With the fairly recent Google’s “Farmer” Algorithm Update multiple bloggers (affiliates in particular) became concerned (subject also brought up by Joe Sousa in his recent post here), and started wondering if they (as content producers) may be affected by it.

The short answer is: “No, as long as what you produce is unique and quality content.”

For more detailed explanations/commentary, I’ve contacted four established SEO experts and book authors, and would like to bring you their opinions in what follows:

Quality content that’s keyword rich, but written with users rather than search engines in mind will always triumph. Sure, search algorithms change, and will continue to do so. Rankings will change. But articles and blog entries will continue to be found and spidered. Following the basic guidelines always helps: frequent updates, links, tags, a decent CMS. Content is what powers the web, and that’s not gong to change any time soon.
– Rebecca Lieb, Author of The Truth About Search Engine Optimization

If your blog can be viewed as featuring duplicate content, or mostly non-unique content, you should be worried. As that’s not the case for your average blogger, and is more relevant to spammy sites, I wouldn’t worry about it.
– Gab Goldenberg, Author of The 7 Curiously Obvious Rules Advanced SEOs Rely On

What’ll happen to article based content search? In general, Google’s latest “content farm” algorithm change was manual (versus automated) and intended to penalize sites with what Google perceives as low quality content. I imagine, another way of looking at what Google is attempting to reduce or penalize is content that was solely created to rank in search-engines for purposes of some form of arbitrage. Either way I’d say that any content that is likely to be perceived as low quality is at risk of being pushed out of the SERP’s. For instance, if articles are poorly written and written specifically to rank on search-engines they are at risk. In addition, Google has always had specific rules about duplicate content – in this way, using article distribution as a primary strategy for building links was always shortsighted. So the moral of the story is to make sure that you are writing high quality, unique content and that it fits into a larger strategy to rank well on search-engines and ultimately provide the end user with value.

Is it just the article sites or are keyword content blogs in danger? As mentioned above, any content that is likely to be perceived as low quality is at risk of being pushed out of the SERP’s — this includes blogs that exist solely for the purpose of ranking well on search engines. I’d strongly advise to build a site around the content, encourage user generated content, interact with readers, hold contests, open social media accounts, leverage word of mouth and buzz marketing strategies, and build links as naturally as possible.
– Kris Jones, Author of Search Engine Optimization: Your visual blueprint for effective Internet marketing

I personally don’t think blogs are in danger from the Google Panda/Farmer update if they have established a credible brand that engages its audience well. We know from Google that this is an algorithmic change and they are looking to de-emphasise “sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content”

SEOs have naturally speculated about the signals which would enable Google to identify this type of site. For example a high proportion of ads above the fold. But Google have said this isn’t a signal. Instead I think its useful to turn it on its head and think about how Google can identify a site with quality content that engages its audience. Obvious signals of a quality engaging blog are a higher proportion of:

• Original content (many Article sites posts are reposts from blogs and press releases
• New backlinks compared to new articles
• Comments
• Social mentions via Twitter of Facebook
• Bookmarking via Google Bookmarks/Toolbar
• Brand name searches

All of these signals are features of an engaging brand, that’s what successful SEO is about in 2011, so if your blog has these features there’s not too much to worry about. But these features aren’t natural features of a retail site for instance, so it’s not clear how Google differentiates these type of sites — perhaps there is also some on-page analysis of the semantic markup and use of images.
– Dave Chaffey, Author of E-Business and E-Commerce Management: Strategy, Implementation and Practice

Being a blogger myself I don’t view this Google’s update as any kind of immediate or even precedent type threat. If you have something to add to the above, I would, of course, love to hear your thoughts as well (please use the “Comments” area below for it).

The launch of Google Instant (a new way of searching the Internet via Google, which is meant to save the end user between 2 and 5 seconds on each search) has produced a wide resonance which has touched nearly every area of digital marketing, but especially everything that is immediately influenced by search (paid or organic).

Much has been written on the topic over the past 7 days, but not everything may be worth your precious time.

To narrow things down, I’ve decided to compile my personal list of favorite posts, articles and a podcast on the topic of Google Instant and how it affects (or may affect) those of us dependent on SEM (read: everyone).

