If the last few months of ranking changes have shown me anything, it's that poorly executed link building strategy that many of us call white hat can be more dangerous than black-hat strategies like buying links. As a result of well intentioned but short-sighted link building, many sites have seen significant drops in rankings and traffic. Whether you employ link building tactics that are black, white, or any shade of grey, you can do yourself a favor by avoiding the appearance of link spam.
It's become very obvious that recent updates hit sites that had overly aggressive link profiles. The types of sites that were almost exclusively within what I called the "danger zone" in a post about one month before Penguin hit. Highly unnatural anchor text and low-quality links are highly correlated, but anchor text appears to have been the focus.
I was only partially correct, as the majority of cases appear to be devalued links rather than penalties. Going forward, the wise SEO would want to take note of the types of link spam to make sure that what they're doing doesn't look like a type of link spam. Google's response to and attitude towards each type of link spam varies, but every link building method becomes more and more risky as you begin moving towards the danger zone.
1. Cleansing Domains
While not technically a form of link building, 301 "cleansing" domains are a dynamic of link manipulation that every SEO should understand. When you play the black hat game, you know the chance of getting burned is very real. Building links to a domain that redirects to a main domain is one traditionally safe way to quickly recover from Google actions like Penguin. While everyone else toils away attempting to remove scores of exact-match anchor text, the spammers just cut the trouble redirected domains loose like anchors, and float on into the night with whatever treasure they've gathered.
.png)
When Penguin hit, this linkfarm cleansing domain changed from a 301 to a 404 almost overnight.
Link building through redirects should be easy to catch, as new links to a domain that is currently redirecting is hardly natural behavior. To anyone watching, it's like shooting up a flare that says, "I'm probably manipulating links." The fact that search engines aren't watching closely right now is no guarantee of future success, so I'd avoid this and similar behavior if future success is a goal.
2. Blog Networks & Poorly Executed Guest Blogs
I've already covered the potential risks of blog networks in depth here. Google hates blog networks - fake blogs that members pay or contribute content to in order to get links back to their or their clients' sites. Guest blogging and other forms of contributing content to legitimate sites is a much whiter tactic, but consider that a strategy that relies heavily on low-quality guest blogging looks a lot like blog network spam.
With blog networks, each blog has content with a constant ratio of words to links. It posts externally to a random sites multiple times, and with a lot of "inorganic" anchor text for commercially valuable terms. Almost all backlinks to blog networks are also spam.
I cringe when I see low-quality blogs with questionable backlinks accepting guest blog posts that meet rigid word length and external link guidelines. Quality blogs tend not to care if the post is 400-500 words with two links in the bio, and quality writers tend not to ruin the post with excessive linking. Most of us see guest blogging as a white-hat tactic, but a backlink profile filled with low-quality guest posts looks remarkably similar to the profile of a site using automated blog networks.
I'd obviously steer clear of blog networks, but I'd be just as wary of low-quality inorganic guest blogs that look unnatural. Guest blog on sites with high quality standards and legitimate backlink profiles of their own.
3. Article Marketing Spam
Article link addiction is still a real thing for new SEOs. You get one or two links with anchor text of your choice, and your rankings rise. You're not on the first page, but you do it again and get closer. The articles are easy and cheap, and they take no creativity or mental effort. You realize that you're reaching diminishing returns on the articles, but your solution isn't to stop - you just need to do more articles. Before you know it, you're searching for lists of the top article sites that give followed links and looking for automated solutions to build low-quality links to your low-quality links.
Most articles are made for the sole purpose of getting a link, and essentially all followed links are self-generated rather than endorsements. Google has accordingly made article links count for very little, and has hammered article sites for their low-quality content.
.png)
Maybe you're wondering how to get a piece of that awesome trend, but hopefully you'll join me in accepting that article directories aren't coming back. Because they can theoretically be legitimate, article links are generally devalued rather than penalized. As with all link spam, your risk of receiving more harsh punishment rises proportionate to the percentage of similar links in your profile.
4. Single-Post Blogs
Ironically named "Web 2.0 Blogs" by some spam peddlers, these two-page blogs on Tumblr and Wordpress sub-domains never see the light of day. After setting up the free content hub with an article or two, the site is then "infused" with link juice, generally from social bookmarking links (discussed below).
Despite their prevalence, these sites don't do much for rankings. Links with no weight come in, and links with no impact go out. They persist because with a decent free template, clients can be shown a link on a page that doesn't look bad. Google doesn't need to do much to weed these out, because they're already doing nothing.
5. (Paid) Site-Wide Links
Site-wide footer links used to be all the rage. Google crippled their link-juice-passing power because most footer links pointing to external sites are either Google Bombs or paid links. Where else would you put a site-wide link that you don't want your users to click?
To my point of avoiding the appearance of spam, Penguin slammed a number of sites with a high proportion of site-wide (footer) links that many would not have considered manipulative. Almost every free Wordpress theme that I've seen links back to the creator's page with choice anchor text, and now a lot of Wordpress themes are desperately pushing updates to alter or remove the link. Penguin didn't care if you got crazy with a plugin link, designed a web site, or hacked a template; the over-use of anchor text hit everyone. This goes to show that widespread industry practices aren't inherently safe.
6. Paid Links in Content
There will never be a foolproof way to detect every paid link. That said it's easier than you think to leave a footprint when you do it in bulk. You have to trust your sellers not to make it obvious, and the other buyers to keep unwanted attention off their own sites. If one buyer that you have no relationship to buys links recklessly, the scrutiny can trickle down through the sites they're buying from and eventually back to you.
If you do buy links, knowing what you're doing isn't enough. Make sure everyone involved knows what they're doing. Google is not forgiving when it comes to buying links.
7. Link Exchanges, Wheels, etc.
Speaking of footprints, I believe it's possible to build a machine learning model to start with a profile of known links violating guidelines, which you can acquire from paid link sites and link wheel middlemen with nothing more than an email address. You can then assess a probability of a site being linked to in that manner, corroborating potential buyers and sellers with a link graph of similar profiles. I have no idea what kind of computing/programming power this would take, but the footprint is anomalous enough that it should be possible.
Exchanging links through link schemes requires a lot more faith in a bunch of strangers than I can muster. In a link wheel, you're only as strong and subtle as your "weakest links." My opinion is that if you're smart enough to avoid getting caught, you're probably smart enough to build or write something awesome that will have superior results and lower risk than link wheels.
