Frustrating Yes – But I Want Google To Be My Friend
I’ve been thinking about this all last week and I’ve decided to make some changes to this blog. In response to the Google PageRank penalty slapping, which in my case dropped this blog from a PR 6 to a PR 3, I have decided to adhere to Google’s demands.
I am no longer selling text links via the Text-Link-Ads.com service and all direct text link sales I make will have the nofollow code applied as per Google’s instructions. I’ve already had the Text-Link-Ad sponsors money refunded for last month and I’ll be contacting the direct text buyers to figure out what they want to do moving forward.
This will impact my bottom line in the vicinity of about a $400-$700 a month, which was mostly from the Text-Link-Ads.com income on this blog.
I’ve submitted a request via Google Webmaster Tools telling them that my site no longer breaks their text link selling rules and asking if I could have my PageRank back. Hopefully in a week or two they will get back to me with a positive response.
The reason I decided to do this is because I feel the credibility of the PageRank green bar is more important to me than the $500 or so per month I was making from selling text links and I want to be on Google’s good side.
I haven’t seen any changes to the level of search traffic coming from Google – in anything it’s increased – however I don’t want to risk further penalties impacting search results because I do get a significant amount of traffic from Google. Even if the PageRank penalty is largely cosmetic and doesn’t reflect any changes to the actual SERPs for my blog, given what I do for a living and what information products I’d like to put out in the future, it helps to have a solid PageRank.
I’m making some slight changes to how I monetize this blog, which isn’t because of Google, it’s because of the new blog design I’ve got coming out. Thankfully those changes will more than make up for any lost income from text links, but it does demonstrate yet again, as bloggers, we need to always be careful how we monetize our blogs and stay dynamic. You need to be able to adjust based on the conditions you face, and there is only one constant in the universe – change – so be prepared for it at all times.
Should You Sell Text Links?
I’m doing an audio for my Blog Mastermind students to instruct them on how my monetization strategy has adjusted in light of the text link selling changes and to offer my recommendations for whether bloggers should sell text links and if so, how they should go about it.
If you want the audio, you have to be a member of Blog Mastermind.
Am I Giving In?
I had a real chuckle at a post from Robert Clough at Search Engine Guide, which outlines the conversation history he had with Jennifer Laycock, the main writer at Search Engine Guide and what they went through deciding how to deal with the Google PageRank changes.
It’s a hilarious read and I have to concur with everything they express in their conversation – I feel exactly the same way.
You can read it here – Composing the Perfect Letter of Surrender