Here is my list:

Affiliate Marketing

• Google Instant and what it means for Affiliate Marketing by Paul Wright
• Google Instant and the Affiliate by Mark John Hiemstra
• Google Instant and its impact on Affiliate Marketing by yours truly

Paid Search Marketing

• Will Google Instant Kill The Long Tail? by John Ellis
• Google Instant: Impact on Paid Search (PPC) Programs by Rise Interactive
• Google Instant Will Not Cause Death by Starvation by Nate Griffin
• How Adwords will be Affected by Google Instant podcast by David Szetela & Brad Geddes (corresponding blog post here)
• Google Instant AdWords Trouble by David Iwanow

SEO & Organic Search

• Google Spam Fighter Matt Cutts Weighs In On The “Death” Of SEO (Or Lack Thereof) by Jason Kincaid
• Dear Mainstream Media — Please Remove Foot From Mouth by Rae Hoffman
• The impact of Google Instant Search on SEO: Introducing Pass Through Impressions by Franz Enzenhofer
• SEO Is Here To Stay, It Will Never Die by Danny Sullivan

Other Must Reads

• Google Instant Search Myths Debunked by Emma Davis
• Google Instant Is Not The Terminator by Nate Griffin

If I have missed any articles which, in your opinion, must be on the above list, please do post about it in the “Comments” area below.

I blogged about the trademark use in affiliate domain names. But what about subdomains?

Amazon, for example, deems it “unsuitable” for affiliate websites to:

…include any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, or any variation or misspelling of any trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates, in any domain name — for example, a domain name such as “amazon.mydomain.com”, “amaozn.com”, “amazonauctions.net”, “facebook.com/amazondealsgroup,” “endlessboots.com,” “endless.mydomain.com”, “endlss.com,” “kindlemagazines.mydomain.info,” or “kindlewirelessreader.co.uk”…

What about other affiliate programs? I’ve polled affiliate program managers and merchants, and regardless of the fact that not too many people took part in the poll, the results already look quite interesting:

If you haven’t yet participated in this poll, I would highly appreciate your vote too.

In the meantime, it does look somewhat strange that while the majority of affiliate programs out there do prohibit the use of their trademarks in domain names, they are okay with the use of them in affiliate subdomains. Most of the participants of this discussion [as well as this blogger, and many here as well] for example, believe that subdomains are treated and indexed as separate websites. Shouldn’t the rules for affiliate use of trademarks in subdomains and subfolders be the same as the rules for domains?

I have been recommending affiliates to use keyword-rich domain names more aggressively, and I myself have been experimenting with different types of domains and how well they do with search engines. Today I would like to share with you my experience with hyphenated domain names.

Some are saying that hyphens in domain names are a “no-no” for SEO “because people won’t remember to put them in when they’re trying to remember how to access your site” (not sure where the connection with SEO is though), while others state that it isn’t bad for your SEO at all, and hyphenated domain names do well with narrow search engine searches.

A little over a year ago I registered two domain names: both in highly competitive niches, one – hyphenated, another one – not. The non-hyphenated one reached the #1 position on Google and MSN (it still keeps it with Bing, but dropped a bit in Google) about a month after its registration and loading content, whereas the hyphenated one did relatively well with other search engines, but wasn’t very successful with Google. Here are its current rankings across 6 different search engines:

• Google – not in the top 100
• Yahoo! – #3
• Bing – #8
• AOL – not in the top 100
• AltaVista – #3
• AllTheWeb – #3

Based on this experience, I would recommend looking for a non-hyphenated domain name over a hyphenated one.

If, however, you do decide to go with a domain name that contains separators (such as hyphens or underscores), you want to stay away from underscores. Earlier this year Matt Cutts of Google has strongly recommended hyphens over underscores because at this time, and in case with Google, “dashes or hyphens are treated a separators, and underscores are not.”

Finally, remember that while metatags no longer matter much, your page titles and inbound links still matter a lot.

Over the past few days I have been polling my blog’s readers on the question of whether they believe domain age matters for SEO. As expected, the majority of poll participants has chosen the positive answer (if you haven’t yet voted, I’d appreciate your vote right now — before you read through the end of this post).