8. Low-Quality Press Release Syndication
High-quality syndication and wire services possess a few unattractive attributes for spammers: there are editorial guidelines, costs, and even fact checking. Low-quality syndication services will send almost anything through to any site that will take it. You'll end up with a bunch of links, but not many that get indexed, and even fewer that get counted.
My experience has been that press releases have rapidly diminishing returns on syndication only, and the only way to see ROI is to generate actual, real coverage. I still see link-packed press releases all over the web that don't have a chance of getting coverage - really, your site redesign is not news-worthy. I'm not sure whether to attribute this to bad PR, bad SEO, or both.
9. Linkbait and Switch
In this context, we're talking about creating a real piece of linkbait for credible links, and later replacing the content with something more financially beneficial. Tricking people into linking to content is clearly not something Google would be ok with. I don't see linkbait and switch done very often, but I die a little every time I see it. If you're able to create and spread viral content, there's no need to risk upsetting link partners and search engines. Instead, make the best of it with smart links on the viral URL, repeat success, and become a known source for great content.
10. Directories
Directories have been discussed to death. The summary is that Google wants to devalue links from directories with no true standards. Here's a Matt Cutts video and blog post on the topic. Directory links often suffer from a high out/in linking ratio, but those worth getting are those that are actually used for local businesses (think Yelp) and any trafficked industry directories.
- Would I pay money for a listing here?
- Are the majority of current listings quality sites?
- Do listings link with the business or site name?
If the answer to any of these questions is no, don't bother with a link. This immediately excludes all but a handful of RSS or blog feed directories, which are mostly used to report higher quantities of links. When I was trained as an SEO, I was taught that directories would never hurt, but they might help a tiny bit, so I should go get thousands of them in the cheapest way possible. Recent experience has taught us that poor directory links can be a liability.
Even as I was in the process of writing this post, it appears that Google began deindexing low-quality directories. The effect seems small so far - perhaps testifying to their minimal impact on improving rankings in the first place - but we'll have to wait and see.
11. Link Farms and Networks
I honestly can't speak as an authority on link farms, having never used them personally or seen them in action.
"I'm telling you right now, the engines are very very smart about this kind of thing, and they've seen link farming over and over and over again in every different permutation. Granted, you might find the one permutation - the one system - that works for you today, but guess what? It's not going to work tomorrow; it's not going to work in the long run." - Rand in 2009
My sense is that this prediction came true over and over again. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
12. Social Bookmarking & Sharing Sites
Links from the majority of social bookmarking sites carry no value. Pointing a dozen of them at a page might not even be enough to get the page crawled. Any quality links that go in have their equity immediately torn a million different directions if links are followed. The prevalence of spam-filled and abandoned social bookmarking sites tells me that site builders seriously over-estimated how much we would care about other people's bookmarks.
Sites focusing on user-generated links and content have their own ways of handling trash. Active sites with good spam control and user involvement will filter spam on their own while placing the best content prominently. If you'd like to test this, just submit a commercial link to any front-page sub-Reddit and time how long it takes to get the link banned. Social sites with low spam control stop getting visitors and incoming links while being overrun by low quality external links. Just ask Digg.
13. Forum Spam
Forum spam may never die, though it is already dead. About a year ago, we faced a question about a forum signature link that was in literally thousands of posts on a popular online forum. When we removed the signature links, the change was similar to effect of most forum links: zero. It doesn't even matter if you nofollow all links. Much like social sites, forums that can't manage the spam quickly turn into a cesspool of garbled phrases and anchor text links. Bing's webmaster forums are a depressing example.
14. Unintended Followed Link Spam
From time to time you'll hear of a new way someone found to get a link on an authoritative site. Examples I have seen include links in bios, "workout journals" that the site let users keep, wish lists, and uploaded files. Sometimes these exploits (for lack of a better term) go viral, and everyone can't wait to fill out their bio on a DA 90+ site.
In rare instances, this kind of link spam works - until the hole is plugged. I can't help but shake my head when I see someone talking about how you can upload a random file or fill out a bio somewhere. This isn't the sort of thing to base your SEO strategy around. It's not long-term, and it's not high-impact.
15. Profile Spam
While similar to unintended followed links on authority domains, profile spam deserves its own discussion due to their abundance. It would be difficult for Google to take any harsh action on profiles, as there is a legitimate reason for reserving massive numbers of profiles to prevent squatters and imitators from using a brand name.
What will hurt you is when your profile name and/or anchor text doesn't match your site or brand name.
"The name's Insurance. Car Insurance"
When profile links are followed and indexed, Google usually interprets the page as a user page and values it accordingly. Obviously Google's system for devaluing profile links is not perfect right now. I know it's sometimes satisfying just to get an easy link somewhere, but profile link spam is a great example of running without moving.
16. Comment Spam
If I were an engineer on a team designed to combat web spam, the very first thing I would do would be to add a classifier to blog comments. I would then devalue every last one. Only then would I create exceptions where blog comments would count for anything.
I have no idea if it works that way, but it probably doesn't. I do know that blogs with unfiltered followed links are generally old and unread, and they often look like this:
Let's pretend that Google counts every link equally, regardless of where it is on the page. How much do you think 1/1809th of the link juice on a low-authority page is worth to you? Maybe I'm missing something here, because I can't imagine spam commenting being worth anything at any price. Let's just hope you didn't build anchor text into those comments.
17. Domain Purchase and Redirect/Canonical
Buying domains for their link juice is an old classic, but I don't think I have anything to add beyond what Danny Sullivan wrote on the matter. I'm also a fan of Rand's suggestion to buy blogs and run them rather than pulling out the fangs and sucking every ounce of life out of a once-thriving blog.
Domain buying still works disgustingly well in the (rare) cases where done correctly. I would imagine that dozens of redirected domains will eventually bring some unwelcome traffic to your site directly from Mountain View, but fighting spam has historically been much easier in my imagination than in reality.
This list is not meant to be comprehensive, but it should paint a picture of the types of spam that are out there, which ones are working, and what kinds of behaviors could get you in trouble.
Spam Links: Not Worth It
I have very deliberately written about what spam links "look like." If you do believe that black hat SEO is wrong, immoral, or in any way unsavory that's fine - just make sure your white hat links don't look like black hat links. If you think that white hat SEOs are sheep, or pawns of Google, the same still applies: your links shouldn't look manipulative.
