All those businesses out there who’ve gone and looked for a link building company have most likely ended up at the Google search box to start their quest. With so many people having problems due to links these days, I thought we’d take a quick look at what an unsuspecting consumer might end up being provided by both organic and paid search results from Google. I feel bad for a lot of small businesses who don’t know any better and end up getting a boat load of spammy links done in their name. While they’ll most likely enjoy the benefits for a while, they’ll one day get the stinger of Google in their arse and that can be disastrous. While I don’t condone you heavily rely on organic Google traffic, it does make or break a lot of businesses.
So I’ll pick a few random search queries a company might search for and see what results we get in the organic and paid (Adwords) results. I’ve looked at a couple and have been disgusted with what I’ve seen, which is what inspired me to get this post going. It’s also quite obviously a sly tactic to make people aware of our link “attraction” process and why we promote awesome content for links more than any other tactic out there.
Search Query: Link Building Services
So here in red we have the companies that offer services that are against Google’s TOS and good ol’ Vertical Measures holding it down in green at number one. They do a lot of amazing work and even as a competitor, I have no problem promoting them or kissing a little ass. Problem here? Most will go with the others because a link attraction campaign costs quite a bit of money and those cheaper services are just too easy to go with.
Search Query: High Quality Link Building Service
So, BuildMyRank, a very very blackhat link building network that has recently been kicked in the rear from Google is still ranking no1 for this term… strange? You can imagine how this will end up getting a lot of people and their businesses in trouble without them knowing any better. This is another great example of why this post is going up here and why Google may even need to specifically check in on these SERPs.
Search Query: Whitehat Link Building Service
These are looking a lot better as I can see our site in the company of Eric Ward‘s (which should be no1 in my opinion). You can quickly see that a lot of the other results for the “whitehat/white hat” queries bring in a number of services that are in no way approved under Google’s TOS.
Be Careful
As you can see there is a lot of room for people getting stuck with a company that has no idea what’s going to keep you out of trouble while getting them ranked. You’d be shocked at how many firms are using blog networks to pump up client results and they’re not even telling them. I can imagine this will also lead to a lot of lawsuits or threats from companies who wake up one day with their business on the verge of extinction.
We don’t claim to be all super whitehat either, don’t get me wrong. Ranking in some niches sometimes requires sneakyness and we know that techniques that are not squeaky clean often work. We do, however, have ninja skills when it comes to acquiring links that can only be obtained via some monetary exchange. When it comes to stuff like that, the clients are always made fully aware of the potential risks at hand. I’d just like to drill it into companies’ heads that they need to be aware of what might be a problem for them in the future and not be in the dark. Flying in the face of Google’s TOS is like investing: you have to be willing to lose everything you put in. One day, it might not be worth anything.
The time has come for another Linklove conference here in 2012 and it looks like the lineup of speakers is nothing short of the best ever. The conference was today and I wish I could have attended but I cannot be everyone at once so I hope it was a blast! The folks at Koozai(who you should go follow all over the social world) were kind enough to put up this video to let us know who’s talking about what this year. I will without a doubt be making my way over for the next event so hopefully I’ll see you there.
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.
The word on the “digital streets” in February was that blog networks were getting heavily deindexed by Google. There have been a lot of these private blog networks popping up on the market and a lot of people got stung on the 7-9th and 18-21st of February. Within the last year, webmasters and SEO’s have been debating whether or not external links could hurt your rankings. Now, we can confirm it’s a sure thing as a lot of them are now getting notices in their WMT. For the most part, these warnings and penalties came for blatant and excessive link exchanges. There have always been, and will be private blog networks out there for SEO use, but the amount of paid “private” ones have flooded the market.
It’s no surprise, either, as the ranking rewards from a blast on a few of these networks was, and still is, netting people great results. The problem? Your SERPs are getting bombarded by thin affiliate sites that most likely should have no business ranking where they do. We all know by now that Google’s algorithm was built on links and that there is no shortage of places to buy obscene amounts of them.
The fact is that just about every big player in their niche is going to be buying links in some way or another. The difference amongst those players being whether they get caught or not. I’ve seen my fair share of extremely elaborate private blog networks in my time and I’ve recently seen nothing but endless low quality blog network services popping up. I’m not going to pretend I’m above having links from a private blog network, but the quality I’ve seen coming forth is atrocious. While participating in a private blog network for links is clearly a link scheme and against Google’s TOS, a lot of companies still don’t mind the risk.
