The old promotion model was based on links and content. It was the foundation from which site growth began. Write content, build links, and you’ll be happy.
Then came the filters, and this model broke down.
First was the content filter (Thin Content, Google Panda, or Google Fred — there are many names for it). The bottom line is that for some reason Google considers the content low-quality, and if a site has many such pages, all pages on the site suffer and the entire host gets demoted as a result. There is no return from such a site — no matter how much content you write, it’s useless. The most detailed public manual — https://alexeytrudov.com/google-fred In the English-speaking SEO community, it’s mostly fluff on this topic and almost no recovery case studies.
Then came the penalty for bad links — Penguin. We don’t even think about it anymore, because almost everyone has learned to balance between link trust and spam, and nobody runs XRumer directly on the promoted site anymore because they understand it’s risky and stupid. Penguin is in the past.
Right now, there’s a much more serious thing that undermines site trust and drops it straight to the bottom.
The «Affiliate» filter, which in my opinion has existed since late 2019, is aimed at combating webmasters who want to make money on Google without providing «value» in Google’s view. When all pages are written targeting «best» keywords and everything redirects to Amazon. Google decided that this is making money directly on the site without added value, and there are fewer and fewer such sites in the top results.
No matter how much you improve speed, optimize the site, or build links, the return from such a site will be minimal until a Core update arrives. And if the site behaved well and was «valuable,» Google will bless it with traffic and make the owner happy with green bills.
Or it might not, and that’s the main problem…
You work on something for six months and have no idea whether it’s right or wrong, because the results aren’t visible quickly.
All you need to understand: no trust — no top rankings. Content and links don’t carry the value they used to.
As long as the site isn’t interesting to Google and hasn’t earned trust, there’s no point in trying too hard — content doesn’t work, and even when you place powerful links on such a resource, there’s no visible return at all. It feels like money wasted.
This explains people’s frustration when they buy strong links but see no results. Remember: no trust — no top rankings.
In Yandex, a brand-new domain can rank quickly without trust; in Google, I don’t see such examples en masse anymore. And building trust takes months of waiting.
What’s the way out? Get trust first. Make a 5–10 page site instead of 100 pages and see what happens. If there are rankings in the top 30, then think about expanding the site. But if a site doesn’t respond at all — abandon it. Wait for a Core update and see what happens to it. If it goes up — develop it.
I used to be against this model, because every site needs links and content to take off, but now the absence of filters and having Google’s trust comes first.
Right now, one of my white-hat sites hit a filter due to thin content — we published pages without content. As a result, almost all pages dropped out of the index and the site has no rankings. We’re removing all empty pages and leaving the site until better times when it starts moving into the top. Until then, we won’t spend time or money on extra content.
The second method is publishing on authoritative/trusted resources.
The top rankings are currently dominated by high-trust sites where content kicks in very quickly — for example, 13k monthly traffic to a single page in a highly competitive niche within 1.5 months from launch.
The third method is building info sites for the US market — there’s money there too. Check out the article about this here.