I'm advising against the tactics above because the potential benefits don't outweigh the risks. If your questionable link building does fall apart and your links are devalued, there's a significant cost of time wasted building links that don't count. There's also the opportunity cost - what could you have been doing instead? Finally, clearing up a manual penalty can take insane amounts of effort and remove Google's revenue stream in the meantime.
This shift towards quality links rather than quantity is a very positive move for the WWW as it not only is giving the necessary value to the PageRank Technology but also helping to reduce the spam on the web.
Our post on https://blog.webpro.in/2010/08/what-is-all-this-link-building-about.html reflects our ideology regarding inbound links.
The more innovative you get the more ideas you get. There is no substitute for hard work. Link building which introduced a lot of spam on the web can become the creative identity for SEO if link building is taken in the right sense as suggested Carson Ward and in the Econsultancy blog post link shared below.
In fact it is a good thing that everyone is thinking of innovative ways and means to earn the links rather than running after them to get the links. The best resource till date that I have read on how to work on earning quality links - https://econsultancy.com/us/blog/7131-51-essential-link-building-tips
This post gives 51 tips for earning quality inbound links. Some of them are:
Some past discussions on the SEOMOZ blog on inbound links:
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/dont-ask-sites-for-links-find-people-and-connect#jtc142513
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-sitewide-reciprocal-and-directory-links#jtc111870
Now we're talking... awesome!
This is a great comment with quite a few actionable items. PointBlankSEO's list has already been mentioned, and I think that is a great resource as well. However, #'s 23 and 24 are listed in the article as things that should be avoided.
Blog Commenting and Forum posting used to be accepted (even embraced when done correctly), and now it appears that they are going to be devalued.
Don't get me wrong...I understand why. There are too many companies that use these methods in an abusive and spammy way. But it means that we are all going to pay the price for that.
We no longer advocate blog commenting as a link building tactic, but if it can increase awareness of your product/brand and add value to the conversation then it becomes a marketing tactic,and isn't that the point anyhow?
To be clear, I love your list, but that clarification needs to be made.
Great list... that actually every SEO with experience (hopefully) already knew.
Do you know, Carson (and Rand, like to see you so present in the blog today)? The most manipulative factor is laziness and misunderstanding what Google is all about now. The common denominator of the 17 link spam types you list is "let's make this easy and then go link building for another site".
The reasons why those types of links are still so common and used are, imho:
Ok... I wrote a rant, and I feel really sorry about this (so I'll accept any critics or thumbs down): but if I was not writing it down I was going to explode :)
6.3 - beautiful examples to follow.
On 4), 5) and cost in general - it was a cheap way of keeping up with the 'big boys', and it worked. So plenty of people did it because budgets were low. But now there needs to be a mind-shift from 'cheap and easy' to 'cheap and clever'.
Well said, Gianluca. I think the primary reason that spammy links are still pervasive is that to some extent they work, and they require little to no creativity or originality. As you said, most clients don't really know or understand the risks, but I think they'd definitely care if they understood. Thanks.
Thanks for the list, Carson
As you can imagine, I am here to expand upon "guest blogging"
The thing is, while it always ends up in "link building" lists, people should stop thinking of it as a link building tactic.
I am serious
Yes, links are the only measurable thing guest blogging can be estimated on, but focusing on links demerits the whole process. You should stop counting your links and simply move on. You'll be amazed to see how much more you were able to achieve this way.
Well said, Ann. We're seeing some of our best ever SEO results (and also some of our best results in terms of traffic and social shares) by treating guest blogging simply as it is and as it should be, rather than going over-the-top with the link building aspect of it, e.g. trying hard to get the perfect anchor text and/or targeting the highest DA sites, etc. Couldn't agree more.
I agree I feel too many brands/business and even SEO's these days focus on KPI's around link targets and focus on competitors links ect, for example setting silly link targets each month. The best style of link building is when you do your own thing and focus on a strategy that will excel aggainst your competitors.
Exactly: don't count your links! Analyze the progress: more brand mentions, more link power, etc. See the full picture instead of focusing on those 1 or 2 links you are getting from one guest post
HeHe -
Sorry but some would say on the other side of the coin, without taking into account that which is the scientific elelment of the algorithm would also be not the full picture!
:)
There is more than one way to skin a cat
ewww I am a vegan - that is just a gross saying :)
HeHe -
Sorry but some would say on the other side of the coin, without taking into account that which is the scientific elelment of the algorithm would also be not the full picture!
:)
There is more than one way to skin a cat
ewww I am a vegan - that is just a gross saying :)
Not saying one should concentrate on links, I only think your view is a little skewed due to conflicts of interest, and thought I should point out it was a pretty blanket statement
LOL this is why I hate blogs!!!! They suck time :) I must get work done!!!!
I would only disagree, in the fact that we must be vigilant on both fronts - Until Google actually does stop putting so much weight on link building, we will always have to compete with those that perform the technical art of SEO maniplulation extrememly well.
Coming from a security background, I understand that "pluggin a hole" only opens another.
This is not a pessimistic view, only reality - there will always be someone out their better, smarter and faster, and willing to take the risks that some will not - and looking at things differently than you, me us....
So just putting out great content, and hoping that you will be rewarded without having some kind of measurable ROI is not a business strategy either.
I hate sports, but a sports analogy is all that comes to mind -
In Football of course you concentrate on other things, but your main goal is scoring - as that is the only way to win - I am not syaing link count is the only way to win in SEO/Marketing - but not focusing on it or at least being able to report on it is a mistake, and not a full strategy--- giving that advice is kind of self preserving due to your main business, IMHO of course :)
I love your service Myblogguest though! And I think you do great work steering people to the light of writing for content, not links! But just disagree in a blanket statement like that above, from a powerful figure in the SEO world, due to your close affiliation with gust blogging, and keeping its reputation from being tarnished- but I also understand you have a business to run, and preserve! once again IMHO ;)
My point was not exactly "stop caring about links". My point was: forget about them for a while to see much better results (in terms of backlinks as well). If you focus on networking and influence-building aspect of guest blogging and stop counting links, you'll see that people will start linking to you without you asking them to
HeHe,
and I am saying that is a blanket approach and as an SEO, we must be vigilant on more that just one front in all aspects of what we do, and not just giving "talking point" blanket advice with no substance :)
Counting links is an extremely basic and one-sided approach, I believe. You should refrain from it.