I personally couldn’t sleep well at night if my company’s rankings relied on a flimsy blog network or three. With that being said, what happens when, either that blog network your relying on gets the boot, or your site gets dropped? The blog network’s users are more likely the most detrimental factor, not the owners. After their spun content goes up, you can be sure that a dosing of spammy links will be splattered all over these blogs. It’s a recipe for disaster, and by the looks of February, this caused a lot of problems.
A lot of companies are not aware of what they’re getting themselves into as well when buying a link blast on a private blog network. What’s even worse is when a business hires an SEO company and they get back a bunch of links that are really just going to be trouble in the long run. On the other end of the spectrum, big companies are spending tens of thousands of dollars on a well sorted private blog network. These sites are well thought out and don’t consist of spun content and thousands of scrapebox and Xrumer links. All I’m saying is be smart and careful, especially if you stumbled onto this post while making a decision for your business. This commercial, for example, is well produced and makes sense, but to the unsuspecting business owner who doesn’t know much about Google’s TOS conditions or what will eventually happen to these networks, it could spell disaster.
Many Google Algorithm Changes In February
By now I’m sure you’ve read this blog post from Google talking about 40 changes to their algorithm in February. The bit in that article about links has raised a lot of eyebrows within the community. We can only speculate on what that change was and how much of a real impact it has on your rankings. What does this have to do with private blog network links? Well, for one, blog networks are easy to detect and Google can sniff out a pattern in no time. Secondly, I think Google is just going after people who are too greedy in their anchor text distribution. It’s really very easy for Google to detect, seeing as we give them all our data (not that they really need help determining what constitutes as a quality link). This should really make you rethink your link building strategy if you’re relying on blog networks as a big part of the game plan.
We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
You’ll still see tons of spammy websites ranking across the board, and that hasn’t changed much. I do, however, think that if you’re using these techniques, your chances for longevity are now in the toilet and those methods are not going to work for a real business. This is why it pays to do things right and reap the benefits once you establish your business as a leader in its vertical. This is why, as a brand, you should be doing amazing things that stand out. This will attract links, social buzz and all the right signals that get you to that level of authority. If you’ve already decided you’re going to eventually dable in a blog network or two, then perhaps wait until you’ve reached that status….it does work better and since your brand is established, it seems you can get away with a lot more *hint hint*.
So Who Got Deindexed?
Well I don’t actually use private blog networks for our clients so I don’t have any hard data myself. I am, however, very active on most of the webmaster forums and definitely noticed the brewhaha in February. I’ve never seen so many unnatural link warning messages go out. I also saw more speculation threads about blog networks getting deindexed although, I didn’t happen to see anyone admitting it outright. We’ll go over actual threads I’ve been keeping my eye on and dig a little deeper into what’s going on in the world of black hattery!
Like I mentioned before, there are dozens of public “private” blog networks currently on the market. I’ve had my team try their hand at most of them with certain niche sites we own. We knew from the get go that just about every single one of them (BuildMyRank, ALN, LAN, DiamondLinks etc etc etc) would provide us low quality content on sites that had nothing to do with our vertical. Every single one of these networks was easy to spot and the content wrapped around yours was not my idea of a delicious sandwich. We don’t use services like these for our clients EVER, however, I see why there is such a raging market for them. It’s hard to build links and if you’re rocking a thin affiliate site, the chances of getting hundreds of natural links isn’t going to come easy. There’s too much money to be made out there and if people can exploit something easily, then it cannot be stopped. Just remember that if you’d like to have a thriving business that benefits from free organic Google traffic, take the slow and steady road.
Yesterday my network of 165 blogs was nearly completely de-indexed by Google. I’m not complaining about this as, hands up, I was posting spun content and selling links. The point of this post is rather to let others know how I think they uncovered my whole network.
I was posting spun (paragraphs spins to 60% uniqueness and 20 spun titles) articles to a random selection of 40-75 of the blogs in the network. That spun content was the only thing linking the blogs together.
None of them had Webmaster Tools, Adsense, etc. installed. None of them were linked to each other. Nearly all of them were hosted on different IP addresses. The only 2 sites not to get de-indexed were 2 that had been hacked a few days earlier and so the content on those couldn’t be found via a Google search.
Goes to show that, even though you may be hosting them on different IP’s, low quality networks are easily caught by Google and that you have to be smarter than your average bear these days if you want to play dirty. While we won’t usually see another private blog network owner come out and admit they got dropped, we can look at the mayhem PBN users saw in February. We’ll start by looking at BuildMyRank.com because they’re one of the biggest and most well known networks. They happened to close their doors on the 19th which, also happened to be a day of major ranking loss for thousands of websites across the IM world. I’m not, however, saying this was the reason they closed their doors; they clearly state they grew too fast and needed to grow some more. Regardless, they’re on Google’s radar for sure and will eventually get their users smacked down in the rankings.
