The question for today is around backlinking ethics. Search engine rankings mean money, and money is a strong motivator. When that motivation results in creating thousands of pages of garbage content for the purpose of gaining backlinks, you have to ask the question: Is that OK? Do the ends (profit) justify the means? Or, should we always try to make the Internet a better place? We explore that topic, chat with Cliff Ravenscraft, and give a great tool tip and more, all in this episode of the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.
New Show Music
Shout-out to Mike and Izabela at Music Radio Creative. They have tweaked the show music and stingers and taken the whole thing to the next level. I also got a new preamp that I am really digging. It's the Golden Age Project Pre73 MKII Microphone Preamp, and I love it. I hope you like it too.
Reply From Cliff
Last week, I asked Dan Miller about indirect passion, and I used Cliff Ravenscraft as an example. Cliff head that interview and offered a reply. His thoughts on the topics of passion are motivating, so I included them in the episode.
The Ethics Of Backlinking
So, there was recently a post from Glen on ViperChill that talked about how link spam still works despite Google's best efforts. I agree with most of what is in that post, and it aligns well with my own observations.
But the whole thing raises the question, is link-spam OK? I discuss the topic, looking at who should care about link spam and ranking algorithms. I also walk through a bunch of scenarios and discuss what is spam and what is not in the context of the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Tool Tip Of The Week
This week, my tool time is Rollup.me — a very cool tool for managing newsletter subscriptions in your email inbox.
Feedback
Thanks for an awesome audio feedback from The Podcast Profits Show.
Leave Us A Review In iTunes
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To leave a review, just go to latenightim.com/itunes and follow the instructions. Thanks!
Send us your feedback
As always, I'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. Better yet, I’d love to answer your question about Internet marketing on the show. Just drop me a line here on the blog or on the digital recorder at 214-444-8655. Don’t worry, there are no stupid questions. Unless you tell me not to, when you ask a question or leave a comment might even use it on the show.
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Episode 060 Transcript
In this episode of the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast
- We’ll hear direct feedback from Cliff Ravenscraft on the Dan Miller interview,
- We’ll talk about the ethics of spamming the internet for backlinks,
- And I’ll have a fantastic tip for you about a really cool tool that I’m using to get my inbox down to zero.
- All this and more on the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.
Sixty episodes – how great is that? I’m actually quite proud of that. I like big round numbers of podcast episodes. I’ve got a few to catch up with Cliff Ravenscraft, who tells me he’s over 3,000 episodes.
Sixty episodes and there’s no me without you guys, so I appreciate you listening. For those of you that have been with me since Episode 1, and there are some of you, I thank you very much.
This represents the third episode in a row with no annoying multi-week breaks in between. That’s very exciting. I’m back in the studio, I’m away from the recording on the road and the audio quality problems that presents. I’ve got a new preamp rolling here and some new gear, and I have a new compression configuration. I’m still tweaking things, so we’ll see how the sound goes. I’m working on it every week.
As you probably just heard, new show music from the geniuses over at Music Radio Creative. If you do any kind of audio and you need any kind of 60 second promo or a little stinger, or a full up package for podcasting, these guys are awesome. Just head on over to Music Radio Creative and tell them I said hello. I recommend them without reservation, they’re really awesome. You’ll hear some of the other cool stuff that they did throughout the show.
One of the cool things about the guys over at Music Radio Creative is they’re doing something that they love and they’re doing it on the internet. It’s a service business, it’s a big service business, but it started out with Mike and Isabella just kind of doing it. Mike’s an old radio guy and he knew how to do that and he’s turned it into something exciting. I just love working with them. I felt like they got inside my head about what I wanted the show to sound like and really delivered something to take it to the next level. I hope you enjoy the new tweaked up show music as much as I do.
The other thing I wanted to mention today is I’m wanting to do two things. I’m wanting to add two things to the show that I normally do and increase the frequency.
I want to do more interviews. I’ve been working on getting interview candidates lined up and I want to hear your feedback on who you want to hear. Come on over to the feedback hotline and let me know what you think and who you would like to hear. You can leave a comment in the show notes or you can go to a new URL that will take you directly to a place where you can leave feedback, find the show notes, and all that kind of stuff; LateNightPodcast.com.
