Ad Churning and Irrelevant Site Wake Up Call

i think the best bet for those that are concerned about triggering penalties is to

1 - spread your weight across multiple sites and use up all 20 ad slots for each account ... varying link text as much as possible. heck ... aim 50% of your weight at your competitors best term! (just kidding)

2 - while being involved with coop, use other sites to utilize link vault and focus that on your sites as well ... using different anchors and throttleig back your voltage as much as possible to grow sloooowly.

dynamic links are great, but i'm of the opinion that we need but a fraction of those #'s with static ones.

how many of you have competition with fewer links but higher serps? think about it!

 

I think skattabrain has a point. Some sites may be suffering as a result of the Coop (although I haven't seen any definitive proof of that yet -- there may be many reasons for a site slipping, including many that have nothing to do with your site and everything to do with what your competitors are doing to outstrip you).

If so, the question becomes why is this not happening to ALL sites using the Coop? What are the ones who still seem to be benefitting doing differently? Or what 9is different about those sites (e.g., new versus established sites; new domains versus nwe subdomains on established primary domains; how many ads and how distributed; etc.).

 

let me just say that at one point i had several PR 3,4,5 sites w/ maxed out weight ... and i was focusing lots of weight on fewer terms. so here i am with 1 site with 54,000 weight focused onto 6 terms ... and copy this times a few more times for other sites ... it's was silly ... i owned several #1 slot for this site, now the site has PR but gets ZERO traffic from G. so in my case, it's not that my comp was beating me out, i was removed from the results.

not to mention i have 3 other sites that have been sandboxed since August 04 ... these sites have (i should say 'had') lots of weight across too few terms. i was an aggressive linker.

i have another site that was released from the sandbox in Feb and has done excellant (we are talking a 1 word (5 letters) phrase here) ... the difference? less weight, many more terms.

can i say 100% this is why? no ... but i have my suspicions.

coop is very powerful, if you ahve 54,000 in weight ... IMO ... you need to spead that across 40 terms/pages or you are going to get tagged ... then bagged (assuming you are blowing away your comp).

 

I agree skattabrain, that has been my strategy all along. However what happens to the slow and steady release of weight when you run out of weight and your serps haven't changed. In my case I have 200/k of weight focussing on 1 theme (Several keyphrases and URLS). I am not seeing the same effect (if any) that this COOP used to have.

In order for there to be a solution there must be knowledge of a problem

 

Bobafind.. are you still finding that MSN doesn't care about the rotating links? One of our sites which is getting DP links has lost a lot of traffic from MSN recently and there has been no changes to the site.

 

I saw a big drop from MSN recently when I didn't update the site for a while. MSN seems to favor fresh content, and then it drops it like a rock if it's not fresh...


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Derek

 

For this very reason and the others mentioned, I've already starting to move my sites to Link Vault. The benefits of Co-op is not what is use to be.

 

I do think people are overreacting and jumping ship prematurely here -- I don't understand the tendency to blame the Coop for any drop in SE rankings -- there are probably many for that, including, as I said above, many factors that have to do with changes your competitors are making and nothing to do with your site per se at all...

...but I guess that's what choice and competition is all about.

 

But you have to agree that static links are far more beneficial than rotating dynamic links? Unless the purpose of joining the co-op is for "advertising" only and have no SEO intentions.

 

my older sites are doing great in msn

but I havn't seen the rapid jolt in msn on new sites I have added coop links to

I wasn't sure if it was coop or msn just slowing down a little

 

anyone haveing weight issues?

if i do a site:www. asdfasfd .com , i get tons of pages 30K+, not similar results either ... but the API returns way, way less than usual.

 

1. remember that even with Google but especially with MSN and Yahoo there are many other factors than backlinks which determine SE ranking

2. I really think people are discounting the advertising benefits of the Coop -- I am definitely getting some referrals from Coop ads. When I look at the text used in some of the ads appearing on my site, I wonder why anyone would click on them.

3. Perhaps it's true that you'll get more benefit from static links but where will you get that many static links? I don't think link-vault is there yet...

 

Neither do I, but I do believe it is filling a hole in the market and it can only be so long until it's user base grows...

