Google Depenalization - Steps 1 to 3
I’ve taken the first steps to getting Google to depenalize this blog. They were:
- Removed text link ads. I had some text link ads sprinked in a few places. It made me a bit of money, but not enough to offset the penalization IMHO. I’ve disabled the ads and removed this site from the ad marketplace entirely.
- Turned off comments on older posts. I installed the Comment Timeout plugin to disable commenting on posts older than 15 days. The plugin is pretty flexible, it lets you keep active posts open for longer as long as commenting is occurring.
- Went through and cleaned up ALL existing comments. This took a while, but I went through all the comments on this blog and removed the few spammy ones that had managed to squeak past both Akismet and me. BTW, I’ve concluded that Chuck Brown leaves the longest, densest, most insightful comments!
The next step is to run through the blog’s content and put “nofollow” on any disreputable and/or affiliate links. That will definitely take a while.
My goal with this is to not only restore the site’s natural search engine rankings but also to give contributors the proper PR boost they deserve, otherwise what’s the point of having a “dofollow” blog? Right now, though, I don’t think any PR is being passed to the other sites.
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July 11, 2008 | Filed Under AdSense
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10 Responses to “Google Depenalization - Steps 1 to 3”
Doesn’t seem fair, does it? I love Google on many levels, and hate them on a few. But it’s so hard to keep up with every little thing. I’ve never heard that leaving comments open on older posts is a bad thing. I have several do-follow blogs now and I have left them all wide open. Of course, this mean a lot of spam, but I’m living with it. I still don’t let any junk get through since I’m set up for manual approval on everything.
And I’m really uncomfortable selling text ads…unless they have the no-follow attribute in place. I won’t be selling any new ads without that.
However, I will admit that I still buy links now and again, in various forms. Why? When trying to get my second biggest site ranked (and this is truly an excellent site…if not the very best in the genre, then certainly in the top 5), I look at the top-ranked site for the top keyword phrase…and they have 11,100 backlinks according to Yahoo (564 according to G). There’s NO WAY those 11K are organic backlinks. I have no chance of competing if I sit and wait for organic backlinks…although I do get a nice stream of them on an ongoing basis. I HATE having to spend time trying to get ranked instead of focusing on development of new content. But until the search engines get it together and find a way to rank sites based on merit instead of whatever manipulation critera gets around their filters…I will have to play the game to some degree as well. Maybe someday…
It’s certainly a pain, that’s for sure. I think the text link ads are the main cause of my pain, but I’m not sure of course… won’t know until I get some response back on my reinclusion request.
I agree with your comments about competing with the top sites… there are so many sites out there that get links back to them through paid means it’s hard for new sites to get ranked in the top 10. You end up being forced to try to get links back in a similar fashion….
Eric
BTW, Chuck, keeping your blogs on full moderation is probably a good idea for “dofollow”. I should probably revert back to that model myself, which would triply ensure that no spammy comments make it in. It doesn’t lend itself to extended, immediate discussions, though, which is why I’ve avoided it… but maybe that’s not worth it anymore…
sorry to be so dumb, but what do you mean by ‘text link ads’?
do you mean by that company text-link-ads [DOT... you know]?
Or do you mean something else? doesn’t google adsense itself provide text link ads? what about things like for CJ products/advertisers — is that also verboten now?
I thought you could recommend something and send someone to a product without being penalized — or is it actually the opposite?
I.e, is google penalizing everyone who dares to be an affiliate for anyone/any program OTHER than google?
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So much for the newbie to learn about blogging and Google, glad to have come by your site. I will take a few of your suggestions and put them in place and see how it all pans out and will let you know the outcome.
Respectfully,
Dr Saxe
I am interested if you can explain the rationale behind these three actions?
Link text ads means including Adsense itself, why shall Google penalize her own advertising tools?
I believe point (2) and (3) are due to spamming or irrelevant comments. Else I can’t see why an active blog post with a lot of comments will jeopardize its standing in search engines.
Google doesn’t want paid links messing with PageRank, so paid links need to be “nofollow” or else generated dynamically through JavaScript.
As for the comments, those steps were taken to ensure that no links to bad places make their way into this blog. An active blog can be hard to monitor that way, that’s all.
Eric
I never understood why Google penalizes webmasters who sell links. In that way, somehow, Google places itself in a position of a market monopolist.
Anyway, thank you for this very useful post.
Regards,
Bob
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