Archive for May, 2005
Next Entries »Blog and Ping/Content Controversy
Sunday, May 1st, 2005Hi all!
I usually don’t get a “soap box” attitude about anything.
I have a question for you though….
Would you rather search for some something in a search engine, and have REAL informative content come up, or just a bunch of jibberish?
What? Did you say that was a stupid question?
You know, I thought so too.
Then WHY in the world would people be selling software that allows webmasters to automatically post jibberish?
Because they want to help those webmasters get ranked higher in search engines? Maybe…
Because they want to make money off the latest and greatest fad? Now that sounds more likely…
I’ve been trying to figure this all out for the last week. I just don’t understand it….
I’m going to be posting different view on the subject here from different people who are active in many things online. I’d love to hear what all of you think about this, and what might come of it in the future.
Paul Short did a really good job of summing this whole thing up. I am a HUGE fan of Paul. This guy really knows his stuff, and when he speaks, I am all ears. Read his post at:
http://www.ebizreporter.com/arc/2005/04/im_not_mad_at_a.html
T.L. Pakii Pierce from http://blogforfunandprofit.blogware.com/blog Also has a lot to say about this subject.
http://blogforfunandprofit.blogware.com/blog/_trackback/612590
Everyone needs to read these two posts if you read nothing else about this subject. These two are the go to guys on seo and blogging. I have learned more from both of them than I have from ANY self proclaimed “guru”.
Here’s a forum post from Andy Henry. It’s a private forum, so I can’t give the link, but I wanted to post it because Andy shows the bad and the good side of these methods.
Posted - 05/01/2005 : 08:31:37
——————————————————————————–Hi Liz,
These tools are really just supplying a demand that there is in the market right now.
As you know, there are lots of benefits to using blogs and they’re becoming increasingly popular.
I’ve always advocated the creation of decent content sites, but I like to stay up on the latest strategies, so I always check out things like this.
Here’s my take on the automated B&P tools.
They’re a tool which like most others are all about speeding things up.
The main purpose they serve is in getting your pages indexed quickly and comprehensively in the search engines.
As you also probably know, there’s a hundred and one ways to get your site indexed and some are free, some you pay for, some are quick, some you have to wait for etc..
Normally, there’s a correlation between expensive and quick - i.e if you want to done quick, you’ll have to pay, or pay more.
For most people the blog and ping technique is not relevant at all and they will go ahead and build their content-rich site, and then start the ongoing process of building inbound links.
For the majority of people, creating useful content in a market they’ve researched, and finding useful products and services to make their visitors aware of, is a sound model. How quickly your pages are found in the search engines is not really a worry, and you know they’ll get found because you’re getting links in to your site and you may even have a site map to ensure all of your pages get found ok by the bots.
That’s fine.
However, for some people - the rules are slightly different and they’re not interested in the visitors for anything other than a source of clicks on Adsense ads.
For these people, they may well be playing with ‘dubious’ strategies which are frowned upon by the search engines. They know that they can quickly and easily create pages that people will find, but they also know that there’s a good chance that the tactics they use will get those sites banned after a few months.
For these people, the speed that their pages get indexed directly relates to how much money (and how quickly they make it) they earn from each site.
They’re not bothered about the site being banned because they’ll have made thousands more by the time it happens.
So, you can easily see why for those people - when faced with the choice of paying for a PR7 or 8 link, or using an automated B&P tool in order to get indexed quickly, the B&P tool suddenly becomes appealing.
For myself, I like to test out any tools that are around, and see what strategies work, if for no other reason than to be able to offer sensible advice based on experience rather than conjecture, so I’ve tried several of these tools.
Since I almost always use a content management system to build sites these days, I occasionally setup a blog and B&P any new sites to make sure that Yahoo, MSN, and Google find the site within the first 24 hours. I don’t normally bother with every page (as I always have a linking campaign strategy and I’m not in a hurry - although I outsource it so that it’s not MY time spent doing it).
As for the ethics/morals of these things - I don’t have any moral objections to people using whatever they feel helps their business and doesn’t directly harm anyone else.
When it comes to the SEs, we’re all playing a gambling game and are totally at their mercy.
I never rely solely on search engines for any site.
When you consider that the whole foundation of search engine profitability is based on using other peoples content and making money from advertising, I can imagine why some people don’t see any problem in using a similar model to make money online.
It’s not where I spend most of my time, but who am I to judge anyone else?
Regards,
AndyH
You can visit Andy’s blog over at www.moneyandmotivation.com/blog
I’ll post more information here as I find it. This is a very hot topic, and in my opinion could make things screwy for a lot of us online.
Liz
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