If you're new to Cheap Hosting Directory, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Austin, Texas - (Cheap Web Hosting Directory) - February 29, 2008 - The Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West, in conjunction with Apogee Search, released the results of its study of PayPerPost blog links, designed to determine the impact of a penalty recently imposed by Google.

When Google dropped many PayPerPost bloggers’ reported PageRank to zero, the search engine optimization industry assumed there would be a negative impact on SEO and a loss of opportunities for the bloggers involved. Apogee Search decided to test this belief with a controlled study.

The results of the Apogee Search study show that, despite the drop in PageRank and the recent concerns in the industry, PayPerPost is still an effective strategy for many online marketers. PayPerPost (PPP) is a service that connects full-time bloggers with businesses for sponsored reviews. Businesses that use PPP benefit from widespread awareness and link building, while bloggers are compensated for their reviews and posts. Because businesses tend to qualify bloggers based on PageRank for sponsorship opportunities, many PPP bloggers found their livelihood and sponsorship streams jeopardized when Google imposed its penalty, a severe drop in PageRank for PPP blogs, just before the last year’s holiday season.

The Apogee Search study consisted of over 80 blogs, both PPP blogs, those that were penalized by Google, and non-PPP blogs, a control group. The blogs were each given a unique set of anchor text and a destination page, and over the course of six weeks, Apogee Search studied their ranking on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

The study found that among the PPP group, blogs are ranked in Google at half the rate they are in Yahoo, while the blogs in the control group were ranked similarly in both. Another lesson learned from the study is that MSN did not rank any page based on the anchor text provided, signifying that search engine rankings on MSN are largely determined by key words and phrases on the page itself.

Apogee Search concluded that a PageRank of zero, imposed by the Google penalty, does not have as large an impact as previously perceived on PPP bloggers’ ability to provide valuable natural search ranking and optimization benefits for advertisers. To further test its theory, Apogee Search will conduct several follow up tests over the coming months.

Since its inception in 2001, Apogee Search has been a Search Engine firm focusing on a variety of proven online marketing methods that include paid search, natural search, other online media placements, and website effectiveness / conversion optimization.

To learn more, please visit: www.apogee-search.com.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.