6 ms·

I'd like to look at it in another way. I've a small blog, one that I love running, it makes barely any money, but for a long time ranked for some pretty good ke

I'd like to look at it in another way. I've a small blog, one that I love running, it makes barely any money, but for a long time ranked for some pretty good keywords. Anyways, a few of my articles blew up on hackernews, reddit, even on twitter (with smashing magazine tweeting it out), as a result, everyone and their grandma linked back to my articles when they discussed the topic it targeted. What happened then? I looked at my link profile and I've a few thousand "dangerous looking" backlinks. All from people that had low-ranking blogs or 0 ranking blogs, or that used Tumblr's share feature (which blogged a link and an excerpt) to "bookmark" my site. And some from people that FULLY reblogged my site without permission. Meaning that they took the entire article. They weren't shady either, they had a big banner that said: "I repost articles for my own use to read in case the site goes down" or something to that effect with, obviously, a link back to my site as a source. What happened? Penguin, Panda, and all the other animals killed most of these sites. Even considered some of them spam. Now, I have a "dirty" link profile through no fault of my own, using no "shady" tactics. This just pisses me off to no ends. I never "link built" anything, the links just happened naturally. Yet, I get penalized for it. It's fucking shitty. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

jacquesm 12y ago
Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? If someone copies your content, go after them, sue them if you have to and out them. Make sure that they realize that if they copy your content that it will hurt. I have absolutely no idea what if any backlinks I have to my blog, nor could I care less about it. People will read it, or maybe they won't, like yours it id non-commercial, a way for me to practice my writing and to sometimes tell stories and share those with others. It does not make me money and it costs me time. What google makes of it is not my problem. I would not think of paying someone to increase the visibility and it took many years to get to any kind of exposure at all.
- vectorpush 12y ago
  Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? Well, besides the fact that it's his prerogative to care about his blog's search ranking, I think the implications are pretty obvious; he's suggesting that if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone, including someone who does have a commercial interest.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    I miss the bit where we have a right to traffic. That's maybe naive, but just like I don't expect customers to beat their way to my door through some act of magic I don't expect visitors to come to my website either. If I want them there I have to go and engage them. That's marketing, building customer relationships and so on. Hard work, and definitely not easy money but it is very hard to assail that from the position of a competitor or even Google. Of course it could happen to anybody. That is the one reason why you should never ever run a business that is dependent on a single source for customers. If you do that you don't have a business at all, just an extension of the ecosystem owned by someone else at whose whim you live or die.
    - vectorpush 12y ago
      I get what you're saying, but as far as business goes, it's just not very pragmatic to ignore the monumental impact that google can have on your hits/conversions. Your competitors certainly aren't ignoring it.
    - jshen 12y ago
      I'm really shocked by your naive arrogance in this thread. You can't see beyond your own niche and use case. There is an enormous space of good content where the best method of finding that content is searching the internet, not having a previous relationship with a client/customer. In an earlier comment I gave one of many examples, medical conditions that people don't care about until they get it, and at that point they turn to google to search for information. Google is effectively a monopoly on this front, and at some level should have an obligation to the common good.
- DontBeADick 12y ago
  Are you really trying to pretend that you don't care if people read your blog even though you link to it here all the time? If there were an olympic event for mental gymnastics, you'd be dominating right now.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    > Are you really trying to pretend that you don't care if people read your blog even though you link to it here all the time? I checked to see if you have a point here, I submitted exactly one link out of the last 30 or so to my own site, the rest have been posted by others. If we go back 60 links that's approximately 300 days and there are still only 2 links, and both of these were in response to HN content, either articles or comment threads. Suggest you re-read my original comment and then take your own nick as advice.
    - DontBeADick 12y ago
      Regardless of how many links you've posted (it's also in your profile), the point still stands: You want people to read your blog. The simple fact that you have a public blog on the internet demonstrates that, even if you never posted a link to it. If you truly don't care about "what Google makes of it", why not block Google with your robots.txt file? I'll tell you why: Because you do care, but you're pretending not to for the sake of arguing with a bunch of people on the internet. And the position you've taken in that argument appears to be based largely on spite rather than reason. We get it, you don't like SEOs, but these changes clearly hurt innocent people who know little or nothing about SEO.
      - Isofarro 12y ago