And I am saying focusing solely on any one tactic or outlook is incorrect and one sided
(Also I am not advocating the counting of links, only wanted to point out that links are still important, and in a scientific formula (which the algo is) you cannot just disregard what you do not like :) And even though the algo will become more and more like a human, it will never be one... That is not possible (well unless Roger decides to get that operation)
It is science, so we must adapt to it, not it adapt to us - so just saying I am going to put out content, and not having an actionable way to report gains and losses other than just profitability is incorrect - as it appears that is now what is being advocated.
Either way, you are measuring results, it just depends on how you do it, and can even be niche specific in some instances.
So just thought it was a blanket statement (not necessarily one I disagree with)
really only disagree in principal, that blanket statements (as I felt the original comment was) are bad for a community
LOL I am really gone now have a great day (se ya on MBG ;)
Oh and thanks for your kind words about MyBlogGuest :)
I'm going to hijack your football analogy and suggest that far too many people see links as the "goal." We've become a little myopic as an industry in that regard. For almost every site I've worked on, the end goal is profitability. I think what Ann is suggesting is that guest blogging can help achieve that goal in other ways, and that focusing entirely on links results in many missed opportunities.
I agree fully - and I think within all my rants I never stated one way or the other is better - only that a one sided approach in any situation is not the answer...
So her blanket analogy in the inital response I commented on was my point, not really the semantics (as no one other than Google can say what we really SHOULD be doing) (and we all know google talks out of both sides of its mouth, but as I have said many time, they have a business to run as well)
And since they will not do that, we must look at all ways - this also includes the scientific aspects of SEO, as well as the creative side needed for consumers.
Where I agree is the distinction between user and algorithm is getting smaller and smaller (and I assume this is the overall goal)
But the issue is were does profitabilty come from? We can use different words all we want, and call it "Puppy Cuddling" but it is still building links.... And the way to Search Engine Sucess currently is link portfolio.... Not saying it will be this way forever - but it is currently "A prophet is rarely heard" can apply as we cannot say currently that links will not be as important today as they will be in 10 years, so radically changing any strategy to not employ at least a gereral strategy for "obtaining Links" however you call it is a little pre-emptive and maybe a little too dramatic.
So personally i would think the idea of Focusing on gaining links is still true, but not worrying about anchor text and trying to be "SEO perfect" would be the new key in my opinion.
My only point, was as a high figure in Guest Blogging of course that would be her response, and it could have gone without saying... And just feel it was misleading, based on her own personal feelings, not necessarily by hardened data - it was a projection (not saying i disagree with her overall point as I DO emply the strategy she says and benefit from it)
But I also have the benefit of being in small niches, where on top of good content I add SEO tactics which allow me to dominate my competitors who only employ content.
I do not manipluate, but I use the science of SEO to my advantage, as well as creating content to be shared and for the user.
I think this debate is way bigger than can be contained in a blog, but please understanf, i do not disagree with the underlying point of what she said, only that it was "jaded" in my own personal opinion.
And to the other side of the coin that NOT focusing on the links is also not the big picture... Only focusing on one thing is never the big picture it is all how you look at it, and opinion based since none of us are Google :)
So basically all this boild down to MY OWN personal opinion that there is no "perfect" way to do anything, and stating to do something in a single mindset, is a pet peeve of mine - as things are not black and white and will never be in a world of color :)
AHHHH ----- and as to the Football hijack (take it I hate Football) :)
Just think that it depends on how you look at it, and kind of a chicken or the egg situation....
Of course the end goal is profitability, but how do you get there?
Through many steps - which one of them being ----- building links amongst many other things, so once again all I am saying is --- To thnk of any goal so obtusely as "Well I am gonna be profitable today as my goal" is incorrect and still one sided!
LOL --- OKAY --- HOW!!! are you going to be profitable!
Not just by saying I am going to put out some content, and it will be great so people will link to me - That is a Shotgun marketing approach - You must be calculated and methodical, and one of those ways COULD be by counting links amonst many other things
Ann, I may have professional feelings for you.
I'll add:
Build links that people want to click. Track referrals from those links. Track a few hot keyword rankings from referring URLs and apply Slingshot SEO's click-through-rate study numbers. Feel good about all that. Tell a friend. Sleep.
@SaintPhilip
Ann, I really hope it didn't sound like I was against guest blogging. I recall a post you did about not setting absurdly strict guidelines, and you often write about how to guest post effectively. Keep up the great work. I hope more people take to tactics like guest blogging in a way that adds value.
You did not sound like you were against guest blogging, Carson. You sounded like you were against "low-quality" guest blogging which I am against as well :)
@Ann Smarty:
So do you have any parameter to differentiate between the low quality and high blogger on the myblogguest?
I mean, if I post an article and am waiting for people to make offer, is there any method through which you can stop the low quality blogs from making offers for my article?
That's a great point, and I see the same thing with social. Much of the value of guest-blogging is relationship building, IMO. Almost all of my business has come from online relationship-building via guest-blogging, blog/forum participation, and social media. Even if I never got a link from any of those sources, I'd still be making money.
What's ironic is that everything in that list can be (and is) used in a spammy, low-quality way. If you paste random, link-filled comments to 100s of irrelevant blogs, it's spam. If you thoughtfully engage on sites regularly and connect to your audience, it's good marketing.
Exactly! There's nothing wrong with the tactic: it's how you are using it :)
And what is Google going to do when they finish hunting down each of these forms of manipulative links? I'm guessing they start coming after links built to infographics and other forms of content marketing that feel so squeaky clean right now. Why? Because why should one page that garners hundreds of links be able to help a completely different page on the domain rank for competitive terms? It shouldn't. And Google could just as easily chop down site authority gained this way as it chops down site authority gained through all of the tactics mentioned above. The line between SEO-driven manipulative, aggressive link building and SEO-driven manipulative, aggressive content marketing is a pretty thin one.
Gonna disagree. Google's representatives have spoken tons of times about how sites that have content that earns editorial links and references deserves a bump. This view accurately reflects the real world, too. Brands that host events, sponsor charities, create value in their communities, offer research to the public and to their industry and generally give back earn awareness and attention. Google is trying to replicate precisely this phenomenon on the web.
