I assume its the tons of dumb 'content' put out there? Congesting Google Searches with nothing but wikipedia curated information with BS added to put Amazon Links in there. At least that's what disgusts me about that.
I have to image Google eventually figures out how to weed these out altogether.
I believe there can be quality, valuable affiliate sites (Amazon and otherwise). Reviewsignal.com is a refreshing take on hosting reviews (interviewed on Indie Hackers recently).
I agree. Every time I read about this type of "back-link hustling business" I come away feeling like I need to take a shower. Same with lead generation. I mean, congratulations, you can produce some cheap generic content and then spam it all over the web so my Google searches are 0.001% less relevant and you can suck a few $K a month out of Amazon.
Answering that would require speculation, since I own no company and have no current plans to "release something" of my own any time soon. I suppose, should I one day decide to hang my shingle out there and sell a product, I would aim to make it of sufficient quality and usefulness so as to not require scummy "link building" to sell it.
It's not enough to be "useful", you need to work on visibility (marketing, SEO). You need to reach the owners of the sites where your potential customers are hanging out and ask them to link to your useful product. This way you will get better positions in search results and more traffic to your site.
There's nothing "scammy" in this kind of outreach unless you're building links for a scam.
If you provide good content, google will find it and back-links will build themselves naturally from organic traffic; he's objecting to the unnatural building of back-links via spamming the Internet. No one likes when they google something and the results are full of spam sites and affiliate links.
Google will find it but it will not place it on top of your competitors if your site has low authority, i.e. small amount of backlinks.
So you will not get any organic traffic because your site is not visible. On-page keyword optimization is a very weak factor compared to the number of backlinks from "powerful" sites.
Cold emails to relevant site owners and bloggers is no more spam than "Show HN" is spam.
As I just said, back-links will come naturally and organically if the content is good and then it will have authority. Good things get found, again and again, it's what Google exists to do and they're pretty good at doing it even for sites that don't try and artificially pump up their back-links. Most sites don't get natural organic traffic because they suck, not because they don't rank high enough. Authority doesn't come from back-links, back-links come from Authority. Don't confuse cause for effect.
They do not come naturally, speaking from experience. Our site is placed on the 2nd to 3rd pages for the vital search queries that our product needs for long-term survival despite relatively low competition.
But most of the first page results have many times more backlinks. We've got less than a dozen organically during the last year.
> They do not come naturally, speaking from experience.
Yes they do, speaking from experience. They aren't coming naturally for you because you're competing in a saturated market or a small market selling things people don't really want or need. Your content probably isn't useful for any reason outside of selling something, which isn't the kind of thing people will naturally link to. If your site isn't useful to people who don't want to buy something, you're not going to attract organic growth. Write interesting content people want to share, and they'll link to it without any marketing efforts. If you can't get organic growth, your content is not interesting.
> A company who wants to compete in more or less established market will have no choice but work on link building.
Link building isn't adding any value to your site; you're merely trying to game the search engine who doesn't want to be gamed and who actively resists gaming by hiring some of the smartest people in the world to ferret out and eliminate your tricks. Google wants good content, not back links (back links are only a proxy they use to rate quality and only one of many), focus on good content and the rest will follow automatically without gaming the search engine which is only ever a temporary win at best. Trying to continually "trick google" by creating more links to your site that natural traffic would warrant is not a good long term strategy. Creating content people want is always a good strategy and works long term and removes you from the trying to trick google game which removes you from being taken out by a change in their algo aimed squarely at you fake back linkers.
I think you use a narrow definition of a backlink which is "asking a link to weak content". Asking to add a new app to somebody's "Useful tools for ..." list is link building too.
> Google wants good content, not back links
Google relies on "dofollow" backlinks from big sites more than anything, check different researches on ranking and backlink count correlation.
Google relies on an ever changing definition of what they consider "good content", which may currently include dofollow back-links and may not in the future. Optimize for good content and you don't have to worry about such ever changing implementation details. Trying to figure out how Google currently works is a losing arms race, understanding what Google is trying to do, find good content, and providing it, is a winning strategy.
All those stories about people losing their businesses because Google changed their algorithm, those were people trying to game Google to promote their content higher than it should have been, Google will always win that contest.
No, I'm saying content that users find helpful and useful will get rank naturally. Tutorials for example, teach people something, they'll link to it. No one likes spam, you can't dress up spam and make it useful, if the only point of your site is selling stuff, you're always going to be fighting for rank and traffic because your site isn't useful. Build a site that's useful first, monetize it second; sites that only exist to make money will not get organic traffic, they don't offer anything useful.
People have to want to come to your site and get something useful for free, interesting content. Look at your site, take off all the products, what's left... if it's nothing, your site will never attract organic traffic because it's a spam site hocking someone else's products. Build a site that attracts and builds an audience first, then monetize it with relevant links to affiliate stuff and you won't have to always play the SEO game. SEO is for shitty sites that don't offer anything of value in and of themselves.
