“Money Plant” is Baidu hyperlink cheaters punisher

Baidu’s “Money Plant” algorithm, introduced in 2013, targets link-spamming practices such as buying and selling links, aiming to promote fair competition among websites.

The latest update, “Money Plant 2.0,” released on July 15, 2013, expanded its scope to penalize sites hosting promotional articles (advertorials) considered as link spam.

To align with the “Money Plant” algorithm, SEO managers should:

• Avoid Link Buying and Selling: Refrain from participating in link exchange schemes or purchasing backlinks, as these practices are penalized by Baidu.
• Steer Clear of Advertorials for Backlinks: Avoid publishing promotional articles solely for the purpose of acquiring backlinks, as Baidu considers this a form of link spam.
• Focus on High-Quality Content: Develop valuable, original content that naturally attracts backlinks from reputable sources, enhancing your site’s authority.
• Conduct Regular Link Audits: Periodically review your website’s backlink profile to identify and disavow any low-quality or suspicious links that could harm your site’s ranking.
• Adhere to Baidu’s Webmaster Guidelines: Stay updated with Baidu’s best practices to ensure compliance and maintain a strong presence in search results.

The Money Plant

Baidu developed « Money Plant algorithm » and updated it lately as an anti-cheating algorithm that discover and punish hyper-links business both selling and buying as well as other ways of hyper links cheating.

Many SEOers look at it as if it was a Chinese version of Google panda. « Money Plant » is supposed to show how it « purify » the content of Baidu. Thus it is an algorithm that gives a death penalty to link farms, sites with cheating links, link trading sites and the links on it. It is basically a tailor made algorithm for « black hat Baidu SEOers ».

 

 

A new upgrade

As soon as a site is regarded as a cheater, which means it uses spam links and low quality content, Baidu punishes it by different ways which will cost webmasters longer time and more effort to recover from it :

• Add stricter filtration which will slow down the submission of the site to Baidu and the update of the site.
• Stop giving power to pages that have purchased links (especially those links from portals and local news sites).

However, those bureaucratic explanation are only what Baidu is expressing publicly. The reality is not exactly the same. Two words have to be understood : link and quality. So what is the definition of link problem and low quality content by Baidu.

Links problem

Baidu punishes certain type of links. The links on forum, blogs, big website are safe but as soon as it is highly spammy links, the punishment can be harsh. Therefore, you should avoid hidden anchor text and links, anchor text irrelevant to the topic of the page, deceiving jump, redirect, doorway pages for black SEO and automatic spamming link.

What you need to know is the importance of the website optimization. Website that rely on external links have mostly lost their position but not all of them. Those last site use more basic and common SEO methods such as building backlinks, especially purchasing friendly link, and blogroll links. More over, links in comments that support blog are not punished even if they are links purely and obviously reserved for optimized page. For example, a page with 10 links from one blog to it everyday can have a better position than others.

On the contrary, sites that focuses on the optimization don’t decrease and many of them got better positions. For instance, Baidu always emphasizes that those purchased links, especially those links from portals and local media sites, will get punished. It is not always relevant. Now, portals like Sohu, Sina, qq, netease and media sites such as Pclady begin to refuse advertorial publications and delete previous advertorials. Regarding the ROI though, it is much worse than before.

 

Low quality content

All the Baidu algorithm updated are taking into consideration the quality content. However we also discovered that meaningless accumulation of keywords, massive ads and malicious code are the real targets of Money Plant. Copied content are not really punished by Baidu but still get a minus in the ranking. So we won’t advise you to do so. Quality is very important.

 

Baidu’s Webmaster Guidelines emphasize the importance of natural, high-quality backlinks to enhance a website’s search ranking. Key recommendations include:

• Prioritize Quality Over Quantity: Focus on acquiring backlinks from reputable, authoritative websites, as these carry more weight in Baidu’s ranking algorithm.

• Avoid Manipulative Link Practices: Refrain from buying or selling links, participating in link exchange schemes, or using automated programs to generate backlinks, as such practices can lead to penalties.

• Ensure Relevance: Seek backlinks from sites related to your industry or content, as Baidu values contextual relevance in its evaluation of link quality.

• Utilize Descriptive Anchor Text: Use clear, descriptive anchor text for backlinks to provide context about the linked content, aiding both users and search engines in understanding the link’s purpose.

• Monitor and Disavow Harmful Links: Regularly audit your backlink profile to identify and disavow low-quality or spammy links that could negatively impact your site’s ranking.

By adhering to these guidelines, webmasters can build a robust backlink profile that aligns with Baidu’s standards, thereby improving their site’s visibility and authority in search results.

 

So what are the solutions ?

It mainly depends on the website condition but problems are usually the same :

• Lower keyword density. Mostly because the density of keywords that Baidu thinks is natural has dropped from 6% to about 1%.
• Report to the complaints center of Baidu.
• Diversify internal links. It was very popular before to put links of the homepage on all the innerpage. Now, if Baidu can’t find any link between innerpages, it punishes it.
• Delete problem links, especially exchanged links. Problem links from other sites can affect your own site.

The English name of the algorithm has a totally different meaning from the Chinese one. It means « Money first ». Weird isn’t it ? Not that much when you know that Baidu shoots a big cash cow for big sites such as Sina and netease. Now SEOer can hardly pay them to get links and thus get good result. This will convert many companies into Baidu SEM clients.

Further readings

• Learn more about us and our Baidu SEO/SEM Services
• How does Baidu SEO work ?

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