The idea that a brand/site that earns lots of links to its content won't see improved visibility and traction from all sorts of channels (not just SEO) is unrealistic. It's why content marketing as a whole works and I think it's unrealistic and incorrect to presume Google wouldn't place ongoing value on it.
I'm not sure that Google's representatives could explain why an ecommerce site with many unique domain links pointing to infographics on its blog would deserve higher rankings for individual product pages though. On the surface, that's what you're supporting here. I know that's not your intent.
Google will likely be busy with all of the areas Carson mentioned for quite some time. But by then, there will be new classes of linkspam - some of which likely fall into the category that Gianluca describes in his comment below--those that "Weren't manipulative once."
Infographics, when used for SEO, do everything to help site authority and nothing to help page authority of a primary keyword service/product page (unless the infographic is also hosted on that product page--which could end up being the future of infographics). The presence of hundreds of links to a site's infographics say very little about the value of its core products/services. This is why I think Google has every right to discount the sitewide benefits provided by these links.
I think we can both agree that the value of traditional brand-driven events and activities goes far beyond web rankings.
Hey hey. We are raising larger questions here. Is it a good business practice for a company to create educational content around its core business, and be more than a mere seller of goods? I think the general consensus would be yes. And that's what infographics are. It might not make you more relevant for a specific product (or keyword) but it should pass authority to your company (or domain name), part of which should trickle to your product (or keyword).
I agree with Scott. Google is not trying to show the results that reflect a webmaster's clever content creation wizardry. Google is trying to show the results that will fulfill the searchers needs. To say that "This view accurately reflects the real world, too." misses the mark. In the real world, companies do the spammiest of things, chopping down forests to fill every mailbox for miles with untargeted flyers, spamming us by phone during dinner, advertisint on TV to everybody watching a show, whether they are interested or not. The real world is one big blakc hat. Google is not trying to replicate the real world. Content marketing works for now. But five years is a long time in the Internet, and I would not be surprised if people look on content marketing five years hence the way we are now looking at article marketing.
Yeah dude this guy is crazy. What is left to do but scratch our balls for good quality links. I mean come on. Some of that old school link stuff has got to work. He should also give us some kind of solution not just what not to do anymore. he shit on everything I do. I use things like magic submitter and I don't know what else to do as long as its good clean content and links are not spammy. Right?
I agee it can be a thin line, the majority of successful linkbait is promoted through paid/manipulated social media promotion. Instead of paying for links you are paying for the content and the promotion to attract ‘natural’ links.
Scott, why on earth would Google go after high-quality content? I recall this from the Cutts-Enge interview.
"Now, there is also the notion of link bait or things that are just cool; maybe not helpful, but really interesting. And those can stand the test of time as well."
Sure, people try to spam with infographics, but the only links they garner fall into one of the categories above. I don't see a spam engineer saying, "hey, this guy's just making awesome content that people want to link to! Let's get him and his added value!"
Carson, don't get me wrong. A valuable infographic page should deserve to rank well by itself for relevant terms. What I perceive as being a weakness in assigning site authority as a whole is the notion that an ecommerce site's authority and product page rankings could be boosted by a ton of links from unique domains pointing to infographics on the blog.
I'm just applying the "If it were my search engine" rule to infographic marketing. For example, I don't know whether Mint.com deserves to rank for its money term "Personal Finance Software" even though it gains a ton of links to it's awesome infographics hosted on the site. These link signals say nothing about the quality of the core product (even though, generally speaking, there's probably a decent correlation between a company's product quality and the quality of peripheral content it produces). Wouldn't you agree?
Scott, all of your comments above are spot on in my view. Really interesting discusssion.
I see your point now, and it's a really good one, but I can only partly agree with it. I agree with you that Mint's infographics don't make its software any better. I would personally not choose software based on who had the best viral content or by who ranked first in Google.
That's all well and good, but I don't expect or want search engines to rate websites based on the products they sell. Google's job is to give people what they're looking for, and sites that get a lot of coverage with awesome content are much more likely to give users what they're looking for.
I dunno. There are edge cases, of course. But for the most part link spam is awfully easy to spot. The real question is how quick Google will be to fix issues when their spam detection sweeps too broadly. That's what terrifies me.
To Google, 6 weeks' turnaround to fix an algorithmic brain fart is nothing. To a small business, it's extinction.
Hey Scott, regarding your original question...the strategy of building infographic links to a blog post about the infographic (which links to your money pages) has always been odd to me. Instead, I like to focus on adding relevant infographics to my money pages as a way to "better the content" of the page I'm trying to rank higher. After all, Google is going after a "may the best content win" approach.
A well written article Carson, thanks :-)
*We need to be on the lookout for scammy re-written versions of this article titled something like "15 proven ways to build links for $99.95" ;-)
We all agree great earned links are the way to go the question is how can small buisness with out teams to make that happen still do seo on a small budget(or can they)? Seo just got alot more expensive and the world needs to see that.
They are forcing us to be marketers with seo backround instead of seo's!!!!
I think extremley small businesses with business owners who have no internet savvy (or the time to invest in SEM) are the ones that are going to get hit the hardest. They either need a real inhouse SEO/SEM person to "earn" links or they need enough $ to hire a real agency.
Gone are the days of hiring overseas freelances for $300 a month to try and break your way into competitive niches.
Hmm seems it's possible that SEO is being replaced by traditional marketing, now that so many SEO techniques are getting blasted by Google.
If that's the case, the SEO pro faces the risk of being sidelined in favor of the traditional marketer, copywriter, MBA, social media manager, creative director, etc. Because if video, branding, publishing, etc., are the way to go nowadays, then it's a steep learning curve for SEOs, who are mostly used to dealing with URLs, HTML, etc., to switch gears into the more creative, writing-based, and relationship-focused sector of marketing.
Take video as an example. Video is great for SEO, right? How many SEOs know the first thing about greating great video content that people will want to share? Hardly any. SEOs didn't go to film school or study advertisting for years in school doing projects and researching the pyschology of audiences when it comes to using video effectively. But now they're supposed to create great video content for their clients?
If this is the trend, then all those SEOmoz articles on content/community building are going to be even more valuable, as is perhaps going to back to school and getting a degree/certificate in marketing.
But the thing is its not hard to go online buy a cheap camera and start producing content for Youtube, I have never been to film school, I have never even read any thing about how to make professional video.
