Penguin Update - Need Your Advice

Hello NB fellows,

I have aquired a site which is cut out for showing Amazon affiliate products. Yet, I have read on some threads here that the Penguin update targeted / damaged some Amazon affilate sites. If I am not mistaken even Top Dogger was affected.

Before adding products to my site Tart Cherry Juice I would like to ask you if the following is safe these days: Write a unique, lengthy description about each product, and include an uncloacked Amazon affiliate link.

I am looking forward to hearing from you regarding the above question. Should there be anything else please let me know, too. The site is new in my portfolio, and I intend to make some changes regarding the navigation for example.

Again, I am grateful for anything that I might have missed, but in particular I am looking for your thoughts regarding the Penguin update which seems to have also affected Amazon affiliate sites.

Thanks a lot!
H.

The problem wasn't so much Penguin as it was Panda. Google has been going after affiliate sites for at least the last 5 years. The main problem is any type of data feed site, including those using the Amazon XML feed. The primary problem is the duplicate content. Thousands of sites use essentially the same content. I got around it for several years by using a home-grown content scrambler that spun the Amazon user comments and scrambled the sentence order. Amazon screwed us up when they put the user comments in an iframe.

My advice for any Amazon site is:

1) Write absolutely unique content. Never use Amazon's content and do not waste your time with content spinners or content from article marketing sites. They no longer work.

2) Use the nofollow attribute on all affiliate links. Matt Cutts recently recommended this, but I have done this ever since search engines started with the nofollow attribute.

3) Keep in mind that Google does not like anyone who makes money on the web unless their name is Google. They have very successfully trashed a wide range of internet industries, from directories to affiliate sites to article marketing sites to e-commerce sites adn now even sites with too many ads. One trick that appears to work is to make the site look like it does not offer products by writing very good informational content.

My problem is that I have too many sites and do not have enough time to research and write good content for all of them. I will probably trim down my list of sites and concentrate on 10 that focus on areas that I like to write about.

It was really nice when you could write an Amazon script that automatically added and updated 100,000 products, but those days are gone.

Habaku, some of your cherry juice articles do not use unique content. I suggest that you consider re-writing the articles and run them through Copyscape. Some are from ezinearticles.com, which is a kiss of death in a post-Panda environment.

The design for the cherry juice site looks very good. :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TopDogger

Habaku, some of your cherry juice articles do not use unique content. I suggest that you consider re-writing the articles and run them through Copyscape. Some are from ezinearticles.com, which is a kiss of death in a post-Panda environment.

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Indeed the articles have been syndicated to Ezine. You are right that they are not unique, but they aren't duplicate content either. I have talked to the platinum writer who syndicated the articles on behalf of the previous owner. She said there is no problem with it at all, which I found somewhat confirmed in a useful article I have come across: Duplicated vs. Syndicated Web Content After Google Panda .

I can say that the backlinks are in place, whereas cross-domain canonical tags and Google’s syndication-source tags need to be investigated. If anybody can share his or her experience with this kind of syndication that would be appreciated.

Regarding the Amazon articles I thought I might simply add some Amazon widget at the end of the articles. I think this will lead to some sales commission and should not harm the article quality. Correct? Maybe AdSense earnings will be affected to a lower CTR though.

Finally, I want to thank you for your great help when you responded TD; been on vacation so it took me a little while to post this update.

Habaku, the article you cite does make a point about duplicate vs. syndicated content, but what it is not saying is that both get filtered out of search results. Almost all duplicated AND syndicated content copies eventually gets filtered out of Google's top rank positions in search results. Yeah, you can identify an original syndicated article with links back to the original article from all of the copies, but that almost never happens with syndicated content. You have not done this with your site, either.

The point is that if your article is not the original, you are using duplicate content. You might avoid a spam penalty if you follow the rules for syndicated content, but you do not avoid the filter.

Both the Ezine Articles site and all of the content people were using got hit very hard by Panda.

Every article must have unique content in order to avoid Google's Panda filters. The articles must stand out as originals if you want them to rank well. The best way to do that is to have the ONLY copy of the article on your site.

The articles that I referred to in your site do not pass the Copyscape test, so they therefore not unique enough and they are not the original articles. They are duplicate content regardless of how you look at them. Even your home page does not pass Copyscape.

I have proven this a hundred times over with sites that are doing exactly what you are doing. I still recommend that you re-write the articles.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TopDogger

I have proven this a hundred times over with sites that are doing exactly what you are doing. I still recommend that you re-write the articles.

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OK, you have now convinced me 100%. I will have my articles rewritten really soon.
BTW: What do you think about the Amazon widgets?

Thanks again.
H.

Which Amazon widgets are you using? I don't see any on the site?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TopDogger

Which Amazon widgets are you using? I don't see any on the site?

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I was referring to my question posted the other day: "Regarding the Amazon articles I thought I might simply add some Amazon widget at the end of the articles. I think this will lead to some sales commission and should not harm the article quality. Correct? Maybe AdSense earnings will be affected to a lower CTR though."

I don't use any of the Amazon widgets, but there are some threads in this forum where people talk about the various Amazon plugins and widgets. I think Sami4u tested several Amazon widget plugins.

Presence of unique, well-written and original content on your website will definitely help. Since the original vendor is Amazon, so in order to avoid some duplicate issues and possible problems, try to make your website distinct in some ways. Links are very helpful but to avoid pitfalls, try writing useful reviews about the products which have been added to your website, use your own skills and try to produce something original.

If possible, create additional pages and dedicate a product to each page and then provide useful information about that, this can be better than creating some huge HTML pages which talk about tens of different products. Such crowded spots might cause problems and maintaining them too may sometimes prove to be difficult.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bermuda

Presence of unique, well-written and original content on your website will definitely help. Since the original vendor is Amazon, so in order to avoid some duplicate issues and possible problems, try to make your website distinct in some ways. Links are very helpful but to avoid pitfalls, try writing useful reviews about the products which have been added to your website, use your own skills and try to produce something original.

If possible, create additional pages and dedicate a product to each page and then provide useful information about that, this can be better than creating some huge HTML pages which talk about tens of different products. Such crowded spots might cause problems and maintaining them too may sometimes prove to be difficult.

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Thanks. Instead of making product pages I am now planning to add Amazon widgets at the end of the articles. The articles aren't sales threads, so I guess it is safe to add a widget displaying relevant products at the end of the articles. Yet, if somebody can confirm this is safe after Panda and Penguin this would be great.

On a side note, the articles have been rewritten, and the site has seen slight changes in the menu structure to allow for better navigation.