google

Guest Blogging Leads To Unnatural Links Detected Message?!

3 Comments
March 24  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

While I haven’t seen many reports for guest blogging leading to an unnatural links penalty/warning from Google, this is an interesting topic to keep an eye on. I know this topic is going to freak you out a little but let’s take a look at this bloke’s case and feel out what might be the problem if it is even guest blog links. I’m a huge fan of guest blogging so I’d be pretty choked it this were an issue now, but I suspect a couple of other things in play here. I found this thread while doing my daily forum browsing;

I went from 1k Google visitors per day to 200. I then went back up to about 400 and now I’ve tanked again to 250ish.

I figured Google was punishing me for something so I submitted a reconsideration request.

I recently received an email from G stating that:

“We’ve reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines.Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.”

The thing is, I’ve never paid for a single backlink and 90% of my link building is by submitting guest posts to high quality blogs in my market. With each guest post I include an author resource box. Does Google recognize that this resource box is included with lots of my backlinks and see it as unnatural link building? How can I lift this penalty without individually contacting over 50 bloggers who host my content with a backlink? And if guest posting is no longer a viable link building strategy, then WHAT IS?

Veeerrrryyy interrreeesssting! Now we don’t know if that warrior was engaged in other link building practices, but usually most people are. If you’re buying services from affiliate marketing forums, they’re more than likely on the grey/black side of things and can lead to trouble…although everything seems to lead to trouble these days. So while the thread is young, I’ve piped in with my 2 cents and we’ll see what comes of it if anything.

What Am I Thinking?

Well lately there is a lot of guest blogging going on, and sadly I’m seeing a lot more low quality stuff taking place. Remember to take what I say with a grain of salt, I don’t claim to know all and I’m just here to get the discussion going. So if it were possible to get an unnatural links penalty for guest blogging what factors come to your mind first that might trip the filter? Think about this for a minute here and then continue reading on……

Anchor text manipulation come to mind? I imagine if you’re gaming nothing but the same anchor text over and over that’s still going to be considered trying to manipulate the SERPs. We here at Linkbuildr are a huge proponent of NOT bothering to give two shits about anchor text anymore, and more so go after site/brand anchors or whatever isn’t trying to manipulate your ranking for one or two keywords. Keeping your rankings in the long run is all about building trust folks.

Another factor to consider when attracting links…ok well not consider but actual friggin do is link diversity! Relying on the same type of links is not a smart move and really will make your profile stick out like a sore thumb. So that’s all I really have to say and if you’ve had a problem with guest blog links I’d love to hear about it in the comments so don’t be shy now.

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Google’s Changes To Duplicates In Site Links

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February 28  |  News  |   Ryan Clark

So Google’s 40 new changes to their algorithm in February brought on many new changes. While there are already many blog posts covering the changes I thought we’d look at some humor.

Of course, the folks at Google state a lot of stuff that just doesn’t yet work or take effect. I’m quite content in saying that half of the stuff that comes out of their PR department is bollocks and mostly just hype. For example, they stated they’re making sure less duplicates show up in mega site links. It’s typical that Google cannot even get that part right as is evidenced here:

That is all for now :)

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Detected Unnatural Links Notice From Google

10 Comments
December 28  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

No we didn’t get a notice of detected unnatural links but more and more people are these days and I expect this to ramp up a lot more in 2012. As I’ve stated many times, I’ve got my ear to the ground and a lot of the webmaster/affiliate forums are bringing up threads with this message. Google’s war on link spam is like America’s “war” on drugs – it’s a big fat fail boat year after year. The biggest hole in their algorithm is the links although they don’t need to change that aspect entirely. The anchor text abuse is rampant and that’s what needs to be curbed or turned down a notch…something we’re actually seeing in our link analysis a lot over the past 8 months.

I’m writing about it today because I saw yet another thread started in Google’s Webmaster Help Central regarding a rather larger site getting this notice. It comes in your webmaster tools area and you definitely don’t want to be seeing it. There are still a lot of people who claim that links cannot hurt your rankings, there are also a lot of people who believe in all sorts of fairy tales. Google’s guidelines on link schemes clearly state that you can be kicked in the ass (loss of rankings) if you’re heavily gaming their algo.


