Art Of Money

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I received an email from Text Link Ads a couple days ago telling me that I had to update my affiliate links to their new ones. Fair enough, but then I noticed that the new ones were being run through the “tinyurl.com” service.

Here’s my new beautiful affiliate link: http://tinyurl.com/2twhrb

Very weird, I thought….why would they completely give away their brand and have their entire system rely on a third party website (that’s a major business dependency and a huge risk point).

Then the answer became obvious…Text Link Ads is going underground in response to Matt Cutts and Google’s basically declaring war against paid links. Here’s more background than you’re ever going to read:

1. SES Paid Link Presentation
2. SEOmoz | The Paid Links Debate Rages On - SES San Jose 2007
3. Are Paid Links Evil: SES, San Jose 2007 » Unofficial SEO Blog
4. Bruceclay.com - Are Paid Links Evil?

At first I was ready to wave an angry flag about how Google was abusing their power and spreading fear and paranoia in an effort to make webmasters “be good” so their job as a search engine would be easier.

Then I read this excellent post from John Andrews called Understanding the Google and I actually began to see things a little bit differently. 

Matt Cutts communicated very clearly that Google wants to see more of the kind of content that drives adoption of the web. Google is a carrot and stick company, as we all know too well. The stick goes to paid links. The carrot goes to good content. For those who weren’t there, I’ll recap.

The session was about purchased back links, and why Google says they are bad. One of the complaining panelists asked why Google values links earned by a funny video but devalues links that are bought. Specifically, if a real estate guy posts a funny video on the politics of the search marketing industry, and earns a collection of backlinks, why do those back links count when they are off-topic and have nothing to do with real estate? That was a good question. And there was a good answer. Matt answered that the funny video was creative, was unique, and added something to the web, but the paid links did not. Did you hear that?

Google is talking. Are you listening?

I think that when you live in a dictatorial society, and that’s what life as a webmaster these days certainly is…with Google being the dictator, it is easy to assume the dictator is evil and has only his best interest in mind. After all that’s how we would all behave if we had almost absolute power but what if the dictator really is wise and benevolent…what then?

Just something to think about, I really liked John’s refreshing take on the story and I find that I enjoy believing in the goodness of playing in alignment with the dictator as opposed to fearing where the next shoe will drop.

- Jon Symons

PS. Want a blog SEO tip? …notice how John’s individual post pages do not have sidebars or even menus or categories. Each post has a link to the next and previous, a link to the home page, and his “about page” and a link to the feed at the bottom of the page. That’s it. From what I’m learning at Theme Zoom this is the correct why to setup a page for maximum SEO benefit. I’ve been craving to “go lean” with my theme and I think I’ll borrow a few ideas from John’s site.