Google Changes…Do they affect you?
John Jonas’ blog recently talked about the new google rules and how to deal with them. These new rules particularly affect affiliate marketers who usually use domain forwarding techniques to shorten or mask long cumbersome affiliate urls.
“If you’re using Google Adwords, you’ve probably already seen or heard about the change that’s coming on April 1, 2008:
Warning Important Change to URL Policy Enforcement
Starting in April, display URLs for new ads will be required to match their destination / landing page URLs, without exception. Please adjust your URLs accordingly when creating new ads.”
He then goes on to outline a number of strategies for dealing with these new rules. I highly recommend the article. I really enjoy his blog. BTW, there is a podcast associated with the blog you might want to listen to as well.
That said…he addresses various strategies including so-called “Black Hat” strategies for dealing with these issues. Black hat strategies basically come down to figuring out ways to “trick” the search engines into doing what you want you to do.
You should know that Google pretty much always figures out black hat tactics. After all they are discussed openly in blogs and sites all over the internet. When they do figure it out, everyone using them ends up severely penalized and then they have to figure out a whole new way to scam and spam the search engines.
It still comes down to honesty being the best policy, folks. Do a really good job in what you do, Use all honest SEO techniques available to you. Participate in the internet community (discussion groups, wikis, lenses, forums, social communities, etc.). Create awesome content and use the techniques we teach on The Cookie Cutter Group calls. This will give you success. Not overnight and not without effort, but definitely long-term, trackable, bankable success.
In the long run Black Hats work longer and harder, because they are constantly having to find new fixes for the messes they get themselves into. Not worth it, IMHO.
Tags: affiliate marketing, Black Hat, Google, Google changes, John Jonas, Scams, SEO, SEO strategy, Spam