Image Credit: http://searchnewscentral.com/20110629173/Latest/does-google-think-your-links-are-unnatural.html
 
This is what she looks like and for a lot of people I’ve spoken with, it doesn’t always follow with a decrease in rankings. I imagine your site is now under some serious watch from your big brother G so proceed with caution. From what I can tell, it takes a certain type of “link scheme” to trigger this message. The type I’m referring to is usually link exchanges as they’re really easy to spot and trigger an alert to Google. A lot of people these days are link spamming via article marketing, blog comments and forum profiles and I’ve only seen a couple cases where these links caused a problem. Those types of links are too easy to spam a competitor with, thus Google most likely won’t be causing a fuss from these links too much…I imagine they just eventually devalue them and move on.

Where I’d also be suspect is in a few other areas of your link profile. If your top anchor text are clearly gaming or a certain keyword then I’d be quite worried as a business owner. Half the time businesses hire some crack pot SEO firm and all they do is spam spam spam for certain anchor text links. A lot of companies have no idea what’s going on or if this were even a bad thing to have happen. Another area I always like to peep on is the distribution of links to pages besides the homepage. This is another area Google can easily calculate in their algorithm is something looks highly unnatural. If I were Google, I’d also take a look at the number of C classes that total the link profile, but that might just be a little too hard to determine by a machine if something’s awry.

Is Google passing value on the type of link? I’d put a lot of money on yes they are. If your link profile consists of only blog comments, how could they not determine something was going on. I’m a big fan of link diversity, but I’m also a bigger fan of creating something that encourages people to link to you…that’ll provide you with more than enough natural links.

Cases To Study

Via this Google search query:


 
That should give you folks a good idea of what they’ve been going after in the past year or two. Like I said above, I expect these messages to be ramped up in 2012 so make sure you’re really thinking about your current and future link marketing efforts and tactics. If you’ve seen this message and would like to tell your story, then feel free to do so in the comments below. If you’ve got this message and would like us to take a look at your website for free then get in touch via our contact form.

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Google+ Brand Pages Ranking In Google

1 Comments
December 21  |  Inbound Marketing  |   Ryan Clark

Google+ brand pages are now showing up ranking just below the main websites for some brands but not all yet. I’m obviously not the first to realize this but I want to prepare your minds for when their posts are going to outrank most other sources on the web. Huge brands with insane amounts of followers are going to have a major advantage dominating the SERPs. I know a lot if you folks think the “social network” isn’t going any where but I urge you to push for those followers even harder now.

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Article Marketing Robot Causes Link Penalty

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December 13  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

Article Marketing Robot is a very popular content “marketing” tool used by a lot of folks, specifically in the affiliate marketing world. I frequent a lot of SEO forums to keep my “ear to the street” as they say, and one particular Blackhat World thread caught my eye. Keep in mind that this person was most likely doing all sorts of junk link building like 2.0 and forum profiles, junk blog comments and other low quality stuff. The message I’m wanting to get across is that the Googly Woogly is cracking down a lot more on poor link building practices.

Short story: a few weeks ago 4 of my sites were penalized and I made a reconsideration request on all 4 of them. Of course they are were rejected so I have written them again with more details. Few days ago they finally replied me (this is the first reply from google in 5 years ).

Here is part of the email I got from them:
“Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank.

To illustrate how these articles could apply to you [they mean google quality guidelines], here are examples of pages that contain inorganic links to your site: [they posted examples from which one is an AMR article]” To illustrate how these articles could apply to you [they mean google quality guidelines], here are examples of pages that contain inorganic links to your site: [they posted examples from which one is an AMR article]”

They tend to be really helpful now. They post links and even the anchor text. I replied them again and they answered within 72h.

I decided not to post a screenshot of this email because I am still trying to recover my rankings and I don’t want them to know that I am sharing this info here.

I know a lot of people say links cannot hurt you but the fact of the matter is they can. I’ve quoted Google’s guide on link schemes so many times my fingers hurt. Pimping low quality content going after certain anchor text is in direct violation and is risky business. We all know it works well so just be careful in how you go about your link building efforts.

I am by no means saying not to game Google. If you have a solid brand backed by wicked awesome content you’ll be able to get away with a lot more. The majority of affiliate sites will rarely ever get linked to and that makes it too easy for Google to spot a link scheme taking place.

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Only The Links Google Trusts Count x Matt Cutts

13 Comments
November 13  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

At Pubcon this week Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting about links and it’s a perfect topic for us to sit and think on here. A lot of people are doing different things when it comes to building links, and it is usually dependant on what they know or their industry. One thing’s for sure, a lot of folks are blasting thousands of links with spam tools because it’s TOO easy. One thing’s for sure, the way Google views links needs a shaking up and I’m a big believer that it’s a coming.