Blog Network Woes
BuildMyRank(BMR) is perhaps the most well known and largest network that was open to the public. They offered thousand of low quality, high (artificially inflated) PR blogs for your link whoring and it came at a cheap enough price. While you cannot get an example of what a site looks like before you buy, they do offer this tidbit of information from their FAQ (sadly, it doesn’t mention that this service is against Google’s TOS):
To protect the integrity of our network, we do not release domain info to the public. However, once you begin using our network, you’ll find your links easily enough with tools such as Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, or Ahrefs.
So how much do you want to bet Google has an account on there? There were easily over 100 threads across the popular webmaster forums all speculating that a huge chunk of BMR sites took a dive and dropped off the map. A lot of users experienced a huge drop in rankings while some others did not. I’ve tried my best to put together the most discussed threads on the topic here:
There are tons of other public networks that I’ve mentioned here, but I’ll just mush together all the threads that had a good discussion and may interest you folks here. I’m also open to hearing what you have to say so don’t be shy and let us know what you think below. In the mean time, however, here is some reading that should keep your busy for the better half of your morning.
There will always be people gaming Google’s algorithm in the link department, so I don’t expect to see a drop in private blog networks. There will still be, and are currently, dozens of open-to-the-public networks to blast thousands of links on. While it does work well, Google is quickly learning how to spot these and, even quicker, how to devalue your link juice. If you’re a legit and serious business, stay as far away from blog networks as you can. If you must dabble, then prepare to eventually get stung in the long run and you’ll be right back to square one.
I know a lot of you are going to be thinking that anyone who got caught up in Google’s algorithm smacking in February must have been foolish and only relied on PBN’s for links. Either that or they got too greedy and didn’t diversify their links, whether it be the anchor text or a multitude of links to internal pages. In the end, it doesn’t really matter when you’re spamming for blog comments, forum/user profiles, wikis, article sites and the like.
Keep in mind that damn near every form of link building goes against Google’s TOS.
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.
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.
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.
It has been a while since I’ve posted a whiteboard friday from Rand over at SEOmoz so here’s the latest one right in time for the holidays. This one he gives away some awesome link building tips to show you how you can give away products and other items to get some juicy links. If you’re running an ecommerce site then definitely watch this because it’s the best way to get links imho.
Are you link building via article marketing for your main source of links? You might not be as safe as you think. While I’m aware I’m spouting and promoting fear a little bit here, I do have my ear to the ground when it comes to this topic. Clearly the majority of companies out there are pumping out ultra low quality content. That’s not the only problem though, everyone is also gaming anchor text and that’s what Google hates…a lot.
I like the fact that Google would discourage this because too many sites are way too shitty to deserve a top ranking spot. Google’s guidelines when it comes to links makes it pretty clear that link schemes are going to cause you trouble, and most article marketing falls under their definition.
You might remember the violation emails Google sent out regarding unnatural links detected pointing to a site. While it’s a very rare occurrence, the possibility is a reality and something you’ll see pop up in Google’s webmaster help central. I just came back from a trip and while catching up on the latest posts on my trip, I discovered this instance that caught my eye.
Meanwhile I submitted a reconsideration request for my other sites that had the same -50 filter, some which had zero inorganic links. In the E-mail I received I was told that I needed to remove any “inorganic links” that I could and if I couldn’t remove them I needed to create a list of the links I couldn’t remove.
It’s important to keep in mind that this person is most likely running a bunch of thin affiliate sites and they were also doing user profile spam. A lot of people think that links can never have a negative effect on your rankings, but those people haven’t been around long enough. Even the link schemes definition from Google clearly states that “This is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results“. That alone should end the debate.
If the post is true, it’s still a rare case and, in my ninja opinion, pretty difficult to get in trouble with links. Pretty much every top niche is dominated by unethical link building practices and it has been that way for the last decade. We, of course, do a lot of high quality content marketing and I’m not claiming to be pure by any means, just be careful out there. That statement is also for those companies who are just blind hiring an SEO to get mass links.
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.
Find out the results of a year of high volume content marketing on guests blogs taught us money still talks. Read the results!
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Negative SEO Attack?
Check out the anatomy of a "negative SEO" attack on our own site in our latest post. There's too much worry about these attacks happening, but I wouldn't worry too much about it. Come read what I think and just what to do if anything like this happens to your brand.
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……
By now I’m sure you’ve read 