Saying that, the Co-op is an extraordinary tool...

I'm seeing a little less in terms of results than I used to, but it's still working very well for me...

Like Minstrel says, keep up all the other work. This isn't a magic tool to give you #1 for anything you want (Any more).

 

Hi Shawn, I agree with you 100% SEO is not just about links. But without links, I bet you can't find Apple.com under the word "apple"..

For a new site, link development is one of the most time consuming and difficult task for a SEO. I beleive that is why most of us are here. It provide us with a "short cut" for link development. I realize your intention is to be an "ad network", but I have to believe most of us are here for the links.

 

Shawn, I think this is exactly what a few of us have been referring to - diversification of the nature of ad links can only help the advertising side of things, and will definitely help SERP's as a result - with absolutely no downside.

Here is the groundwork of a near--perfect solution:

IMO, I believe there is one, basic way that we can diversify on the most important points we are facing, such as relevancy, ad rotation, reciprocal links, and more. KILL ALL THESE BIRDS WITH ONE STONE.

Here's my suggestion in a nutshell:

***Allow members to assign keywords to their target sites. The more target words that show up on a page the ad lands on - the longer the ad stays on that page.***

This works for advertising because it concentrates ads on pages more likely to be of interest to the readers of the page.

It works for ad rotation because there is high-rotation, giving breadth and quantity for non-related pages (like it is now). But, it gives a static benefit, where it is most needed - on relevant pages.

It works for reciprocal/non-reciprocal links because of diversification. More likely to get a reciprocal link but only if it is two-way relevant link -- where you most want a reciprocal link.



Some details:

I know Shawn is "In Awe" of Adsense, and how it places ads on relevant pages... the coop can create a poor-man's version of Adsense where keywords are the driving force.

One super-basic way to accomplish this would be for each person to assign keywords to their target site (the site linked to with the incoming link). Say you had 50 keywords assigned - if there are none of those keywords the first time the ad/link is placed on the target page, then the ad rotates off, just like it does now. But, say keywords match 3-5 times on the page the ad shown on - then the ad sticks for 5 days. If there are 10-15 matches, it stays for 10 days, 20 matches - 20 days, 40+ matches - 50+ days.

That way we are taking care of the big issues we all know are coming - relevance and churning. You are gaining relevance where it counts - on pages related to your keywords, you are getting rotation of 'non-related sites which allows for quantity links. Most importantly, you are establishing semi-static links exactly where they will be most important - on relevant pages.

There is the argument that you'll be 'stuck' on a low PR page. But there could be ways around that by adjusting the rotation based on PR plus keyword relevance.

I, personally see no downside at all after adjustments to the concept are made. Please let me know if you are aware of any.

 

I don't think penalty is the correct term. Value??? is more descriptive. As far as jumping ship...webmasters should not hold the COOP responsible for any drop in SERPS, we should take corrective action, though. Usually that begins with what you have most control over. In my case it happens to be the COOP.

 

How low can your site's traffic be that you'd see traffic from a tiny little link at the bottom of a site somewhere in the network? Right before the new weight re-adjustment, I had over 148k weight being pointed at a few dozen terms at 3 sites, and I haven't once seen a link from a coop site in my top 20 referrers on any of the sites-- not even the lower traffic 400 visitors/day one... I know my ads are showing on the network, but people don't click them-- we're here for backlinks.


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Derek

 

homer ...

i see doing both (not using same sites) is good if you already have a site in coop rotation. it would be nice to allow a slow release into the network, not to mention adjsuting the cap on ads from 20 to say ... 50.

i guess you could just dump huge weight on another unrelated ad too, this would allow a more controlled release.

regarding supersizeme ... how many sites out there (authority sites) are already linking to supersizeme.com with mcdonalds all over their articles?

i mean ... as far as on page seo goes ... look at these titles ... http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=site:supersizeme.com+

shawn, all due respect ... i can't help but think it's a bad example. these types of sites barely need seo they have so much natural related linkage. not to mention PR 7.

c'mon - http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/supersize_me.html


nice account you got though!

 

There are plenty of success stories in the coop, all you have to do is look through this forum to see a few. This is just one example.