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Reckon I'd get a job as a Sun Reporter?

So you would class a forum as Social Media, which just gives a sense of irony on a thread entitled "How not to build a reputation using Social Media", when it gets spammed by an amateur SEOer from China...

This industry really is top heavy with low quality

It's no great surprise, but Search Engine Land have run a story about Googles crackdown on links, and what is now likely to get you a penalty!

Basically it's what lots of us have been saying for a long time, Google wants to see a natural linking profile. What was fair game a few years ago, and worked very well, keyword anchor text eg "free advertising" is now likely to get you a penalty, or even worse, booted off Google.

So all those thousands of articles, guest blogs, forum posts, advertorials, all with those keyword anchor text, either bedded in the article, or in bio's or signatures are now potentially working against you.

For bios and forum signatures, it's an easy fix. Simply replace sales keywords for your site name, brand or URL, or add rel="nofollow" to your links, so these links won't pass any Pagerank, and won't have any seo benefit. But they can still have human traffic benefit, a key thing people forget when link building.

For guest posts and articles, it's a different story. Depending on the scale of it, you either need to start a clean up exercise, or simply draw a line under it, and concentrate on natural links.

It doesn't mean articles and guest blogging are dead, it just means rethinking your strategy, reigning in that anchor text, and not concentrating on one tactic. If all of your links come from articles, then the Google god will surmise that this isn't a natural link building policy.

Googles updated link policy in all it's glory is here: Googles Link Policy Was tempted to add free advertising instead of link policy, but didn't want to get into trouble...

So a brave new slave to Googles linking rules dawn is upon us...

Do you think it will cut down on the volume of low grade SEO rubbish passing through? Or lesson the number of spammy SEO emails you get? Unlikely..

So anyone got any thoughts, had or seen any recent issues?

This is pretty worrying, and goes against the minor optimism of last week with the economy in growth, albeit only slightly.

You would hope to be financially secure in your mid 50's and planning to wind down and start enjoying more of life, instead of a bleak future and working until 70

Make sure you have a sound exit strategy in place for your businesses so you don't end up as a statistic in later life.

I see this is getting replaced soon with the Keyword Planner tool, but apparently this will only be accessible for adword account holders, unlike the current keyword tool which is publicly available.

We use interspires emailmarketer, but run and send from our servers. Very easy to use, and also has great reporting tools.

If you use adwords, and have been fighting a constant battle with your quality scores like most of us, then this article is pretty interesting reading.

Quality Score Explained By A Former Googler

The bit I really took away was:

Anyone have any thoughts? Find it useful?

I thought this was worth a bump, interesting article from someone who ditched office life and now works from Coffee shops

BBC News - Chris Ward: The PR boss who works from coffee shops

Ok, so now I just sound like just a grumpy old git, but really, come on resellers, don't be so obvious....

I noticed your email address starts as halfpriceseo.... Scarily similar to your promo code... like the OP

Problem with this kind of approach, resellers masquerading under the impression of being an end user can actually undermine the parent company and puts doubts into the minds of potential punters.

Just be straight and tell the world you resell their services and can get it cheaper from you. If there are loads of genuine trust pilot reviews, then happy days, and reference them .

People are a lot more net savvy than they were back in 2003. Trust is the new currency, and most people are quick to google (biz name) reviews / feedback / complaints. If you google click submit seo review you'll see this thread...

It depends on your business type, if you have 1500 clients who may rebuy your services, then that can be pretty profitable, but that would be more likely a newsletter communication than full on sales promo.

We run a freemium model, so it's all about up selling to people who take out a free listing, and yes we collect details from the sign up process via our t&c's. our membership lists grow by about 200 per day, but we are dealing in lower price products than most, so for us it's volume.

You need to do what works best for your biz model.