Hey Mike,

That is the concern, however I'm not certain the effects are going to be as significant for people in less competitive markets such as music. Still doing a lot of research and talking to friends in the industry to get a better feel for the effects this is going to have. It's possible that it will effect EZA but I just don't know yet. I'll need to publish some articles and see.

It does have me eventuating the idea of a large authority site vs a network of smaller sites. But as of now, my authority sites have not been too dramatically affected. Neither of my main 3 have been hit, but one saw the introduction of new competing sites into the rankings which took a piece of my pie. That was not in music though. I'll have abetter feel in a few weeks. As of now I'm still cautiously moving forward with the same plan I have outlined in the past, Though I am going to really be focusing on a link plan that seems as natural as possible.

Mike Baker said:

Also wondering if you could briefly expand on what you mean by "focusing on a link plan that seems as natural as possible"?

I basically just mean anything that doesn't leave an obvious footprint and looks just like normal conversations do on the internet. In other words, unique and valuable content that appears on decent sites in related niches or on quality free or social sites/networks.

For example, for the time being I'm staying away from fiverr links, mass submissions of any kind, spun content, etc. That may change, but for a little while its best to keep it safe. Press releases, guest blog posts, new sites like content facilitator, social media links, etc are all very natural and par the course of any above board site. At least that is what I'm currently doing with my authority sites. That doesn't mean that grey hat stuff isn't working for mini sites. It very much is. You just don't want to take chances at the moment with your authority sites. At least until the dust settles.

Mike Baker said:

Hey John: just received an interesting email from EZine that I thought I might share with you and everyone else here.

 

I submitted an article about a big-time artist whose music sounds a little like mine (well, really it's more the other way around, right?) last week. 5 or 6 days later, I got an email saying approval had been held up, and that one of their reviewers wanted to email me directly, which of course I said would be okay.

 

Finally heard from the reviewer today; she said everything was fine, except that both of the links in my resource box linked to the same squeeze page. She recommended that I switch one of them to link directly to my main content site, and that I include a link to that content site directly on my squeeze page.

 

"This will ensure that your readers have a large amount of content to view on each link they click on.", she said, which seems thoughtful. However, it totally defeats the purpose of the squeeze page, of course. I made both of the changes and emailed her back to say so. Hopefully now it will be approved quickly....so that I can go back and remove the new link from my squeeze page!

 

Have you heard of this happening to anyone else lately, or do you think it might just be that this one reviewer is stricter than most others? If this is a new policy for EZA, it seems like it's going to be kind of a bummer for us to essentially be required to put two conflicting calls-to-action into our resource boxes...

This is interesting. I have not heard of this at all. May be a fluke, may be a shift. If it continues I would drop the two links and go with one to your squeeze page. No point in sending traffic to your content site. Wouldn't be worth it in my opinion.

The open rates are pretty good. 10% is not a terrible click through but it could be better. Mine seem to range between 5 - 25% (CTR). Really depends on the topic, the email, and email frequency. Link placement has a lot to do with it as well. I don't know that I can look at those numbers and say anything definitive.

Yeah, it's still being debated in terms of EZA post penguin, but I'm definitely leaning more towards general content marketing like Sean Mize talks about in the recent podcast I did with him. I think creating quality content on web 2.0 properties is a fine way to go. Guest blog posting is probably even better, though harder.

I'm in the process of creating a site just for MMM and IC members for exactly the reasons you are touching on. It's basically going to be a giant music site. In theory it will function like EZA did in the sense that you benefit from their authority, but because this will be ultra targeted for music everyone should do better. And because the primary reason the site will exist is to help you guys, you won't be fighting the competing agenda that the article sites have.

There will be quality requirements though.

The site is already live and you are free to start contributing if you like, but the site is very new so there is no built in authority and/or traffic yet. The design isn't even finished, nor is the layout. You can check it out here: http://www.hardcoretroubadour.com/

Once it's puling in more traffic and the rankings are there, I'll unveil it. But the idea is to basically let you guys create content and I handle SEO. It'll take some time, but I think this is going to be pretty huge once I get it to mean something in teh serps. I'm being very cautious with this one because of the whole penguin thing. Eventually I will expand things so that I have a whole collection of sites like this for added diversity. But first things first. If you want to start publishing just shoot me an email at john@www.mmmanifesto.com - just mention that we talked in teh forum so Steve knows that it needs to be left for me. You can also PM me here in the forum.