Viral is just another word for extremely interesting, but normal interesting has quite a long tail. However viral marketing is the proof of what I'm saying, first be interesting, that gets eyeballs, and eyeballs can be monetized. If you're just a shopping cart site selling someone else's products, you have no draw, why would I ever come to your site, I can just go to amazon or one of the other big name sites. So you need either something interesting, or something unique you're selling I can't find anywhere else.
You're hung up in figuring out what google does currently and not seeing their goal, good content. There's a vast different between putting your site out there by posting links in a few places so "people" will see it, and posting links so "google" will see it. I have nothing against the former, those are simply links, but it's not about back links, it's about getting the word out to people. Worrying about back links is you trying to game Google, that's a losing game long term. By calling something a back link, you are specifically referring to Googles page ranking strategy which means you're not trying to promote your site to the audience where the link is found, you're trying to make Google think your site is more worthy, sorry, that's just a losing strategy; Google isn't stupid.
I'm a programmer, obviously I know what a back-link is, and obviously when you're referring to them you're doing so in reference to how Google uses them in page rank, please don't pretend otherwise. I do this for a living, the site I run did 150 million in revenue last year, I'm not talking out of my ass. You want to get pedantic and start quoting me definitions of words, fine, we're done chatting, have a good day.
Agreed. Not only is it completely destroying any hope I have of finding useful information in Google, but as someone who tries to create useful content, it makes you wonder why you even bother. Why write interesting articles/create informative YouTube videos when low quality clickbait and affiliate spam seems to make ten times more money?
Seeing stuff like this rake in the cash while actual journalists and publications struggle to stay afloat is incredibly depressing.
This is just another form of marketing, and marketing does create value. It's true that some marketing is dishonest and harmful, but I don't have a reason to think this is one of those cases.
This person is providing a service in reviewing products for people making buying decisions. As a result, they waste less time being unsure about their decision, and less money is spent on purchases they regret.
that would be true if they were actually reviewing these products and not doing basic feature overviews ranked often artibrarily. theyre in the business of looking legitimate not being it
i really disagree that marketing creates value, at least the current state of things. to me, marketing looks like a big prisoners dilemma that i have to actively ignore and filter in order to make good decisions.
I wouldn't say marketing doesn't create value at all. It can make for some amazing trailers and advertisements that are entertaining on their own merits, it can bring attention to a product that genuinely is good and needs more people to realise that and in some cases it can give you lots to talk/think/dream about before the actual thing is released.
If films, TV shows or games didn't have trailers and advertisements, an awful lot of communities would lose a decent part of their activity due to their members not having much to discuss for years.
There would be no room for speculation prior to release. No feeling of excitement every time a new announcement is made or a returning character is revealed.
And some ads are basically works in themselves. Like the ones here:
Let's also not forget that while quite a lot of ads are manipulative or dishonest, a near equally large amount are pretty much spot on and give you a great rundown of the products and its strengths.
This ad Nintendo aired for Pokemon Sun and Moon for example got a great reception online and likely sold a hell of a lot of games, yet it's also 100% true to the product and illustrates exactly what you do get by buying it:
i want to thank you for this kind of response. ive been commenting on hn more lately, and its suprised me how quick people are to ignore the nuance of something and just say its "bad" or "good". yes, i know thats essentially what i did in my original comment. but you are challenging what i said with specific examples, and that makes for interesting discussion. and i agree, not all ads are bad. and i think your point about some of them being works of art in their own right is something i strongly agree with- i've scored a couple commercials and have a bit of experience seeing the amount of thought that goes into some of them.
that being said, if were just restricting the discussion to movies- my personal strategy now is to wait until i hear from people i know that something is good before i bother. its not a strong interest of mine, so im pretty indifferent overall. the other way i decide is if i see people on twitter i follow say that something is good. or, i hear about something that has actors or directors i like. so, i think this stance leaves me highly susceptible to marketing. but the fact that marketing is influencing my movie choices is not evidence that its a good thing-
if no one marketed movies, would we still watch movies? i think so. maybe not as many, but probably with more enjoyment overall. just a guess.
do you have any art / music / film interests that are too specific to be overcome with marketing? i do, and i actively seek new stuff, which i am able to find, without the "aid" of sophisticated, organized marketing. i guess thats my counterpoint to the idea that marketing is helping to find stuff in this arena. i can see how teasers and the like can generate excitement and interest in a positive way, and thats a separate point.
spot on. Do people need McDonald's ads to inform them about McDonald's products? Maybe in a few rare cases. It's not about information, it's about manipulation.
i dont dispute that theres value in clearly identifying what your selling. im saying that we are past that point and into lying and manipulative advertising in lots of cases. to put it another way, im fairly sure that "marketing" is making it harder for me to find the things i want rather than easier.
because... lo and behold! its not doing anything of value yet someone is getting paid a bunch. in fact, its probably doing more harm than good by spamming a bunch of people and chowdering up google. cue the "you cant know how valuable it is, thats what the market decides" people in 3... 2... 1...
dear younger people than me: strive to do something that you would be proud of even if you weren't getting paid. and if you do end up making a bunch of money without a lot of work, give it away! thats my feeling anyway.
