This article is for informational purposes only. Being eaten by the GOOG monster is not something that you want to try at home. Please leave the handling of the GOOG monster to trained experts.
The GOOG Monster is a voracious beast that likes to prey on both the guilty and the innocent. The key to getting eaten by the GOOG monster is to give off the appropriate scent…the scent of website decay. If you really want to give this a shot (disregarding our disclaimer), you’ll need to know the appropriate smells to manufacture.
Here are 6 ways to attract the untamed wrath of the GOOG monster:
1. Syndicate your feed
The GOOG monster likes to eat tiny websites that syndicate their feed to bigger websites. So if you’re just starting out, syndicate your feed and make sure it gets picked up by an established feed syndicator. An alternative method is to attract the attention of dozens of splogs.
2. Change URL structure and help your users with a 301 redirect
The GOOG monster sniffs out 301 redirects from a mile away. A 301 is really just a temporary snack for the GOOG monster, and might be a good entry point for the uninitiated if you’re willing to be nibbled on for a while. The GOOG monster likes to nibble on sites with complete URL overhauls for a good 1-3 months. If you’re lucky, the GOOG monster will be satisfied and let you go after this time.
3. Get a new site design
Just as humans smell chemicals, the GOOG monster smells HTML code. When you get a new site design, you might notice how it looks much nicer, but the GOOG monster doesn’t care about looks. Nope. He notices that your code has undergone a radical change. The GOOG monster loves to devour change. A new site design often results in changes to 1) the location of your content in the code, 2) the structure of your title tag 3) the ratio of code to content 4) whether you have a META description 5) sitewide navigation links. All of these changes will bring out the GOOG monster for a feast.
There are really only 2 ways to beat the GOOG monster here. Either, trick the GOOG monster by mimicking your old code (keeping elements in their same locations) or build up enough stronghold defenses (i.e. become an authority) before hand to minimize the ability of the GOOG monster to take a bite out of your site.
4. Give editorial links to paid partners
The GOOG monster has seen a recent increase in his appetite for paid links. The GOOG Monster wants all paid links to himself. So be careful. He has sent out a brigade of sniffers whose sole task is to horde the paid editorial links of others for himself. The GOOG Monster wants to get fat, and his current strategy for plumping up the coffers centers around keeping all the paid links to himself.
5. Link out to your friends
Do you have friends with websites that are unrelated to your own? Do you link to your friends’ websites from your blogroll? The GOOG monster can smell this…but to the GOOG monster, it smells the same as a paid editorial link. And the GOOG monster’s favorite food are varieties of paid editorial links. So if you have a site about bowling and your sister has a site about girls & gadgets, think twice before linking to your sister’s website.
6. Link to a list of other sites from every page of your site
Haven’t heard of the is_home() function in WordPress? Well, the GOOG monster is glad, especially if your theme designer didn’t incorporate the function into your WordPress theme. The GOOG monster loves to snack on run-of-site links to external sites.
Ok. That’s my list. Can you help me make the list longer by offering more suggestions for feeding a hungry GOOG monster?
9 thoughts on “6 Easy Ways To Get Eaten By the GOOG Monster”
‘6 Easy Ways To Get Eaten By the GOOG Monster’ – What a great title!
Number 4 Ryan, is where the Goog will, in my opinion, become unstuck. It’s anti-competitive and isn’t that a serious offense in the U.S. ?
I also suspect that sites are getting penalised by the Goog for NOT displaying Adsense. In the past year one of my sites has attracted quality one-way links from a variety of relevant sites and high quality sites such as UK broadsheets, attained a position on the popular T-List, gained more content by 30%, but it doesn’t use Adsense.
I can’t think of any other reason why it has been bumped from PR4 to 3 other than it has links, that could be or could not be paid ;-), and that it doesn’t display or use Adsense. Yet one of my sites is a one-page invitation to join a beta and has gone up to PR2 with no content at all.
As my grandma used to say (God rest her soul), it’s all a load of b*ll*cks! (but dangerous b*ll*ocks)
GOOG Monster lol. Nice metaphor.
Linking to bad neighborhoods (poker, porn, pills) also feeds the GOOG Monster. Also, the GOOG Monster likes sites that have a bad ratio of reciprocal links vs. one way links.
> Will 11 (currently) non-niche links really hurt me?
Hell yeah. You can minimize the negative impact by limiting these links to a single page.
@ Ryan – Plenty of room for fun. Didn’t mean to offend – but I do like to be in on the “inside” jokes. I’ve had more coffee, so my brain should be sharper now 😉
As for Google, it’s a friggin’ mind game to figure out with the goalposts constantly changing. That is *NOT* fun for the little guy, agreed. I decided a while back that while I’ll sit at the table, I’m not betting for the money.
301s are your best options, but recent evidence shows that you should expect a 301 buffering period of 1-3 months where GOOG waits to find out whether your 301s are legit. Too many blackhat seos use 301s to push authority onto irrelevant new domains…so Google classicaly casts it net so wide that legit uses of 301s get buffered against as well.
The point of the post is that GOOG has turned into something of a dictatorship where the little guy, playing by the rules, still gets screwed.
Unjust? Yes. Reality. Yes, too.
JamesC -> so there’s no room for fun? (e.g. humor tinged with truth)
I plan to expand on these topics over time… but this was mostly satire. Fun satire.
Um, Ryan? It took me three reads to figure out what this post was – advice on what to do, what not to do, or a joke. As they say in copywriting, be clear; never be clever. (And if I’m just an uncool, unhip guy who needs more coffee to get with it, well, blame that ;P)
Now that I’ve understood what it’s all about, I have questions. We’re moving domains soon, and someone mentioned we might want to do a 301 redirect to keep our PR and all that. From what I understand in your post, that’s a bad idea.
So what’s a good idea? How does a blog or a site change domains and not lose everything we’ve worked on so hard to build up?
>So if you have a site about bowling and your sister has a
>site about girls & gadgets, think twice before linking
>to your sister’s website.
>
Seriously? I have two sections of my blog roll. One for related sites (in my niche) and one for non-related sites (my other sites, friends, etc). Almost all of my links in the site (in posts, etc) are to sites/pages in my niches. Will 11 (currently) non-niche links really hurt me?
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