As all webmasters know, if your website does not show up on Google, it might as well not exist. This becomes difficult, however, when Google keeps changing the rules. Of course, the search engine gurus have a good reason to do this, because search engine spammers who are out there for nothing more than a quick buck quickly learn how to get past whatever new rules and regulations the search engines put in place. However, for the legitimate webmaster looking to get content out there and make some money at the same time, the constant changes can be extremely frustrating, not to mention time consuming.
One of the things that all webmasters know that they have to do in order to optimize their webpages is get links to their site from other sites. In the eyes of Google in particular, these back links show that you have quality content on your site that others want to see and show to their site visitors. This has led to a process known as link selling, where webmasters allow you to put a link on their website for a small fee. While this sounds like a good plan, Google does not like it! In fact, if you have a site that sells links, you have probably seen or will soon see a significant drop in your PageRank in the next month or so, and your site might even be dropped from Google's search engine altogether.
Will all link selling get you banned? Not necessarily, because the sites that flagged are going to be reviewed by a human, not just a computer, before being penalized. The best way to prevent having your site flagged is to only sell links to sites that are applicable to yours. Check the sites that are asking for links on your site. Make sure that they are valid, informational, and helpful to your users. If Google finds that you have huge link databases with completely irrelevant sites listed, you will be penalized.
So how does this affect those who bought links on other sites? Well, if you have purchased a link on a site that is going to be penalized, the PageRank of that site is going to be lowered. That means the incoming link is not as valuable for you. If you suddenly see a decrease in your PageRank status, you should probably focus on building some organic links.
If you are wondering why Google took this step, stop and think about the world of Google for a moment. Google did not become the most popular search engine accidentally. The search engine has always focused on providing its users with quality content for their searches. As frustrating as it might be for those of you who have e-commerce websites not to be listed on the front page, Google doesn't care. Google wants to have their front-page content be relevant and full of good information for its users. So how can you make it to the front page? By providing good, quality content to your target audience.
In other SEO news, it appears that the MSN search engine is loosing speed quickly. While MSN.com wants to be one of the top three search engines, the August 2007 statistics indicate that it has fallen to number four, after Baidu.com. For those of you who are not familiar with Baidu.com, it is an Asian search engine that is quite popular in Japan. Google is, of course, still number one, followed by Yahoo. MSN is fourth, followed by NHN, eBay, Time Warner, and Ask.com, in that order. So what does this teach the webmaster? When optimizing your site, stick to the rules of Google. It has been and will continue to be the most popular search engine out there.