        "We get it, you don't like SEOs, but these changes clearly hurt innocent people who know little or nothing about SEO." These changes are clearly hurting SEOers who practice massive link building regardless of quality, too. That is a good thing.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        Not caring about google includes not caring about whether they do or do not send traffic to my site. As you are no doubt aware because you have done so much work to research this there is no advertising on the blog. If people find it through google I'm perfectly ok with that. But I won't bend over backwards to make sure more people will find it, nor will I take action to ensure less people will find it. The rest of your comment seems to presume you know me better than I know myself so I'll leave that without a reply, but I'm happy that we have established that your original comment was a load of nonsense.
- mfjordvald 12y ago
  As someone with a blog, the size of my audience matters a lot, knowing I actually have people reading what I put out there matters a lot. Having people interact with my content or tell me it helped them sure does motivate me as well. If I lost my search engine traffic that'd account for half of my daily traffic. (only around 500-600 people so not huge) If that happened that'd be pretty demotivating.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    > If that happened that'd be pretty demotivating. Ok, that's a good reason. But when you started blogging you did not have any visitors at all, you must have done it for some other reason. And when you have 1200 visitors (say a year from now) per day and you lose half your visitors per day (because they are search engine traffic) and you're back to 600 you could still argue that you lost your motivation. How many visitors come to your site is just a number. What you get out of the engagement is the key imo, and in that sense 50 people that you engage with are worth 500 that just visit and look at what you write.
    - graeme 12y ago
      >But when you started blogging you did not have any visitors at all, you must have done it for some other reason. Or maybe they expected that if they blogged, they would get visitors? It's pretty well known that if you put good stuff on the internet, people will find it, including through google. >And when you have 1200 visitors (say a year from now) per day and you lose half your visitors per day (because they are search engine traffic) and you're back to 600 you could still argue that you lost your motivation. Yes, it's always true that it hurts to lose a source of traffic. I don't follow your point. >How many visitors come to your site is just a number. What you get out of th engagement is the key imo, and in that sense 50 people that you engage with are worth 500 that just visit and look at what you write. This is true, but you seem to be assuming that google visitors are less engaged. Why? My time on site is highest for organic search traffic.
- ProAm 12y ago
  | Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? Because networking is everything in life. Maintaining a good reputation, providing valuable information may not pay off immediately today, but you never know what you'll need tomorrow. If you are penalized today, you have no chance at tomorrow.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    But google traffic is not networking. And a link profile is not networking either, that's just a bunch of bits. Networking is meeting and engaging people.
    - ProAm 12y ago
      You can certainly build a network by meeting people via your blog content. If they can't find it, you'll never engage with those people.
Isofarro 12y ago
"I never "link built" anything, the links just happened naturally" Great. that's what's supposed to happen, links accumulate naturally. (I'm deliberately ignoring the inconsistencies in your story, BTW ;-) "Yet, I get penalized for it. It's fucking shitty" How are you being penalised? Did you get a warning of bad links in your Google Webmaster dashboard? If not, how do you know? Links accumulate, and some disappear over time. That's natural on the web. If Google taking out a bunch of low quality sites affects your own site, that only means the value of your site is significantly positively affected by these sites, so your site was over-ranked. Now it's placed closer to where it should be. Being linked to by big traffic sources also brings attention from less known sources - that's quite normal.
leephillips 12y ago
Imagine how much worse you'd feel if you found out that someone who doesn't like you did this to you deliberately. Google makes this too easy. Through ill-considered changes to their algorithms they've provided a new weapon for the unscrupulous. I've noticed a similar thing with my own personal site. For years it was on Google's front page for a bunch of things (niche topics that wouldn't translate into money). So was my name, which really surprised me. Lately, as it's gotten more links to it from higher profile sources, including some national magazine sites, it's rapidly fallen back in Google's listings.
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
I don't fully understand this. How did you look at your link profile? Is this a blessed google thing ? And how do you know your drop in rankings is down to this back link issue - what if other people have written better stuff (apologies !)
- antjanus 12y ago
  There are several tools out there which scan your backlink profile and give you a report on your backlinks. They usually scan the sites and give you a "danger" rating for those sites. I can't remember the name of the tool I used but I had nearly 20K links in the "danger" rating. Half of them were super-spammy sites that simply repost what you already posted, the other half was a mix of bloggers (good and bad). Usually you can tell that it's because of that issue when a major penguin update goes out, and your rank suddenly drops. To confirm it, you'd disavow the bad links (so, the link farms that link back to you, the reposters, reblogers, spammy affiliate sites etc.) and see how it affects your ranking and exposure. It worked VERY well for me once everything was said and done.

