Squidoo Is Now Officially Dead!

Squidoo is dead people! I don't care how many native Squidooers protest this; the site has stopped getting picked up by Google. Google has now added them to their "spam" list or sites that are banned from the search engines. The days of spamming hubsites with multiple versions of the same article with oneway backlinks are now over.

What really pisses me off about the whole ordeal, is that Squidoo is not even releasing an official report about what is going on with their. Obviously, they don't want to ruin their reputation and stop writers from contributing to their website; but in my opinion, they are a gonner anyway. Google has warned them time and time again about the spam problem. Now, a good thing has been ruined by spammers and the negligence of the site.

So, now what? Well, for one, spammers should take a long hard look and how they ruined it for people and themselves. The more we spam these sites to get a little link juice, the more we are limiting Internet Marketers resources for receiving traffic. I have to say one thing though; Hubpages (the Squidoo alternative), has done a really good job at wheening out spam. They don't give you a warning; they just outright ban your account! LOL Plus, hubpages doesn't count your article's links until it passes a spam filter which takes about 1 1/2 days to complete; this is the same even if your article gets indexed rather quickly.

I use to love Squidoo though, and I find this news a tragic loss for people who were genuinely using the sites as a way to earn income and receive traffic to their sites. Other sites that have also suffered include the following:

Goarticles
EzineArticles (You can still get traffic, but it is not as effective as it was 3 eyars ago)
Articledashboard (they take three years to check and approve your articles)

What is an Internet marketer to do? Now, even social bookmarking sites have tightened their reigns by frowning upon self promotion. DAMN! There is nothing left to get traffic except for blog commenting, and the SEO benefits are temporary with this method since Google doesn't pay much attention to blog comments for long term ranking decisions.

Here is my method to still get traffic:

Frequently update blog- You can still pull in traffic the old decent way; by writing multiple blog post crammed with a lot of content and anchored text. Make sure the anchored text is related to your blog's topic or the search engines can mark it as spam. Also, you will be able to increase your search engine rankings the more you update your blog. I always try to tell others they can get more traffic by placing articles on their own site; it doesn't really matter what your page rank or alexa score is. If you update your blog on a regular basis, Google will find it and come back to it on a daily basis to check for updated material and content.

Redirect Pages- Now, in no way, shape, or form am I encouraging people to use redirect pages as spam (this only ruins it for everybody), but I suggest that you use this if you were unfairly banned from a website (such as a social networking site). Use sub-domain redirect sites because they are more effective and harder to detect.

Write For Multiple Hub-Sites- I still think article spinning is still effective. The point of the matter is, hubsites are perfect for spinned articles. it is important not to use the same article for the same hubsite though, or your account can be banned. This is why Goarticles.com is no longer accepted. Hubpages is nice, but they are not the only ones that can give you a little link juice. Also, make sure to check to see if the hubsite is 'dofollow' to make sure the search engines follow your links and you get credit and link juice. Some hub-sites will not disclose this information out in the open, so you will have to do a quick search online.

Guest Blogging- Guest blogging is still effective. You can even offer to do a free guest blog in exchange for a link to your website. This is starting to be the norm for bloggers to get a little traffic. Both sides win; the blogger gets a free article and the writers gets free publicity! You can look for guest blogging positions on writing boards and freelancing sites.

Blog Commenting- As I have mentioned before, blog commenting doesn't really stick with Google as far as increasing page rank, but you can still use this method to get temporary traffic. Some people argue that nay backlink is better than none. Search for 'dofollow' blogs with a high page rank. You can use the dofollow blog search engine. Just go to Google and type in, "Dofollow Diver" and click on the first url link. You should be taken to a search engine that will help you look for dofollow blogs. Just type in your keyword and a whole list should pop up. The search engine is pretty good, except for the fact that they keep repeating some blogs, so you will need to wheen through them or make a list on an excel sheet.

Forums- Forums are also still effective for traffic. Just keep in mind, forums hold little weight in the Google department, just like blog comments. You will not have any long term gain, and your rankings will probably remain the same, but you will be able to get a little visibility through the forum members.

Create Multiple Blogs- Multiple blogs are great for backlinks and traffic. The important thing is to make sure to manage all of the blogs and update the content on a regular basis. Also, if you are creating multiple blogs, do not do it at Blogger (Blogspot). They monitor all of their blogs and might ban some of them because they don't like "link farming". Anyway, Blogs.se is another cool option to set up a free blog. I like their platform a lot better anyway because their pages gets indexed a whole lot faster than with Blogger blogs. Plus they have an automated ping list (which pings each blog post automatically after publishing).