As affiliates we all know that at the end of the day we need links with the key phrases we want to rank in our anchor text. The more competitive the key phrase, then the more links we require. Yes it is as simple as that! Even a page with poor on-page seo can rank highly if the page has enough links.
Over the last few months though, I’m starting to see changes. Some sites are ranking highly with mainly internal links. There is no doubt that big portal brand type sites have more power than ever before. On the flip side I have also seen many exact match domains ranking far better than ever before plus I have also seen pages ranking well with mainly spam links.
It is clear to me that the Google Algorithm is going through major changes, perhaps since Caffeine was introduced. Many feel that some filters are not yet in place within Caffeine, hence pages with mainly spam links ranking highly. I agree with this theory as I have seen some of my test sites regain decent rankings since Caffeine was introduced. These sites were heavily penalised prior to Caffeine being rolled out.
Many have also noticed Google’s current weaknesses and are busy exploiting the spam links loophole. You can purchase a blog harvester script for under $50 which will harvest tens of thousands of blogs that allow comments to be posted in minutes. For the around the same price you can purchase a blog comments poster that will auto submit to your harvest list. In my opinion though building spam links to your site is a terrible idea. Yes in the short term you may well indeed gain rankings but in the long term you will kill your sites. Those who you take rankings from are not going to be happy, so you will stand a high chance of being reported to Google. Many affiliate programs state in their terms and conditions that they will not tolerant affiliates that resort to spamming, so you may even lose your affiliate accounts. Google is sure to resolve the spamming loophole so the chances of your sites receiving a long term penalty are extremely high in the long term.
If you intend to be a gambling affiliate for the long term then I strongly believe you need quality sites. I have said time and time again that affiliates should build big brand type sites. You need sites that are “sticky”, by which I mean sites that retain visitors for more than just a few seconds. I believe that “sticky” sites do indeed get a ranking boost from Google which would explain why a site I launched in May this year is doing far better than I expected.
Google may well be a little messed up at the present time but you can bet your last dollar that they will sort things out.
Don’t be tempted by the dark side!
