If you’re relying on organic traffic generation methods, especially from the search engines, there have been recent developments which may cause a change in your strategy.

Some of these include:

• The Rise of Blackhole Seo
• Changes in ranking alogorithmn like Google PageRank (a number of websites and blogs saw their PR score drop by 1 or more in recent weeks) and Alexa rankings have fluctuated greatly since the system was change a number of months ago
• Looming changes Google plans to or has implemented since as lower weightage given to directory links (thanks Wil Reynolds for the heads-up), including paid Yahoo directory submissions.

Which can be like an earthquake sending ripples through your business and earnings if you’re not prepared.

I was speaking with Geordie Carswell, former RevenueWire CEO who’s now involved with his own affiliate marketing projects and his business is thriving, despite the negative indicators about the economy.

In most cases, even with the drop from Google’s PR and dip in Alexa rankings, traffic and conversion levels still remain strong within my websites.

In almost all cases, launching a new campaign or creating a new product will more than offset any hits (real or imagined) that arose because of a change in the search engine algorithmn.

The challenge in being a successful online marketer lies in being able to adapt to change and more importantly, staying ahead of the curve.

By adding new tactics and new strategies to what you’re already doing, you can more than overcome any negatives in the present or the future.

Obviously, an auction site (or “digital marketplace” if you prefer that term, publishing blog posts about content publishers generating affiliate income is going to draw some interest.

eBay, from my experience, has taken a fairly non-supporting position towards affiliate marketers on it’s network, so seeing them point to Brian “Copyblogger” Clark’s posts is refreshing.

Except, instead of pointing at Brian’s post “Why Affiliate Marketing Will Save Free Online Content“, the eBay blog post points at his feedburner feed, the pretty obscure “http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Copyblogger/~3/274785900/”

Which is one step forward by giving support for free online content, supported by affiliate marketing, but on the other hand, slaps this free online drive, by denying link juice so Brian’s blogpost will rank higher in the search engine results.

On the other hand, it could be an intern or uninformed blogger over at eBay who pulled the link off Brian’s RSS feed and simply published it on the blog. But really, if it was an oversight, shouldn’t a company which generated net income of $460 million on revenue of $2.2 billion for the 2nd quarter ended June 30, 2008, know better?

Some bloggers won’t care about search engine positions, while others (myself included) will use linkbuilding as part of our traffic generation strategy.

While it’s nice to get some referred traffic through the citation in a blog post, since bloggers are providing high quality content worth linking to, shouldn’t the aggregator give a direct, followed link to their source too?

In the journalism world, we’ve a standing practise to cite source and give credit and attribution when using an expert source. Although recent talks with Michael Gray AKA GrayWolf, seems to indicate that it’s a whole new ballgame when you’ll look at the online world.

What do you think?