Marketing businesses online generally means a business website. Finding that website is often the work of online searches through Google and other search engines. That’s where SEO comes in – search engine optimization.
This week, Google announced that they are cracking down on a popular tactic, Site Reputation Abuse, making it essentially useless for many sites and business owners.
A Brief Understanding of SEO for Business Owners
SEO is always a hot topic among online marketers. There are typically two branches of SEO – on-site SEO, where you do things like write about keywords, optimize your titles, have a good site structure, and a whole lot more that is completely within your control. Then there’s off-site SEO, where you do things to get your site to rank better but it is from things outside your website.
Backlinks are the Primary Driver of Off-Site SEO
One of the big off-site SEO tactics is to get backlinks from other sites. This is where another site links to you. Google’s algorithm says “this site trusts you… I’m going to give you a point for every backlink.” And then with enough points, you’d get a boost in the search rankings, putting your site above all others.
Back in the earlier days of search, this meant you would do things like leave comments on pages where your link would be included within the comment. That’s why websites get so much “comment spam” still to this day.
But Google isn’t dumb (well, in general). They know that these links were often not quality links. So they basically said “those links don’t matter” and tweaked their algorithm to ignore them. That’s why it is no longer recommended that you spend time commenting on other people’s pages.
In recent years, the key has been getting backlinks in the main content portion of the page. For example, if I was to link right here to your site, that would be a much better backlink than one in the comments.
Site Reputation
The thing about these in-content backlinks though is that we all know that not every website is created equal. For example, the major news outlets are typically seen as better than a hobby blog. A government or school/education website is usually seen as higher quality than other sites. This is where Domain Authority (DA) comes in.
Going back to the idea of points for every backlink, Google would also take into consideration the Domain Authority – or the reputation of the site when giving out their points. Maybe they’d give you a bonus point if it was a really good website. Or they’d penalize you for bad websites (like link farms or those that serve up malware — which is why you have to keep your own site secure).
Big sites know this. That’s why in recent years a new tactic showed up where they essentially monetized their DA by allowing you to publish on their sites. For a fee, of course.
Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy
Google is always trying to make their search better. They want to make the results more and more relevant to the user.
Side note: Admittedly, sometimes they miss the mark. If you’ve noticed that the results no longer lead to helpful blog posts and instead to years old forums, this is why. In the past year plus, Google has de-emphasized things like blogs. They called it the “Helpful Content Update” but it hasn’t been all that helpful recently. Now back to the main point…
That’s where yesterday’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy update comes in. They said that this tactic of using a high-ranking website to rank better than it could on another website leads to a bad search experience. You see this a lot with CNN and Forbes who have whole sections that are just affiliate marketing “stories” trying to get you to buy stuff.
But Forbes, in particular, has a whole section that is for experts, advisors, and business owners to talk themselves up and showcase their expertise. And, of course, get a backlink to their own sites.
Google Takes Manual Action Against Sites
There are two ways that Google tweaks the sites that show up in the search results. The first and primary way is through the algorithm. It’s all automated based on rules that they set on how the search results are shown. The other way is through manual action.
Manual actions are where humans get involved. They can override the algorithm in certain ways. In this case, the human reviewer says that these sites or portions thereof are not compliant with the Google spam policies and have either de-ranked or in this case de-indexed the pages as a whole. And Google is removing the points you would receive for those backlinks from their site to yours.
Thus, when you go to search, these advisor articles aren’t going to show up anymore. You’ll still get the primary news articles from Forbes, but their pay-to-play advisor articles aren’t going to have the same effect that they once had.
Cool Story, Bro. Why Do I Care About Site Reputation Abuse as a Business Owner?
That was a lot of history and backstory to get to the point of all of this. And the point is that those Forbes Business Council or Advisor articles just aren’t going to give you the same impact that they once did. They are not going to help your off-site SEO by getting quality backlinks.
While I don’t normally talk about marketing efforts here at Springboard Legal, I specifically wanted to highlight this change. One of the things that I (Kimberly) do as a Fractional Chief Financial Officer is look at what the Return on Investment (ROI) is for marketing efforts. I break down each of the things that a company spends money on for marketing to see if they are a good choice to continue, while also understanding that some spend is for brand reputation purposes or takes a long time to payoff.
But with this change by Google, those paid “advisor” types of marketing pieces are just not going to give you a great ROI. They are being de-indexed (removed) from all search results and not giving you the domain authority boost that they did in the past.
If you are considering one of these types of efforts, you’ll want to carefully consider it in light of these changes by Google.
Especially you lawyers and other professionals out there that joined the Forbes Business Council or similar groups. You can probably save your $5,000 a year by dropping this membership. Or if you are getting benefits beyond the published articles and backlinks, it may be worth keeping. But definitely not for the SEO juice anymore.
I Want More Insights Like This To Help My Business!
Have I ever mentioned how my job as your Fractional CFO goes way beyond the P&L? Or as a Fractional General Counsel is goes way beyond the law?
I look to find effective solutions using finance and legal to help you grow your business. Staying on top of this type of change in the business world is part of my job as your trusted advisor.
Let’s chat at how Springboard Legal can help your business!