That’s a lot easier to remember than all this other stuff. If you want to go to LateNightPodcast.com, you can find what you’re looking for, leave feedback, or find stuff that’s mentioned on the show. That’s a work in progress, but go ahead and check it out.
Great show Mark! Great music and love the new infusion of energy!! I agree with Cliff – I think Dan simply misunderstood the question and the follow-up was appreciated.
You or Cliff said “dare to imagine what you may do with your interests”.
I think this actually nails a lot of the backlinking issue. How so? We can both rattle off dozens, maybe hundreds of people making a nice income online by sharing their passion and expertise on a hobby, interest, knowledge or skill. Granted if it is too finite one can become burned out as Cliff eluded too so well. If so, maybe the person could/should simply scale up their topic.
IMO a niche can be too finite, which creates burn-out or an animal slap. Imagine if Cliff’s show were Podcastequipmentanswers.com. He’d be having a tougher time broadening his scope. I think this is true across many spectrums.
Conversely, those I find that have hundreds of micro sites seem to always be re-grouping, or making the bulk of their nice living selling tools, software, etc. Nothing wrong with that – but I call it the Follow the leader burn-out syndrome. At some point, people simply move on because when they try one of the recommendations (link wheels as an example), by the time they get it up and running on 5, 10, or 30 sites – they get a major slap.
Thanks again Mark!
Wow Mark! You outdid yourself on this podcast. The back linking ethics discussion was intense. It really made me consider a lot of angles to what is an important question. I found myself not only debating with myself about whether certain practices were ok or not, but I also learned about some additional methods that I could probably be using but haven’t.
I think that the hardest part of the link building discussion is for new businesses. Due to the way google is set up a new business would never be found if it played 100% by the rules. The way that you start a business, in my very newb opinion, is by developing a community that knows and trusts you and your product. That entails connecting with people on social media, forums, other websites through guest posts or comments. Rambling aside, a new business has to take part in gray and even sometimes black hat tactics in order for them to get their brand found.
While I like the music and think Mike and Isabella do good work, there’s a handful of podcasts that I listen to that are all starting to sound the same from a music/voiceover standpoint.
One thing I liked about your process was that you started talking over the music as you faded it out. Nice touch.
As far as morality and link building, I view it like this. Yes, putting some content out there for the sake of link building is probably not making the internet a better place. But these are mainly sites that are popping up in the top of search results anywhere so how many people are actually reading it.
However, if 100 people reviewed your main site along with the sites in the top of the search results and 90 agreed your content was the best, then you are making the internet a better place by doing what it takes to get that site to the top of the search results. It’s a big gray slippery slope.
MARK! Unroll.me might just save my sanity. Seriously thank you for sharing this tool, it is awesome!
I also thought the discussion on backlinking ethics was very unique and valuable, and you looked at it from a way and presented some arguments that I had never heard before. Thanks for your hard work as always.
Dan Franks
P.S. Love the new music!
Hi Mark. Your podcast brought me to work today on my run/commute. Great discussion. I really like how you walked through the various options along the continuum as you see it.
With regards to asking for reviews/link in return for something, is this not the same as publishers giving away copies of their book for a review? I just got a request this morning from someone looking to give out free copies of their ebook in exchange for an Amazon review.
Anyway, great episode. Loved your non-judgemental style.
I think the best advice is – make the web a better place. Or, in the words of Chris Burres and Charles Lewis of ‘SEO Podcast – Unkown Secrets of Internet Marketing’: “Don’t be a douche”!
http://www.e-webstyle.com/Search-Engine-Optimization-SEO-Podcast.asp
By the way, the bit that gave me goose bumps was your very last comment. Don’t spend so much time doing internet marketing that you miss your kids growing up.
I really love the tool tip which your have given above regarding back linking ethics. It’s essential to have more back links for a website to earn money or even to have a good rank. Few Toronto seo company are trying to help the clients to get a good back links to their sites. Great post.
Regards,
<a href=”http://www.canadianseoagency.com/”>www.canadianseoagency.com</a>
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