But the thing is YouTube and video editing software make it soo easy to learn how to make professional videos.
I mean I have made around 200+ videos and have 1 million+ views on Youtube and what do I know about video?
Thing is people need to talk to clients see if they have a friend of a friend who can do some cheap video, the days are of SEO been wasy and sitting around to make money are long gone, you need to get out their and start hustling to make content, use what is available.
Yes making a video is cheap.
That's not the point though.
The point is making video that people want to watch.
That's incredibly hard. YouTube is littered with millions of new videos every day that barely anyone watches.
To think that some SEO grunt who has been staring at URLs for 50 hours a week is going to produce amazing video content that people will want to share - especially in this age of oversaturated everything - is wishful thinking.
There are very talented, very smart, very creative people churning out videos every day that barely gets shared or viewed because of the sheer overload of stuff being produced on the web every second. To think that a SEO is going to somehow jump in the mix with her lack of experience and produce viral video content is wishful thinking.
Once
A link is a link. Where are your facts to suggest that auto generated links don't get results?
That's not what I'm experiencing now on my sites (my oldest was built in 1997 I now have over 100)
The problem here is the similarity or poor quality of the content that gives a link ot's context. Whether it's the content that is submitted with the link, - or the content that pre-existed on the site in question.
Google and Mr Cutts have said time after time that a PR6 link is a PR6 link - whether it's on a blog, an article site or your grandmas "knitting" forum. At some point they reduce the effect of too many links from the same or similar platforms. But we still keep hearing this "spam" links and no real definition of what spam is.
A PR4 article site that actively solicits content and then moderates it before publishing is not full of spam. A blog that posts a thoughtful and unique comment is not inviting or publishing spam. A forum goes with a few helpful posts who creates a link in his profile is not spamming.
If you think it is you need to get a dictionary out and look it up.
If dynamic sites or CMS links are ignored (the only way to truly stop auto tools would be to do this) then that's 95% of the internet redundant for SEO purposes - and we all try and ask out local UNiversity or Microsoft or whoever for a link - because that's all that's left.
But when we do that - we are in fact cynically attempting to manipulate search results through pure self promotional efforts offering content only for the purpses of obtaining a link and a rise in SERPS...this is as "on the nail" a definition of spam as you can get.
The only difference being is only those with connections or already with a high ranking website would ever be able to do it.
Like The Who said "Here comes the new boss...same as the old boss" but this time he's pulled the ladder up and the internet is now an exclusive club.
But of course that is NEVER going to happen - because that's not what internet users want whether they be webmasters or pure browsers. It would lead to all search results with just the slightest hint of commerciality becoming a "shopping mall" list of brand names returned for generic searches.
When people search generically they want to see choice, innovation, ideas. If they wanted to search Walmart - they'd have typed in Walmart or have it bookmarked.
Any search engine that becomes a shopping mall does two things.
One - It loses a massive chunk of it's audience. People switch off or over when the ads come on in all types of media - the internet is no different
Two - Googles business plan goes up the wall. If the big boys rank for brand and generic terms in natural search - there is no need for them to ever pay for Adsense.
The little guys - faced with the big guys already winning FOR FREE abandon conventional internet marketing (at least through that portal) - they are never going to win and are throwing money away just to be second or third best to a larger company that is getting natural ranking (which people prefer to click on by a very large margin) for free. That makes no business sense.
Suddenly Adwords makes no business sense to anybody. The winners have won - the losers don't stand a chance. Bye bye Googles monetization.
But again that isn't what's happened. That isn't what is going on.
They haven't punished link building at all directly. They hit the poorly run linking sites and devalued them - they've punished both the platforms that these links are built on, and what no-one seems to be talking about - they've disregarded many links based on the context that the content they are surrounded by places them in.
A link to your garden center site surrounded by viagra spam is not cutting the mustard any more.
A link to the same site surrounded by contextually relavent info on a "clean " site that has retained PR is doing just fine.
After Penguin, Panda and all the rest I have site after site ranking high (higher than 3 weeks ago to be sure) with nothing but these links.
Dynamic sites and CMS are all "open" by their very nature, and an "open" site is one that could be abused.
The alternative is to ask of get other webmasters to include a link to my site within the content of a static site - a none dynamic site.
That's not going to happen - to me - you - or anyone else in the "small fry" brigade.
Sure I'll link to Microsoft or Google or someone with a massive resource. Normally I'll put an outbound link to a site and find that the site I'm linking to is already PR6 or higher.
I rarely if ever have reason to put outbounds to any peer sites (Why would I? Promote my competition? I think not) and likewise they don't link to me.
I could "build relationships" on forums and blogs (which I do) but that is every bit as cynically manipulative as auto link building tools, just a whole lot slower, and in the end what do I end up with?
A link on a forum or blog. Whoppee do.
I have 117 sites a 50+ of them have improved in SERPS in the last 4 weeks, the rest have mostly stayed the same with one or two slipping down.
And what is the common denominator of those slipping down?
Poor, low quantity, infrequently updated content on site.
My succesful sites have upwards of 125,000 words (all hand written by myself or my staff) and are updated at least once a week each (most of them it is several times a week). We make links using just about whatever method we can. We mix it up, buy services, use products. If you've heard of it - we;ve used it (or hired a service which has used it) Other than one private link service (which promted a note from Google - but perversely no alteration in ranking what-so-ever) we have never had an issue. We rank high for over 90% of the terms we are after (top 3 is high for us)
So my metrics have shifted completely based on ON SITE content
Links? They've only helped - no matter how they were sourced.
Well said, as an agency or someone who works on many domains and not just a full time inhouse SEO there is much to be said about a blended approach; use available "manual" techniques to get some low hanging fruit but use the social interaction and quality content approach as well. The key is just making sure the manual techniques used don't set off any alarms.
SEOmoz posts tend to be written for business owners and inhouse SEO's not agencies or individuals who have to bring somewhat fast measurable results for multiple small businesses (who have limited monthly budgets). Also, anything too "gray" won't be shared here or they might not have Matt Cutts participate in future posts.
I take everything here into consideration and its very helpful but look elsewhere for techniques that can be used to scale.
"There's also the opportunity cost - what could you have been doing instead?"
That's a great point. Even if your site doesn't get penalized for link spam, if those less-than-great links are devalued all your time/energy will have been for nothing. Why not spend the time getting real links that are going to help you for a long time to come.