Contrary to popular belief that domain age is valuable for SEO, Google does not believe in aged domains. Regardless of how some may interpret Google’s “Information Retrieval Based on Historical Data” patent filed back on 03/31/2005, much depends on the quality of the history. The company’s engineer Matt Cutts made some interesting remarks earlier this year:

Cutts stressed that domain age has not as much affect on rankings as some may think. “What makes a really big difference is the quality of your site, and the sort of links that you have pointing to you” he said. “Make great content” and “don’t worry nearly as much about how many years your domain is registered for”.

A UK-based IT industry analyst, Phip Payne added:

Domain age is perhaps part of the “trust” factor.  There are supposedly over 200 factors in site ranking — a history of good behaviour may well be one of them.  Not age of itself, but a track record of being properly handled during that time.

So, focus on site’s content and inbound links (the latter, by the way, will come naturally if quality content is being consistently added). Buying an aged domain does not necessarily mean a good decision. Much depends on the favorability of the historical data in Google’s (and other search engine’s) eyes.

The question of link building and improving SEO simultaneously with the development of an affiliate marketing relationship is one that merchants ask me quite frequently. Here’s the text of one such email:

In our next newsletter we would like to push an extra 1% commission for anyone who puts some SEO HTML code on their home page. We’re trying to get to #1 in Google again for [keyphrase here]. Yes, we held this rank for a long time.

If we give them an HTML snippet, do you think they would go for it?

I have just shot the following video-response to this question:

Yesterday I published an “SEO Link Building in Affiliate Marketing – Merchant Perspective” post where I talked about the impossibility of having a merchant direct-link to an affiliate. The answer to the question the above merchant is posing is also “No. No affiliate that knows what he/she is doing will go for it.” The main reason for this being that while such one-way direct links are beneficial for the merchant’s SEO, they carry no value for the affiliate’s website.

An affiliate wrote:

I am one of your affiliates and have an affiliate link on my web site www.hisURLhere.com for your store. My site is new this month and I’m working on building traffic (which would benefit both of us) by getting others to link to my site.  I was wondering if you could add a link to my site.

No, it would not “benefit both of us”, and here are the 3 main reasons why:

1. Leakage + Conversion Attribution Problem. By adding a link to your site, we will add a window for the traffic to leak from the merchant’s website to yours. The if the visitor that “leaked out” clicks the merchant’s link on your website (which will obviously be an affiliate link), returns to the merchant’s website and makes a purchase, the merchant then has to pay you a commission on the visitor that they initially referred to you.

2. Unfair Advantage. If a merchant adds a direct link to one affiliate, why are they favoring only one out of hundreds or thousands of others?

3. No SEO Value. Finally, there is actually no SEO value in exchanging a direct link for an affiliate link. If the merchant links to you through your www.hisURLhere.com URL, whereas you link to them through an affiliate URL (this particular merchant runs their affiliate program through ShareASale; so your link to them will look something like this: http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=BANNERNMBR&u=AFFILIATEID&m=MERCHANTID), the merchant doesn’t gain any SEO benefit from such a link exchange, whereas you do.

An affiliate wrote:

I am one of your affiliates and have an affiliate link on my web site www.hisURLhere.com for your store. My site is new this month and I’m working on building traffic (which would benefit both of us) by getting others to link to my site.  I was wondering if you could add a link to my site.

No, it would not “benefit both of us”, and here are the 3 main reasons why:

1. Leakage + Conversion Attribution Problem. By adding a link to your site, we will add a window for the traffic to leak from the merchant’s website to yours. The if the visitor that “leaked out” clicks the merchant’s link on your website (which will obviously be an affiliate link), returns to the merchant’s website and makes a purchase, the merchant then has to pay you a commission on the visitor that they initially referred to you.

2. Unfair Advantage. If a merchant adds a direct link to one affiliate, why are they favoring only one out of hundreds or thousands of others?

3. No SEO Value. Finally, there is actually no SEO value in exchanging a direct link for an affiliate link. If the merchant links to you through your www.hisURLhere.com URL, whereas you link to them through an affiliate URL (this particular merchant runs their affiliate program through ShareASale; so your link to them will look something like this: http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=BANNERNMBR&u=AFFILIATEID&m=MERCHANTID), the merchant doesn’t gain any SEO benefit from such a link exchange, whereas you do.