Learn How To Keep A Secret
Sometimes internet marketers (and people in general) don’t know when they should keep a secret. We all have our own proprietary trade secrets on how to do one thing or another, but sometimes, some of those secrets should remain a secret.
Recently Russell republished an article outlining a technique to gain Google rankings, however, this article had been discussed before. I first learned about the article in Liz Tomey’s forum, and less than a month later I was reading the same article in the SitePro Newsletter which was later followed up by a brief disclaimer by SitePro News:
The article published in SiteProNews on March 9th entitled “A Back Road Loophole For Getting a Top Google Ranking� received a lot of negative feedback from readers who tried the ranking method suggested by the author. Given Google’s response that even on topic posts could result in being banned, we strongly recommend you not use the method suggested to boost rankings. The advice provided by the author is obviously no longer a loophole.
This was a great idea when it was first published, but it was also one of those ideas that needed to remain a secret in order to remain effective. Once you release information to the internet, it cannot be un-released.
It’s always great to share information, it’s the backbone of the community we call the internet, but it is more than just a good idea to think about what information you want to provide to the general public, what information you want to release with a premium, and what information you want to keep to yourself indefinitely.
I’m sure there were other marketers who knew about the Google News loophole well before this article was ever published, but it seems they also knew not to go spreading the information around.
September 5th, 2005 at 12:23 am
I’m Alexis Dawes, author of that article you’re talking about.
First off to set the record straight, it wasn’t a loophole to Google News, as you mention. It was a loophole using Google Answers.
Certain topics discussed in Google Answers were showing up in the top 10 at Google search because they contained specific keyword phrases.
And the truth of the matter is that I’m not sorry I released the information to the world.
You see, I’m a writer and marketer by trade.
And in this game you don’t make it into the big leagues by rehashing the exact same things that everyone else is talking about. Okay, technically you can. But that’s not how I’ve been able to support myself and my two daughters. I’ve done so by trying to put my own special spin on a topic.
Yes… some secrets are meant to remain secrets.
But I shared this one because I had many other secrets in my fee-based report that were better than the one I talked about in the article. That was just one amongst several. So it was no big deal for me to unleash that one.
My hope was to point out a unique angle on getting traffic from Google, without having to go through the sandbox. As I said before, what I suggested was naturally occuring anyway.
With that said, I am sorry that some unscrupulous webmasters took the idea and used it to spam Google Answers. Anyone who reads the article can see I’m NOT saying “Go spam Google.” My hope was to help people get a little boost using a technique that was already working.
I had no idea that it would snowball into the nasty fiasco that it did. I do business honestly. So when I write about something I don’t think someone is going to take my ideas and use them for ill reasons.
But hey - you live and you learn. Hopefully my mistake helps somebody else.
I’ve been taking care of my 13-year old who had a bone marrow transplant back in March. Now that I look at how widespread the comment at Sitepronews got, I’m sad that I couldn’t do damage control a little earlier.
But I did want to tell my side of the story so people
don’t think I’m teaching some bogus ideas.
I hope this clears the air on this topic.
If anyone has questions, I am available at (travelwithme AT gmail DOT com).
Alexis Dawes
Author, Taking The Back Road To Get On Google’s First Page
April 12th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Hello Alexis,
Thank you for stopping by and commenting.
First, I want to say that this post was not a dig at you personally, but a wake up call to all marketers.
It should be well known that there are unscrupulous users who will abuse what little knowledge they’ve gleaned from the internet to the detriment of everyone else.
Marketers have a responsibility to withhold certain elements that really can cause a lot of damage to the good marketers - but again, that’s a personal choice on the marketer’s part.
At no point did I say you, yourself, were promoting a way to spam Google or that you were endorsing it.
I’m terribly sorry to hear about your daughter and I wish both of you the best.
And I, too, sincerely hope that others have learned from your mistakes as well.
(Other marketers reading - hint - use teasers…)
~ Teli