Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
In the last few weeks, Google’s been on a rampage again trying to take down blog networks and clean up the search results. The last few weeks have been unique to say the least. Some of the biggest blog networks in existence have been hit hard, some de-indexed completely and others losing thousands of their high Page Rank domains.
So What Are Blog Networks?
Blog networks are as the name suggests, networks of blogs that are used to manipulate search engine rankings. Usually, each network consists of several hundred or thousand high Page Rank domains. As a member/subscriber of a network, you’re allowed to submit spun articles into the system for distribution.
Once you submit a spun article, “unique” variations are then distributed to dozens or even hundreds of blogs in the network. And of course, in each article that gets published, you get a link to your website.
Blog networks have been around for a long time and Google’s sudden actions may put an end to them once and for all.
People use blog networks because they’ve always been a sure fire way to gain top search engine rankings. The problem is most blog networks are barely monitored. Which means they accept spun garbage that makes no sense at all. So when the spun garbage that gets submitted ends up on page 1 of Google, the problem starts.
Google has been fighting off blog networks for a long time. You have to remember Google doesn’t want any unnatural link building full stop. If you do any SEO at all, you may have noticed a warning in Google Webmaster Tools about “unnatural links”.
Anyway, many webmasters rely on blog networks to get their top search engine rankings. Google just doesn’t want them around anymore and unfortunately, they are very easy to spot. Most blog networks are exactly the same. They have a wide set of categories, badly spun content and lots of the blogs are hosted on the same IP addresses.
So Who’s Been Affected?
First and foremost I’ll talk about Build My Rank. Build My Rank was always looked at as the premier blog network. The one blog network that would never get de-indexed because they didn’t accept spun content. BMR if you didn’t know, was a blog network that only accepted 100% unique content.
Every unique article you’d submit into their network would be published on just one of their high page rank domains. Just days ago they announced they were shutting down and refunding all members subscriptions because Google de-indexed a huge percentage of their network.
Another big network to be affected was Authority Link Network. ALN was another highly regarded network to lose several thousand domains overnight. Others…
1. ELN is gone.
2. Linkvana (Elite/SEOLinkvine, too)
3. I hear Blog Blueprint is gone.
4. High PR Society.
5. SEO Nitro gone.
6. Backlink Buddy gone.
7. SEO Link Monster gone.
What This Means?
It means Google is putting a stop to Black Hat SEO, or at least trying to. Blog networks were literally the go to source for link building for most SEOs. Google’s deindexation rampage has caused many users to lose their rankings. It’s simple. When a backlink gets de-indexed, it no longer holds any value.
So if 5000 of your backlinks get de-indexed overnight, your rankings will tank. It’s already happened to countless people around the world and will continue to happen as more networks get de-indexed.
What To Do?
Honestly, I think black hat SEO is screwed. It’s always been screwed and anyone who tells you differently is just ignorant. The new SEOs will see this as a slight hick up and continue to use blog networks. However after a while of being shat on by master Google, you’ll realize that it’s just not worth it.
You are in fact much better off sticking to the rules, being Google’s bitch and doing white hat SEO. As Google won’t stop fighting black hatters. Sure, you can continue to adapt to new changes and alter your black hat tactics. But ultimately Google wins and what Google says goes.
So here is my practical advice…
You were never meant to do this alone
Reading this changes nothing. Doing it with people who show up changes everything. That is the whole difference between the people who transform and the people who keep starting over.
Start free →If you’ve been using blog networks, continue to use them. Keep using more of them. As one gets de-indexed, use another. If the blog networks you’ve been using have been de-indexed, consider removing your backlinks from the de-indexed pages and getting back your submitted content.
If Google keeps de-indexing blog networks, you may want to consider not using them. But let’s hope it doesn’t get to that point.
Next focus on more white hat SEO. Manually build web 2.0 properties with 100% unique content, manually submit articles to high Page Rank article directories. Manually write and submit guest posts to the relevant blogs in your niche.
While at the same time, improve your spins. Write unique articles, manually spin them, make sure the variations read well and then mass distribute them… but slowly. That’s the way forward.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
Comments
Allan Bisset March 26, 2012 at 5:38 am
BMR gone? Good. I have always maintained that the best acronym to use in an industry awash with them is WDSTBW – Write Decent Shit to Begin With! Many of these “blog networks” took stuff that was appallingly badly written and didn’t deserve to be seen, let alone read or indexed. Use manual methods to get out genuinely unique quality articles and spend some time on doing the same for your own company blog to turn it into a genuinely informative resource. The heart of that is not churning out facile, vacuous rubbish.
Adam March 27, 2012 at 9:13 pm
Hey Dave, thanks for the info. What do you think about Unique Article Wizard? Do you think they will be affected as well?
Allan Bisset March 26, 2012 at 5:38 am
BMR gone? Good. I have always maintained that the best acronym to use in an industry awash with them is WDSTBW – Write Decent Shit to Begin With! Many of these “blog networks” took stuff that was appallingly badly written and didn’t deserve to be seen, let alone read or indexed. Use manual methods to get out genuinely unique quality articles and spend some time on doing the same for your own company blog to turn it into a genuinely informative resource. The heart of that is not churning out facile, vacuous rubbish.
Adam March 27, 2012 at 9:13 pm
Hey Dave, thanks for the info. What do you think about Unique Article Wizard? Do you think they will be affected as well?
Three posts a day. One email a day.
Everything I publish, in one short daily email. Real numbers, no hype, unsubscribe in one click.
Come do the work with people who show up
Not another course you finish alone and forget. A community that is there the next morning, and the one after that. Free, forever. About a minute to join, then come do the first challenge with us.
Join the community, free →
Most of the people I’ve watched lean on this kind of link building for years already had shaky businesses underneath it. Losing the backlinks is what shows up first, but it wasn’t really the network holding them up in the first place.
How many domains, over what window, is ‘thousands’ actually referring to? The post names seven networks gone but gives no dates for most of them.
Third one of these I’ve watched. The network claims theirs is clean, right until it’s not. Same acronym problem every decade.
Yuki, none of this touches me directly — nobody in my town has ever heard of a blog network, we just tell people things over the counter. But watching this collapse, I’d guess the manual guest-post advice at the end holds up fine for a feed store site same as a bigger one. Only guest post I could realistically write is something for the county extension office newsletter or the co-op’s mailing list, and that’s about as far from a spun-content network as you can get — one real article, one real editor, one real link, done maybe twice a year instead of by the thousand. Slower than anything this post is describing, but nothing Google’s ever going to come after.
I have never used a network of this kind, mostly because I did not know they existed until reading this, but the whole account has left me grateful that the slower, manual route I chose by default turns out to be the only one still standing.
Arthur, I wonder the same thing but from Turkey side — is this deindexing wave a global action by Google, or mostly affecting English language networks? My distribution business site is in Turkish and I have not noticed any change yet, so perhaps we are simply behind the sweep.
One correction: an ‘unnatural links’ warning in Webmaster Tools isn’t the same signal as deindexation — the post treats them as one continuous punishment when they’re actually two separate enforcement actions. Worth knowing which one you’re looking at if you ever get either.
Sorry if this is a basic question, but if my backlinks are sitting on one of these networks that got taken down, is there anything I actually need to go and do myself, or does it just quietly stop counting toward anything?