While I am waiting for Andy Hagans to get a few moments to answer my questions about Reviewme one has already been answered here by Matt Cutts from Google. As I had thought, paying for people to blog about your product, service or self will require a nofollow tag if you are concerned about ranking in Google.

Matt also quickly implies (listen closely) that the disclaimer that Reviewme and others will use (designating a post as “paid”) might not be good enough.

So will paying per post pass page rank benefits? Doubtful, and it could even devalue ones site if they get too heavily into this new form of link building. In other words, if it influences search engines Google will not allow it to go forth and prosper.

As for how Google plans to police the vast network of paid blog posts algorithmically, I have no idea or care to know.

Peter Da Vanzo over at V7N believes that people are not ready to give up categorizing things into folders but are folks already doing so?

I admit to being a Gmail fan and just a couple of minutes ago wanted to contact a guy who was going to make me a CAD drawing but I could not remember his name or email address. I simply typed “CAD” in the gmail search box and found him in a second. Another example is how I searched for an SEO blog, it is actually faster for me to do a Google Search then drop down into my bookmarks and look around. So in my case it is a no brainer, folders are in fact dead BUT this does not take away from Peter’s point that many do not welcome change.

Is Michael Lock (Director of North American Sales for Google Enterprise) offering a wish or are folders on the way out? We now know they are at Google.

I am not one who creates buzzwords or “top ten” educational posts to get digg attention but the phrase SEO Tunnel Vision has a nice ring to it. Warning SEO’s to not be so focused on traffic from search engines is actually not new, I think is was Matt Cutts from Google who spoke of this. Anyhow, Brandon Cornett has a nice article on SEO Tunnel vision (obviously done to sell his ebook) which is a good example of an alternate path to success.

Look at how fast this alternate viral path expanded: Here

Look how this blogspot auto-generated content system cocitates Matt Cutts and Brandon Cornett as if they are on the same team: Here

Do these alternate viral paths bring success? I will ping Brandon Cornett to see if he would like to respond to this question.

Others: Eric Lander - October 23, 2002

Answer from Brandon:

Hi Aaron. Thanks for the invite!

I have to start by correcting one point you made above. I did not write this article to sell my e-book. I wrote it to genuinely help readers.

In fact, the kinds of websites where this article appears are not commonly frequented by my target audience (real estate agents). I sell my e-books through a newsletter list I’ve built over the last 3 years.

I only point this out for the benefit of authors and marketers. In my mind, there’s a big difference between quickly spun “top ten” articles and the kinds of articles I try to write. I’ve published hundreds of articles online, and there’s one thing I’ve learned that all webmasters, authors, marketers and SEO folks can benefit from knowing.

It’s actually a simple lesson, and I should’ve known it all along: Heartfelt articles designed to help readers will travel ten times farther than rapidly churned-out articles or “link bait” articles.

Every time I sit down to write an article, I literally say to myself: “What can I write that will give people some solid ground on this subject, or somehow make their jobs easier?”

Those kinds of articles are a joy to write. And it’s even a bigger joy to see them republished and cited all across the web.

Message to article writers: Don’t think “viral” when you write your articles. Think “helpful” and the viral part will come automatically.

Thanks again Aaron.

Brandon Cornett
www.ArmingYourFarming.com