jacquesm 12y ago

Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? If someone copies your content, go after them, sue them if you have to and out them. Make sure that they realize that if they copy your content that it will hurt. I have absolutely no idea what if any backlinks I have to my blog, nor could I care less about it. People will read it, or maybe they won't, like yours it id non-commercial, a way for me to practice my writing and to sometimes tell stories and share those with others. It does not make me money and it costs me time. What google makes of it is not my problem. I would not think of paying someone to increase the visibility and it took many years to get to any kind of exposure at all.

vectorpush 12y ago
Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? Well, besides the fact that it's his prerogative to care about his blog's search ranking, I think the implications are pretty obvious; he's suggesting that if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone, including someone who does have a commercial interest.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  I miss the bit where we have a right to traffic. That's maybe naive, but just like I don't expect customers to beat their way to my door through some act of magic I don't expect visitors to come to my website either. If I want them there I have to go and engage them. That's marketing, building customer relationships and so on. Hard work, and definitely not easy money but it is very hard to assail that from the position of a competitor or even Google. Of course it could happen to anybody. That is the one reason why you should never ever run a business that is dependent on a single source for customers. If you do that you don't have a business at all, just an extension of the ecosystem owned by someone else at whose whim you live or die.
  - vectorpush 12y ago
    I get what you're saying, but as far as business goes, it's just not very pragmatic to ignore the monumental impact that google can have on your hits/conversions. Your competitors certainly aren't ignoring it.
  - jshen 12y ago
    I'm really shocked by your naive arrogance in this thread. You can't see beyond your own niche and use case. There is an enormous space of good content where the best method of finding that content is searching the internet, not having a previous relationship with a client/customer. In an earlier comment I gave one of many examples, medical conditions that people don't care about until they get it, and at that point they turn to google to search for information. Google is effectively a monopoly on this front, and at some level should have an obligation to the common good.
DontBeADick 12y ago
Are you really trying to pretend that you don't care if people read your blog even though you link to it here all the time? If there were an olympic event for mental gymnastics, you'd be dominating right now.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  > Are you really trying to pretend that you don't care if people read your blog even though you link to it here all the time? I checked to see if you have a point here, I submitted exactly one link out of the last 30 or so to my own site, the rest have been posted by others. If we go back 60 links that's approximately 300 days and there are still only 2 links, and both of these were in response to HN content, either articles or comment threads. Suggest you re-read my original comment and then take your own nick as advice.
  - DontBeADick 12y ago
    Regardless of how many links you've posted (it's also in your profile), the point still stands: You want people to read your blog. The simple fact that you have a public blog on the internet demonstrates that, even if you never posted a link to it. If you truly don't care about "what Google makes of it", why not block Google with your robots.txt file? I'll tell you why: Because you do care, but you're pretending not to for the sake of arguing with a bunch of people on the internet. And the position you've taken in that argument appears to be based largely on spite rather than reason. We get it, you don't like SEOs, but these changes clearly hurt innocent people who know little or nothing about SEO.
    - Isofarro 12y ago
      "We get it, you don't like SEOs, but these changes clearly hurt innocent people who know little or nothing about SEO." These changes are clearly hurting SEOers who practice massive link building regardless of quality, too. That is a good thing.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Not caring about google includes not caring about whether they do or do not send traffic to my site. As you are no doubt aware because you have done so much work to research this there is no advertising on the blog. If people find it through google I'm perfectly ok with that. But I won't bend over backwards to make sure more people will find it, nor will I take action to ensure less people will find it. The rest of your comment seems to presume you know me better than I know myself so I'll leave that without a reply, but I'm happy that we have established that your original comment was a load of nonsense.
mfjordvald 12y ago
As someone with a blog, the size of my audience matters a lot, knowing I actually have people reading what I put out there matters a lot. Having people interact with my content or tell me it helped them sure does motivate me as well. If I lost my search engine traffic that'd account for half of my daily traffic. (only around 500-600 people so not huge) If that happened that'd be pretty demotivating.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  > If that happened that'd be pretty demotivating. Ok, that's a good reason. But when you started blogging you did not have any visitors at all, you must have done it for some other reason. And when you have 1200 visitors (say a year from now) per day and you lose half your visitors per day (because they are search engine traffic) and you're back to 600 you could still argue that you lost your motivation. How many visitors come to your site is just a number. What you get out of the engagement is the key imo, and in that sense 50 people that you engage with are worth 500 that just visit and look at what you write.
  - graeme 12y ago
    >But when you started blogging you did not have any visitors at all, you must have done it for some other reason. Or maybe they expected that if they blogged, they would get visitors? It's pretty well known that if you put good stuff on the internet, people will find it, including through google. >And when you have 1200 visitors (say a year from now) per day and you lose half your visitors per day (because they are search engine traffic) and you're back to 600 you could still argue that you lost your motivation. Yes, it's always true that it hurts to lose a source of traffic. I don't follow your point. >How many visitors come to your site is just a number. What you get out of th engagement is the key imo, and in that sense 50 people that you engage with are worth 500 that just visit and look at what you write. This is true, but you seem to be assuming that google visitors are less engaged. Why? My time on site is highest for organic search traffic.
ProAm 12y ago
| Why does it matter so much? That's a blog, and a non-commercial one at that. Why do you care so much what your 'link profile' is? Because networking is everything in life. Maintaining a good reputation, providing valuable information may not pay off immediately today, but you never know what you'll need tomorrow. If you are penalized today, you have no chance at tomorrow.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  But google traffic is not networking. And a link profile is not networking either, that's just a bunch of bits. Networking is meeting and engaging people.
  - ProAm 12y ago
    You can certainly build a network by meeting people via your blog content. If they can't find it, you'll never engage with those people.

