Viral-Traffic-App-Review.jpg?resize=536%2C405&ssl=1' alt='Blackhat Cpa Software Reviews' title='Blackhat Cpa Software Reviews' />How to Correct a Google Penalty for Affiliate Links 2. EditionYes I Love to Learn. Want to learn step by step how I built my Niche Site Empire up to a full time income I have some good news and some bad news about my public niche site. The bad news is that I got hit with a Google penalty on March 9th. The good news is that I figured out what happened and the site recovered 1. March 1. 2th When the penalty hit and yes it was a penalty, not the Google dance, I had no idea why. However, after a few days of thinking everything through, I was able to narrow it down, take action, and see the penalty lifted. I want to cover what happened here in detail to provide a big lesson learned for me, and hopefully to save you from making the same mistake. What Happened to My Niche SiteAs shared in previous posts, my niche site bestsurvivalknifeguide. Google and making money. Then I wrote a post on March 7th about how to build links for niche sites and starting building a few links to my niche site. I had made just 7 or 8 blog comments on relevant blogs and assigned my Virtual Assistant to start submitting my site to a few web directories. Then on March 9th my site dropped in Google to position 2. My heart sank.   This is not good. Wie fast jedes Jahr haben wir noch immer nicht alle Zahlen vorliegen, aber da unser groer Charity Battle Betrunken Gutes Tun 2016 nun bereits vor knapp einem Monat. Torrentz will always love you. Farewell. 20032016 Torrentz. Hey wassup guys my name is James Scholes and Im the creator of this system and my brand spankin new course httpwww. Featured Business ModelsView All Business Models Having a 9 to 5 takes at least 8 hours from your daily life. With an average of 262 work days a year, the majority of. There are several of these emails going around. I have listed a few of them below. I have also created a video that explains the scam, just press play below. How The. At first, I thought maybe it was just the Google dance new sites tend to bounce up and down in Google when they are brand new. However, after a day of dropped rankings, I could tell it was a penalty for 2 reasons  1. When I searched for my site brand name best survival knife guide without quotes in Google, my site was not on the first couple of pages. The page ranking at position 2. And so knowing this was a Google penalty, I immediately thought it must be related to the links that I had just started building. The timing seemed to indicate that as soon as I started building links, my site got hit. However, this assumption turned out to be false as I explain later on. I immediately asked my VA to stop building any more directory links. In fact, I asked him to try and remove any links that he had built. I figured that if I could remove the links and start fresh again, my rankings should come back. However, with many of the directory links, this is not always possible. And to be honest, most of the directory links had not even been approved yet some can take weeks to get approved. What Caused the Google Penalty The more I thought about it, the less convinced I was that the links had anything to do with it at all. You see, I followed the EXACT same link building technique on my last niche site including the EXACT same directories, and that site is sitting happily at 1 in Google right now. I was not out building spammy links, but just a handful of genuine blog comments and a few web directory links not hundreds or thousands. So, I started to compare what I had done with my survival knife site and my previous niche sites or blogs I have built that are ranking well in Google. The theme is the same as other sites Ive built. I know that changing themes can sometimes impact SEO, but this theme is a quality theme that I designed. The quality content is there. The keyword research is there. Then it hit me.   The ONE thing that I had done different with this niche site than any other site Ive built, is the use of Amazon Associate links  All of my sites have always utilized Google Adsense, so Im comfortable with that process and really know the ins and outs there. However, Amazon is a new beast for me. So, I took a look at my site and how I was using the Amazon affiliate links. The more I looked, the more I figured this must indeed be the issue. You see in my ambition to provide an awesome site which I think I have, I created a massive comparison chart for about 5. To make money, I had inserted my Amazon affiliate link on EACH of these knife listings not once. TWICE Once on the name of the knife, and once on the pictures of the knives. So just with that chart alone, I had about 1. Amazon affiliate links on my home pageThis is what caused the penalty. And I can prove it. How I Removed the Google Penalty. At about noon on March 1. Driver Pack Printershare App. I decided to remove all the Amazon affiliate links from my homepage. I figured Google was penalizing me for having too much advertising on my page. I should also point out that all of these links were cloaked affiliate links. So they were redirects, rather than direct affiliate links. So, cloaking for SEO purposes doesnt work. So, at noon, all the links were gone. I checked my niche site again at about 9pm again. All my rankings had returned  So, within about 8 or 9 hours Google had removed the penalty it had placed, once I removed my affiliate linkswoohoo Heres a quick recap of my Google rankings over the past several days to show you exactly what happened March 7th 2. March 8th 2. 4March 9th 2. Google penaltyouchMarch 1. March 1. 1th 2. March 1. March 1. 2th 9pm 2. Penalty removedyipeeMarch 1. Lesson Learned Too many affiliate links will penalize your site. Yes, I know this should seem obvious. And yes, I now realize that 1. However, Im learning this whole Amazon associates thing as I go here. Again my expertise is keyword research and Google Adsense so Im making a few newbie mistakes apparently for all to see. But hopefully my mistake here will help prevent YOU from making a similar mistake. Can I Use Amazon Links NowI am just happy to have my site back as you can imagine. Im going to just focus on ranking my site over the next month or so. However, as it sits now, it wont be making much money because Ive removed most of the affiliate links. So, can I put affiliate links back on the site I dont think affiliate links by themselves are bad. However, when you have a massive number like I did, they are bad. So, I may have to get creative in how to monetize this site because my original plan with a huge buyers matrix is not working. Well actually it was working great, but Google didnt like all the affiliate links. Ill be thinking of the best way forward for monetizing this site over the coming weeks. However, here are a few options I thought of Option 1 I could remove the comparison matrix completely, and just have a few affiliate links for the actual knife reviews I did on the homepage. I dont like this idea because the comparison matrix is really what makes my site stand out, and I put a lot of time into it. Option 2 I could remove the comparison matrix from the homepage, and just LINK to it on a subpage. So, the user would have to click a link to be taken to the comparison matrix on another page. I could make this page no indexno follow so that Google doesnt rank that page. Then I likely could add back all my affiliate links without having it penalize the rest of my site. Option 3 I could decrease the size of the matrix to 1. I suspect there is some magic number I could find here for amount of content vs. Perhaps I could even keep the matrix as is if I only had one affiliate link on each. Option 4 I could write reviews on every knife on the list, and then have the comparison matrix link to the reviews rather than affiliate links. The review pages would obviously then have a couple of affiliate links. Option 5 I could put the matrix into an ebook along with some other reviews, and go for the opt in to start collecting emails. Then I could put all the affiliate links I want in the ebook. I could also monetize the list through email offers. Important Update  I have been notified in the comments and by email from others helping me out that using Amazon Affiliate links in an ebook or in an email is against their Terms of Service. So, I will NOT be doing this. Please see Rule 6 on this page of Amazon for reference. Option 6 I could give up on Amazon, and go with other monetization methods. There are likely several other options that I could consider as well. If you have any additional ideas, Im all ears.