I think for points 13, 15 & 16 it's important to remember that this does not mean don't add links EVER. It means don't add links on:
Participating in forms, social sites, and comments are all great ideas. Making connections, building relationships, and building awareness is fine. Dropping thousands of links everywhere and hoping to rank based off those alone is what won't work. Thanks for adding that.
1. Cleansing Domains
Any chance of a better explaination of this. What is the image actually showing?
Other than that awesome awesome post!!
AFAIK it is essentially you build 30 domains, each one has a different set of anchors pointing to them i.e. nfl clothes. These all then 301 to one domain with a normal link profile. Now because of penguin they stoped that url 301 redirecting so that the anchor percentage to the domain decreased substantially as the exact anchor "nfl clothes" was no longer passed through the redirect.
But Google will have a historical index of the web and will know that you have been doing this. So as Carson states it will not be feasible to do this.
Nice post Carson.
The post just highlights the fact that SEOs need to just work harder to acquire those links. It takes, time, money and people to create content and reach out, so do that instead of wasting time on acquiring spammy links.
There are countless posts in SEOMOz blog which goes through all the best practices to go about acquiring high authority links.
Take as many learnings as you can from them and change your processes in-house. I know we have.
Very De-Motivated post for any link builder who work on regular stuff… here are things that where I might not agree you (or partially agreed).
Social Bookmarking does not work at all, Google is giving no marks for linking to low quality directories… but If you are going to focus on high quality niche related bookmarking websites like ‘design float’ for website and graphic design, IMO the result will be positive instead of no or negative results.
…same goes with directories, I believe it’s about 2 things… if you have quality directories that are niche specific, I believe Google will still counting it.
Things that I would highly agree are:
Lot of links coming from low quality guest blogging sites, It is important not to target low quality websites that offer quest posting. Let’s say if SEO is your niche you will find tons and tons of website where guest blogging opportunities are available but you have to decide whether to go for easy opportunity or to work on the post and get it submitted on the websites like SEOmoz.
Link Networks, Don’t just get a link from Link network nor try to create your own network of website that link to each other or else the results will be dramatically dangerous.
I believe Google is focusing on changing the way SEO has been done and by now link builders should understand that links through content marketing and social links are the power in 2012.
Hi Moosa,
I realize that the post didn't give you a lot of stuff to do. That's because just about every post on SEOmoz has great ideas for legitimate link building tactics. This post's "job" was to get people to stop doing the crap that I've been helping people clean up this month. In retrospect, perhaps I should have pointed out some of these ideas.
“My opinion is that if you're smart enough to avoid getting caught, you're probably smart enough to build or write something awesome that will have superior results and lower risk than link wheels.”
I agreed but many of us wants to gain success with an easy way so they don’t bother these stuff. When I started my SEO career I Always run behind these kind of techniques but eventually I realized that there is no easy way to success in SEO. So I struggle hard to work as Google want and guess what! I am free from recent Google update.
Thanks to Rand and SEOmoz who opens my mind and help me to realize about True SEO.
I think that quote is dead-on. It's amazing to me how much effort people will go to for a "free link" - if it takes you days of scheming, why not build something that's actually useful? The problem with your link wheel isn't that it's black-hat - the problem is that, if Google devalues it, you have nothing left. It doesn't generate real traffic or interest or brand influence. It's a facade. Build something of value and it can survive the rules changing.
Dr. Pete,
Because *most * webmasters are lazy or want to easy way out. As you very well know it's hard work to create and market content and many of these webmasters thought they had it easy. Well, they did up until a few years ago.
Late to the party I know... :)
One things that stands out for me about the spammy techniques (and the more white stuff discussed here that people feel may be classed as spammy in the future): they all fall nicely within a client/agency relationship
So when we talk about removing these linkbuilding avenues, we are creating two new problems for people to solve
1. A large number of agencies will need to figure out how to create a business model out of higher quality, potentially lower volume linkbuilding - clients tend to understand and value volume over quality
2. Most of the good stuff we are talking about needs to be very client (almost PR) driven. Big companies find creative + measurement hard, thats why they want to outsource in the first place
S
Completeley agree with this. it's very hard to sell a SEO business-model based on Extremely qualitative content. I'm waiting for a post on this topic if possible because i think everyone is definetely OK with the fact that we have to enhance our linkbuilding strategy: but what about the cost for the client?
Great post. However, although our industry yearns for a consensus to be reached, I think what's more important than a consensus of opinion is actual data-driven analysis.
I took a crack at categorizing linking techniques into a big comparison table recently (admittedly mostly opinion-based). As data on these recent Google changes accumulates I may have to revise it, but I'm not convinced that certain of these techniques are completely worthless as yet:
https://www.coconutheadphones.com/linking-strategies-the-complete-guide/
For instance, just because there have been some recent comments in forums that some directories have been deindexed doesn't mean all directories are now totally worthless as a tactic - I'd like to see some convincing ranking correlation data at least.
I think for most linking efforts, if you're not prioritizing and screening out sites with likely penalties and so on you're just spraying and praying - always a bad idea, regardless of the tactic.
BTW, I think Ann is sitting on a potential goldmine with MyBlogGuest, it seems to be to be pretty white hat-ish and with some link builders likely experiencing somewhat of an existential crisis with this year's blitz by Google, it should do well - kudos!
BTW, I think Ann is sitting on a potential goldmine with MyBlogGuest, it seems to be to be pretty white hat-ish and with some link builders likely experiencing somewhat of an existential crisis with this year's blitz by Google, it should do well - kudos!
Yeah, great, you have just made my huge secret public :)
On a serious note, we are foghting every day and every hour with our members trying to convince them to provide awesome content and aim for quality. Not everyone listens, but we are almost there!
`
Oh really? just a dot? Now I won't be able to sleep at night and it's late night here!
Agreed - services like MyBlogGuest and Zemanta should be huge winners from any focus on quality link building and earning attention through content.
I couldn't love you even more for your support of MyBlogGuest, but you always prove that I should find the way to :) Thanks, Rand
Time may not be too far, when Google start reducing the value of guest posting, because it has become a trend and i 've seen people who just pay others for guest blogging for their site.
