Affiliate Marketing – The SMART Way

Yes, it’s true.

Our good friend Google has (finally) started testing a social-type ranking system where users can customize their own search results – removing sites that they don’t want, “approving” of sites they like, and suggesting new sites that should be listed.

This all takes place within their own personal Google account (so in other words, the actual Google search results won’t change – yet – but the users will be able to modify their own results for any given query, which Google then remembers for that user, so they’ll have to be logged in for this to take effect).

However – it would only make sense that Google will be using this data as part of their natural algorithms.

While I don’t think this will actually have any effect on traditional SEO for a long time, what this is forecasting is a future where you simply won’t be able to “mechanically” fake relevance.

Rankings will (eventually) actually have to be earned with worthy content.

That shouldn’t be shocking. It’s what Google (and the other engines) are trying to do right now, anyway. Everyone’s desparately trying to be as relevant as possible to win the search “race”, and Google’s in a particularly precarious spot because they need to maintain their lead, and their pre-eminence.

Now – before we all get hysterical and start assuming that the sky is rapidly descending upon the earth with an armageddon-esque mission, keep in mind that this is just a BETA user-end test that will obviously require a lot of testing, “tweaking” and everything else before it’s ready to be deployed.

Additionally – since this system is even easier to abuse in regards to manufacturing rankings (creating hundreds or thousands of user accounts and “voting” vs. building backlinks), I can only reasonably assume that Google will simply be adding it as one factor in the overall ranking equation.

There’s also a question of “reverse SEO”, as in, competitors attempting to knock out other sites in the way of their own ranking attempts. It would be a lot easier to simply cast bad votes, or perhaps hire black-hat firms who will provide such services in mass quantities.

And finally, there’s no way that a “voting” system can possibly influence or determine the trillions of long-tail queries & results – not to mention the roughly 50% of search queries which are totally unique.

So the future is definitely uncertain, but it’s anything but bleak…

We’ll likely see small, gradual changes over time that we can all adapt to, but what I am certain of is that the long-term outlook for people building valuable sites and resources is better in the future than it is currently.

It will actually be less overall work to produce excellent content than trying to beat the system. And it’s really not that hard in general. Whether you’re creating Conduit Sites, regular product review sites, content/authority sites, products, communities/forums, etc – it doesn’t matter – so long as you’re not just using scraper content, thin affiliate content (nothing but promo) or otherwise sites that have no actual intention of doing anything other than DIVERT traffic – you’ll be fine.

So perhaps this is a wake-up call for many of us who might be relying a bit too much on “manufactured” rankings. It’s important to ask yourself if your site(s) would survive an actual user-based voting system, should that happen in some capacity…

And there’s no time like the present to get a head-start on your future competitors…

All the best,

-Chris

P.S. Keep in mind that catering to your users and actually giving a damn aren’t just speculative “future” obligations for obtaining rankings. They also work amazingly well right now, today. And not just with SEO, although that’s definitely a factor.

Google isn’t some spineless pushover that you can beat into submission (you’re thinking of MSN). It’s kind of like being in high-school, where being “cool” is based on how others see you. Not by trying really hard to fit in, which has the complete opposite effect.

Oh yeah – almost forgot – you can check out Google’s official release about this at http://www.google.com/experimental/a840e102.html