R.O.I. MEDIA

It’s no debate that links (offsite optimisation) are crucial for a sites success, thus it’s not surprising that there is so much artificial link manipulation taking place.

What do I mean by artificial? Well, it’s not according to a site’s natural link growth evolution. Good sites do attract links naturally.

In Google’s ideal world, if you find something interesting or relevant you link to it. But if a site attracts the wrong types of irrelevant links, surely Google has to protect the integrity of their algorithm from artificial manipulation?
Search engine optimizers have supported the assumption that we can control who we link to but not who links to us. Leading SEO companies only pursue one-way links, which makes you think that unless you are not linking out and only receiving one-way links, you are safe.

The reason why this makes some sleep well at night, is because if this was not true, a competitor could link to your site and potentially damage your rankings.

For those of you who think you are now safe – you are not. The reality is that links can harm your site and it’s easily detected by professionals and, of course, Google.

1. On a recent call to Eric Ward, he said link as if Google didn’t exist. This got me thinking about the whole purpose of link building. You should never just get a link from a site that has no value and just for the sake of getting a link, or you are intentionally trying to manipulate pagerank (Google’s Webmaster Guidelines).

So now assuming that we are not linking out to a bad neighbourhood and we are receiving a link, what would Google be looking out for in terms of applying a penalty for inbound links?

1. Paid Links: As per Google’s terms of service, they do not allow sites to sell text links. Sites that engage in these practices are easily detectable and Google has applied penalties to both the site linking (selling) out and the site receiving it (buying). JC Penny recently got slapped with a 90 Day penalty for paid links. If you are selling outbound links for advertising, use no follow links or face the consequences.
2. Unnatural inbound anchor text ratio: If your domain is www.brandname.com, it’s a fair assumption that the majority of your links will contain “brand name”. If it’s the opposite and its “keyword keyword”, you are going to show up on Google’s radar. Rather vary your anchor text and make sure it looks natural.
3. Unnatural link Growth patterns: If your site receives a steady flow of links per month (i.e. 20/month) and that figure jumps up dramatically (1500/month), your site can be put under review.
4. Complaint from a fellow webmaster: Google has appealed to webmasters to use its form to notify them of any link irregularities.
5. Relevancy: If the site you are receiving a link from is not relevant and has nothing to do with what you are discussing, chances are it’s been acquired for purposes of pagerank manipulation. Watch out!
6. New Trends: It doesn’t take long for Google to see artificial manipulation of a new trend for the purposes of link manipulation. Sites that abuse this usually start to rank very quickly and get blasted out of Google as quickly as they entered.

Detection:

There are two types of ways Google detects bad linking practices and applies a penalty, they are:

Automatic – based on the points above, Google can easily detect inbound link manipulation and apply a penalty

Manual:  A fellow webmaster can notify Google through Webmaster Tools of unethical link building and Google then does a manual review of your site.

How do I know if I have received a penalty ?

The simplest way of detecting a penalty, is sudden loss of traffic. If your traffic is radically down, chances are something is very wrong. Run checks on your rankings to see if they have dropped or if your site is not in the index.

Google is getting proactive and now notifies you through webmaster tools of a potential issue. If you are innocent, this can save you. If you are guilty, you need to start cleaning the mess.

An emerging trend has been seen with sites discovering spam back links and removing them to lower their spam score.  Did you just hear right?

Yes, the new face of link building is “Link Cleaners” who will remove these bad links.

What to do if you are guilty:

Make a strong case, remove the damage (yes, you know what this is) and submit a re-consideration request.

What to do if you are innocent?

Repeat the process above, explain your case and be patient or do some link cleaning.

A website is the primary income generator of many businesses and you can’t afford to get a penalty, as this could most likely destroy your business. I personally receive emails making ridiculous claims such as 3000 links for $200. If you want to be in Google’s good books, DO NOT attempt this.

The reality is that Google is already ahead of this curve and probably 99.9% of those links have zero value, so you are actually getting no boost. To get valuable links with sustainable rankings, use a trusted SEO company.