an active site with a vibrant community of it’s own.

Of course, I can only speculate as to why they were banned, but I would assume that the following factors are core:

• Lot’s of user generate articles (different authors), each with a Digg It link.
• Authors most likely Digg their own submissions.
• AND / OR regular users Digg the story.

Why is this a problem?

Let’s put it in context. The site receives 100,000′s of visitors each month and as a networking site, a high proportion are likely to be returning visitors and as such they will be familiar with regular authors.

The chances are that even if the author doesn’t Digg their own story, some regular users will. Only one person needs to do it, but given the scale of the content being generated this could lead to a lot of submissions on a regular basis. Again, as with example 1, lots of submissions + low Digg count could lead to spam flagging.

But surely sites shouldn’t be banned because users Digg their content?

No, of course not. But what we would like and what happens in reality are two different things. I’d love for Google to not index the site belonging to the guy who is copying my content, but here we are!

As I said at the beginning – we need to look at the big picture. Where do your articles fit into the grand scheme of things? Generally, not where we would like, but then that’s why we’re developing a marketing strategy, right?

The reality of the situation is that Digg receives a lot of spammy submissions and as such we need to factor this into our strategies. Some people will spend time working out ways to get around this – fake usernames, pay to Digg, etc. Personally I think this is a waste of time. It is social marketing after all and if you can’t embrace the community for what it is, then you have a larger problem that won’t be solved by a short term burst of traffic from social media sites.

Tips for smaller sites and blogs

I would be inclined to avoid larger social media sites such as Digg until you can get yourself some decent professional kudos from fellow bloggers and industry professionals.

Basically, if you are considered to be a nobody, then your submission isn’t really going to carry the weight that it otherwise would. But if your site or blog has a lot of blogsphere / press / authoritative exposure, then the articles you write a much more likely to stand up to close inspection. Plus it’s useful for smaller sites to have an established user base that can support submissions by Digging them – that will mean there’s less chance of your submission fading away into nothingness.

Also, think about it before you Digg something. Does it really warrant the submission? Is it a topic that would spark a several page discussion on a forum or be covered by industry news sources (or is sufficiently sensationalist for neither of those to matter)? If you can’t answer yes to any of those questions, then why would other people Digg your submission?

Tips for larger sites

If your site generates a lot of content (larger forums, sites where users can submit articles, etc), then consider how you will approach social bookmarking buttons. Do you really want every piece of content to have a Digg button on it?

In my opinion, a good strategy for larger sites would be to have some mechanism to monitor and list popular topics – either by comments, replies, page views, etc. If you can shuffle these to a “popular page” and then ONLY add social bookmark buttons to these pieces of content, then there’s more chance it will be accepted by the Digg community.

Basically, for most sites, the onus is on the site owner to filter out the crap content and promote selective social bookmarking, instead of broad based bookmarking with a “let them sort it out at their end” philosophy. This will give you the best return on your efforts, while minimising the risk of a ban.

Now

should I Digg this post?

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