Isofarro 12y ago

"I never "link built" anything, the links just happened naturally" Great. that's what's supposed to happen, links accumulate naturally. (I'm deliberately ignoring the inconsistencies in your story, BTW ;-) "Yet, I get penalized for it. It's fucking shitty" How are you being penalised? Did you get a warning of bad links in your Google Webmaster dashboard? If not, how do you know? Links accumulate, and some disappear over time. That's natural on the web. If Google taking out a bunch of low quality sites affects your own site, that only means the value of your site is significantly positively affected by these sites, so your site was over-ranked. Now it's placed closer to where it should be. Being linked to by big traffic sources also brings attention from less known sources - that's quite normal.

leephillips 12y ago

Imagine how much worse you'd feel if you found out that someone who doesn't like you did this to you deliberately. Google makes this too easy. Through ill-considered changes to their algorithms they've provided a new weapon for the unscrupulous. I've noticed a similar thing with my own personal site. For years it was on Google's front page for a bunch of things (niche topics that wouldn't translate into money). So was my name, which really surprised me. Lately, as it's gotten more links to it from higher profile sources, including some national magazine sites, it's rapidly fallen back in Google's listings.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

I don't fully understand this. How did you look at your link profile? Is this a blessed google thing ? And how do you know your drop in rankings is down to this back link issue - what if other people have written better stuff (apologies !)

antjanus 12y ago
There are several tools out there which scan your backlink profile and give you a report on your backlinks. They usually scan the sites and give you a "danger" rating for those sites. I can't remember the name of the tool I used but I had nearly 20K links in the "danger" rating. Half of them were super-spammy sites that simply repost what you already posted, the other half was a mix of bloggers (good and bad). Usually you can tell that it's because of that issue when a major penguin update goes out, and your rank suddenly drops. To confirm it, you'd disavow the bad links (so, the link farms that link back to you, the reposters, reblogers, spammy affiliate sites etc.) and see how it affects your ranking and exposure. It worked VERY well for me once everything was said and done.