>dear younger people than me: strive to do something that you would be proud of even if you weren't getting paid. and if you do end up making a bunch of money without a lot of work, give it away! thats my feeling anyway.
Don't be stupid, invest the money and give away some of the fat from your market returns, put the rest back in. Charitable causes need consistent, long term donation more than they need one time cash bonanzas.
As a bonus, if you're ever in financial trouble you have a safety net.
Big charities have their own investments and can probably manage them cheaper than you can. So if your aim is seriously to benefit the charity, you should not keep the money and "dole it out". Either you believe that they will do something useful with your money, or you don't. If you want to keep your money so you have the option of not donating it all, go ahead, but justifying it as "better" from the charity's perspective seems like a reach.
yea- this is a subtly hypocritical behavior i think. i totally dont fault anyone for doing it, and i do it too. but i get a kind of vague sense that holding on to your money to make sure you are totally protected, and then giving it to charity when you are sure you dont need it, is not really that charitable.
interpreting that charitably as "you need to be realistic about your career choice, and that means looking at how much people in the field make" ...its easy for me to agree with that. im suggesting that you add to that some consideration of the content of the work beyond how much you get paid.
Probably because it's designed to feign organic interest in a niche market to get readers to hand over their money and thus little by little tactics like this erode faith in the web.
Just the other day I was looking for a good running-hydration-backpack and Googling for that brought up a bevy of sites that used round-up lists of Amazon affiliate links. The content was relatively well-written, if bland. In the end, these listicles were too bland to be helpful and I ended up adding "site:reddit.com" to my query.
This reminds me of how Amazon reviews used to be really helpful, but more and more these days I'm seeing so many obviously fake reviews that are cluttering up the site, especially for "popular" products. It's really watering down the value of the site for me.
Yes, I like them too, but I'm not sure anybody else had really executed on that model before them, and at any rate they are the strategy to be copied nowadays.
Yeah it definitely is a big pack. During the fall/winter here in the PNW I carry a lot of layers. I'm also Type I Diabetic so I carry some emergency supplies that I (hopefully) never use and most people don't need to bother with.
Lately I've been really liking the Jurek Endure. That plus an Amp handheld (squish it up and bungee it to the waist pack when empty) have been great for up to about 15 miles this summer.
because sites like that push either totally generic information off as a 'review' tricking people into thinking its the best product or straight up lie about it and make up most of the first page search results
Yes, the writing is 5th Grade book report level. "There are many hydration backpacks on the market and it can be hard to choose. One of them is X, which has [feature list]. Another one that some people like is Y, which has [feature list]..."
There are so many sites with reviews like that. After reading for a while it becomes sadly clear that they didn't actually physically interact with the items in question. They just rehash manufacturer curated information or steal from other review sites. So much useless information.
I've found that invariably they have wordy and low-density first paragraphs that make it fairly obvious what's going on, and further reading reveals that it's going to be a long slog after which my back button comes out of its holster. Fine, they got a SERP click out of me, but that's as far as it goes.
Disgust isn't usually that easy to pin down with precision.
Do you find a soiled diaper disgusting? If so, "What exactly do you find disgusting?" Do you find a it disgusting if a person is plucking out their eyebrows and eating them? Probably, but what exactly about it is disgusting?
Many if not most people would struggle to pin it down "exactly". In the case of this particular affiliate site, I'd say the general incentive structure that leads to this entire category of business is disgusting but it's somewhat difficult to pin it on any one specific actor. The site builder may have the best of motives and simply be rationally exploiting an opportunity that would undoubtedly be done by someone else otherwise.
In each case, your answer was essentially, "the disgusting thing in its entirety!" This is equivalent to nudiustertian's reaction toward the affiliate site.
The difficulty comes from trying to zoom in to a higher level of precision, as nimchimpsky requested. What exactly do you find disgusting about someone eating an eyebrow, for example? Can you explain it?
Yeah, it is disgusting that someone would eat their own hair (people die from that because it clogs there intestines). Same with POOP/PEE + smell - it's gross because it literally IS gross.
Yeah, there's an evolutionary cause for sure. Maybe the cause for revulsion at certain kinds of marketing is a similar protective mechanism but driven my memetics rather than genetics at the core.