Q. Everyone says I need more links. How do links improve the quality of the site? I don’t want to play this game and I don’t want to do this.

A: What matters is bottom line. Links are a part of search – they represent online reputation. Although there are many tools that report links, none of the tools can tell you which links are trusted by Google (not even Google’s tools). While the link structure looks bad from the outside, the actual linkgraph that Google uses/trusts looks much better. When the New York Times complained about a site with 10,000 spammy links, Google investigated the site and not a single link had slipped through Google’s filter. Only the links Google trusts count.

Now a lot of webmasters and marketers are going to scratch their heads at that last thing mentioned by Mr Cutts. I certainly did because the SERPs do not reflect this statement at all and it doesn’t take long or much effort to disprove it either. I don’t know if toxic links + a sound website make a difference, but my first search query gave me the results I needed for this post.

A quick search for “bad credit loan quotes” from my end brought me the first ten results, and the first one’s link profile was just what I suspected. Not only that, but the page ranking has 0 unique content on it and it’s basically just a push into their affiliate program. While my query is looking for a “quote”, I’d still be more comfortable from a big brand or more reputable site.

The entire site has low quality content that’s only made for the search engines and it’s basically a thin affiliate site. I hate to use Alexa but since April the site has done nothing but grow, and with a site that should have been swept up in one of the Panda updates it should have been knocked down. So we of course have to suspect the links are artificially boosting this site for now? Ranking for all sorts of loan keywords is going to take a lot of links because it’s one of the most competitive niches online. As I suspected this is what their profile looks like;

No surprise there eh? The only way a low quality site can rank so well is anchor text abuse and this is Google’s biggest flaw in their algorithm. I should mention that this will most likely not keep them ranking high forever, but it’ll be long enough for them to make some serious bank. In some of the niches we work for clients in, we have seen these types of links holding up for years now so I’m not sure what to expect any more.

So what type of links are driving the great results for this site? Well, as suspected again, they’re a mix of junk directories, site-wide paid links, blog comment and forum profile spam. But I thought we’re supposed to build great content and the links and rankings will follow? For the most part, that’s been nothing but bullhooey and I see low quality links outdoing great sites at every turn.

You’d think Google would be better at filtering out links aimed at gaming their algorithm. The offending sites top links all come from sites with junk like this;

That’s all I really have to say. To see for yourself just do any semi competitive search query and you’ll find the top 10 results riddled with this problem.

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Google Panda WTF Case #90,303

2 Comments
November 4  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

I was looking to see where we ranked for our infographic marketing post today and was pleased to see us still ranking in the top 10. There are only a few other posts on the topic that are of any use and not just fluff, so when I saw who was outranking us, I kind of got a little pissed off. I thought I’d give an example that involves someone I know (am). Some of you may remember my rant about the buy espresso beans search results – we’ve been ranking top 10 ever since and we shouldn’t be at all.

From what I’ve been seeing in the SERPs, and I’m sure you have too, tons and tons of junk content still ranks. If you dig deeper into the actionable keywords like buy/review/best you’ll see an even scarier set of results. For the most part, the cliche “content is king” is looking like it’s 100% bollocks because links are God. I might hear from a couple of complainers that there are hundreds of ranking factors, but when it comes to tough keywords, it usually only comes down to links.

So the image below is a pretty accurate SERP result from a few different locations and people, so it should suffice for this post. As you can see, we’re ranked number 7 and right below us is a post from Mashable (which I’m surprised isn’t higher). The site that got my goat is from the Mono-Live site, which is a spam blog that is basically there to sell text links. The post has nothing of worth in it and the site is powered by tons of spam links and that’s about it….

At least Google got the first position right as Lee Oden’s post on the subject has been around longer, is well linked and as always, extremely well written. So I’d love to hear from you folks on similar cases like this where you’re getting bonked about by the SERPs but lousy content in this post Panda world. I will also be continuing my panda case studies as the year goes on, so stay tuned.

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Google Webmaster Central Gets Halloween Themed

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October 28  |  News  |   Ryan Clark


 
The only thing more spooky than what’s going on with Google’s SERPs lately is their Halloween inspired theme going on. If you drop on in to the Google Webmaster Central you’ll see this on your screen while you’re trying to give or get help. I’ve always seen the homepage get an animation or graphic, but this is the first time I’ve seen it elsewhere in the network. Not really much of a post, just thought I’d fill in some words while having the morning coffee.

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