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Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Link to ShoeMoney Internet Marketing Blog

Why do some SEO bloggers get away with selling links?

Posted: 13 Sep 2012 07:39 AM PDT

Google makes it pretty clear – buy links and it could get your site banned.  And numerous site owners who have done just that have faced the wrath of Google's banhammer.  Google wants you not to sell links to manipulate PageRank, or if you do, add a nice and tidy little "nofollow" tag to the links or make it a redirecting link with the redirect link blocked via robots.txt.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

  • Adding a rel=”nofollow”  attribute to the <a> tag
  • Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

From the Google Webmaster Tools answer about Paid Links

So why is it that some SEOs who are selling links as "sponsors" have been given a free pass by Google to be spammy and sell links?  And what kind of example is it setting for learning webmasters to see their favorite SEO blogs selling links and getting away with it?

Take SERoundtable for example.  Barry Schwartz has been selling links for years – and has boasted about not putting a nofollow tag on any of the links he sells.  He also claims he IS penalized, but anyone doing any SEO related searches for any newsy SEO story will always see Barry and SERoundtable front and center.

As you can see, I am making a conscious decision to leave the paid links here despite the PageRank and ranking penalty. Why?

  • I had those links there prior to Google’s paid links guideline
  • I always clearly labeled them as paid links for humans to see
  • Google reads this blog, they know about the paid links and I know they discredit them
  • I am stupid
  • I am incredibly stubborn, ask my wife

You see, I just don’t want to change. This is how I had it, this is how I want it to be. I know the links do little value to those buying them. I believe, I really do, that the sponsors of this site do it because they want to support the site and the industry. Proof? I am posting this, they can read it and pull their links at any time.

So why won’t I nofollow them then? Because I am stubborn and I am one of the few SEO blogs that decided to not change when Google unleashed their penalty (again, Google has to do it and I commend them for it).

He says he is penalized and will take the hit to do his site his way (and no doubt getting anti-Google fans in the process), but is he really?  The only thing noticeable is that his PageRank may be a pretty shabby PR3, but that is still fairly respectable.  And you can guarantee those sponsored links just aren't there by the advertisers good heart and wanting to support the industry (really, Barry?)  And yet, when he thinks someone is selling links, he has no qualms of outing THEM.

Now, it isn't just SERountable who gets away with it.  SearchEngineJournal (PR6) also is selling links – ironically including those to textlinkbrokers and an affiliate link to textlinkads.  SiteProNews (PR5) is also selling "Recommended Links" and a slew of footer links.  But both SearchEngineWatch and SearchEngineLand are doing it right with nofollows and Doubleclicks ads/redirects on anything that looks like a paid link (although I didn’t delve into blog posts to look for suspicious blog posts).

But this brings up the very real – and scary – question.  Should SEO sites that are “big enough” or “newsy enough” be given a pass to sell links and not face a penalty?  If Google can banslap a site like Forbes selling links that Barry Schwartz outted, then shouldn’t Barry and other companies also get banned for doing the exact same thing?  And more importantly – why aren’t they?

Looking for an SEO service that won’t get you banned?
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Do You Need to be a Programmer to Found a Startup? - DailyBlogTips

Do You Need to be a Programmer to Found a Startup? - DailyBlogTips

Do You Need to be a Programmer to Found a Startup?

Posted: 12 Sep 2012 07:24 PM PDT


Last week I was reading an article on Forbes.com, titled How Good Of A Programmer Does One Need To Be To Found A Startup?. The article became very popular around the web, and here’s a quote from the very first paragraph:

Programming skill per se has nothing at all to do with founding a startup. Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) wasn't a programmer, neither is Nick Swinmurn (founder of Zappos), Scott Kurnit (founder of About.com and Adkeeper), Ben Silbermann (founder of Pinterest) … or even me (founder of half a dozen companies including Gust.) In fact, the great majority of founders are not programmers, and of course the great majority of programmers are not founders.

As you can imagine, according to the author the answer to the question on the title was a big “No”.

In my opinion such conclusion is both wrong and a terrible advice for aspiring tech entrepreneurs.

Sure, it’s possible to found a tech startup without being a programmer/hacker, but that path is a lot harder. In fact I don’t agree at all with the fact that the majority of founders are not programmers. For every tech company you give me where none of the founders was a technical guy I can give you five back where it was.

The author says Steve Jobs wasn’t a programmer. Sure, but his co-founder was just one of the most talented hardware engineers and coders the world has ever seen (Steve Wozniak, for the record).

He also says Nick Swinmurn of Zappos is not a programmer. Sure, but his co-founder, Tony Hsieh, is.

Google. Facebook. Oracle. Amazon. Netscape. Microsoft. Yahoo. Intel. Cisco. Paypal. eBay. Craigslist. Dropbox. Twitter. Mozilla. Zynga. YouTube. Flickr. Foursquare. Evernote. You name it. All companies where at least one of the founders was a coder/hacker/technical guy (in most of the cases all of the founders were).

It’s common sense if you think about it: do you need to be a tech person to found a tech company? Hmmmm… yeah! Sure, there are exceptions, but the rule remains.

Here’s the main reason why tech people have a big advantage: if you don’t understand where technology is and where it’s heading, you won’t even know what is possible to be made, what kind of products people will want/need in the near future and so on. If Bill Gates didn’t understand how computers work do you think he would have the idea to bet on making money writing software? If Jeff Bezos didn’t understand the potential of the Internet and the impact it would have around the world do you think he would have the idea to start selling stuff online (and I am talking about in 1995, when most people didn’t know what a website was).

And here’s the other important reason: most of the time founding a successful startup is an iterative, trial and error process. You probably will miss it a couple of times before launching something that works/people are interested. Now if you are not a coder/hacker you’ll need to hire workers/freelancers to create the stuff for you, and this is a nightmare. It will take a lot of time, money, the results might not be satisfying, and so on.

Bad news: Yeah, in my opinion having technical knowledge greatly improve your odds of founding a successful startup. I know, if you are not a coder but aspires to found a startup I am raining on your parade here, so sorry about that.

Good news: while you need to have the technical skill, you don’t need to be a genius or a world-class programmer. You just need to have enough skills to be able to build a very simple version of your product. One that you’ll be able to launch on the market and test the customers reaction. After that, if things go well, you’ll be able to raise money and to hire expert programmers to help you out.

Acquiring those skills is not hard these days, and in my opinion it can be done relatively fast (1-2 years). I’ll talk about how to do this on a future post, so stay tuned.

Wanna make money with your website?

Original Post: Do You Need to be a Programmer to Found a Startup?
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