Just as it happened in case of article marketing and Panda, it wasn't actually spam, but it wasn't quality stuff as well, so taking the benefit of doubt, Google just imposed Panda over them. And now, the rate at which guest blogging is getting common and is used(and misused) I fear a strong responce from Google on this as well.
Rand, may like MyBlogGuest.com, but Matt Cutts... huh! you never know!
This post covers bad link building practices very comprehensively but on the other hand you endorse Guest Posting (MyBlogGuest) network as a good way to build quality links.
How you justify this?
@Carson Ward
I think you did a great job and with this post you save us a lot of time. Just imagine not doing all this nonsense (spammy) link building and to focus on the staff that is really worth it.
I am a German web designer and I get a lot of local business. I really can recomend (if you get for example a local dentist or so) to concentrate on quality (and even semi quality) local directories and niche business directories instead of general directories.
I have a FEW simple but direct questions....
Why are SEO pundits/experts only discussing about " WHAT TO AVOID" and all?
Why are these guys not coming up with detailed analysis on "WHAT TO DO"?
Who after all is the master of SEO masters? Who can guide us the needful steps in emergencies? I have seen almost no one daring to go into the detail of any answer.
If it is only about the cleaning and correction phases we are undergoing why much resources are not available online? What Google is doing for this?
Does this mean no one has an idea what exactly to do to revise the situation?
Sorry, i like to know the solutions.... identification of problem is not the answer to cure it.
It is really frustrating when I see poeple are less talking about solutions than problems.
Formula is (INFORMATION - PROMOTION) = SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
"What to do" points based on above mentioned formula.
I think SEO practices like link building, directory listing, guest posting, blog commenting, business listing, social bookmarking, social media marketing, content marketing etc can't be changed over night. And no one can provide fresh alternative immidiately. So just follow the above mentioned 5 ponts.
Thanks for the post! I found it useful just as an update on what we should be avoiding and with things changing so much and so frequently, it`s good to have a re-cap. I would ask on thing however, that I can`t find anything on in terms of advice on whether Google like it or not and that is Squidoo. A business associate of mine uses it frequently and spends a lot of time and effort creating topic pages on a given subject in order to gain the link exactly how he wants it (without stuffing or spammy links) and it seems to help drive traffic and increase authority for the linked website.
What are your thoughts Rand? Is Squidoo, if used properly, a viable method of gaining those links?
I'd put Squidoo in the same category as article directories. Squidoo's internal ranking metrics are deeply flawed, but there is some really great stuff in there somewhere. The stuff that does attract legitimate links can't hurt. Personally I'd rather have that stuff on my blog.
I'm glad you posted this. I have always been worried about the link building industry. I'm still worried about the link building industry, but at least now I know I'm not alone.
Its good to know as well that I AM NOT ALONE :)
So, it means that people should now stop creating link with the most comman link building stretegies and fous more on writting quality content and just help it found on web and then let the people to promote you.
I think it will be always to find new ways of links and implementing those.
thanks, grt post.
No, like Rand already pointed it out you can use this link tactiques: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4
I agree with most of the strategies in this post are things which you wouldnt advise on. I think any thing which is site wide and paid links with generic anchors in huge numbers screams danager and it has for many years, that been said some specific niches need to be looked at when they make a 80% clean link profile and 20% paid/dirty for example.
Yet I feel areas such as social bookmarking if you use high quality niche specific sites and you gain a bit of traction they can work from a linking and traffic point of view, but I wouldnt advise it as an overall strategy.
Directories too if it is high quality and niche specific can also work, for exmaple I saw a good one recently a directory which listed restaurants with public toilets in them, this was a Government directory, so if you are a restaurant this is gold.
People just have to pick up their game you have to train your team and yourself to work harder, gone of the days of using a link wheel to get quick results to an affiliate site!
Re: directories, I'd just point out https://www.seroundtable.com/google-directory-removal-15151.html and https://twitter.com/#!/dohertyjf/status/202459665672585216
Hi Rand, I think the thing is that deals with very low quality directories, they have been a waste for a while, I saw the press on inbound.org today about it ;)
I am referring to Government directories and resource lists from high authority sources, you cant tell me these do not have some authority and weight.
I think high quality/ high authority directories will have a place, it is like Yahoo Directory if you are a legitimate business you have $299 to buy it, if you are a spammer with a .info you do not have the money to pay for it, search quality raters know this too, I have even heard this same line from an ex search quality employee in the European market say directories are decent if they are high quality and authority.
Hi James,
Perhaps I should have said, "Low Quality Directories" in the heading, but I did say exactly that within the content. Thanks.
Has your Yahoo directory listing ever provided traffic? Has it ever provided a conversion?
Odds are that it has not provided either. So why did you spend $300 to be included there?
Most likely to enchance your ranks..... me thinks yes.
It's a paid link... an expensive one.
Search News Central created a really useful spreadsheet with a list of directories being de-indexed by Google.
https://searchnewscentral.com/20120515299/Latest/google-de-indexing-free-directories-really.html
oh my, i'm using all those technique! Then Carson, I wonder what non-spammy technique are you using to promote your website is?
I've read everything from purist to blackhat in the comments. Very interesting. Emotions running high on this topic. Money, lots of money is tied up in SEO and marketing.
Remember the days of FUD and Microsoft? Steve Ballmer was quoted with sayings like this: "Well, I think there are experts who claim Linux violates our intellectual property. I'm not going to comment. But to the degree that that's the case, of course we owe it to our shareholders to have a strategy."
That kind of statement bears a familiar resemblance to some of those semi-cryptic ones by Mr. Cutts in any number of well-timed public announcements.
FUD. It's what's for dinner.
Why shouldn't Google maximize the impact of its updates? Who doesn't hate the kind of grotesque spam exemplified in the overoptimization announcement on the Google blog? Ultra-low quality deserves to be rooted out. Other than that, it seems like Google is reluctant to overly punish many kinds of links simply to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
A stronger focus on marketing is the shift that Google is rewarding and that really delivers the bottom line to our clients anyway but it's a painful transition for a lot of businesses who never intended to get into "show business."
My own niche in real estate SEO illustrates this point. The last thing many real estate agents want to hear is that they have to start getting into what amounts to, in their view, entertainment. Blogging, Facebook, Twitter and now Google Plus, Youtube videos... many agents quake in fear at getting in front of a video camera or even holding one. Then, to add insult to injury, when you look at many typical search results in many real estate markets such as "Anaheim real estate" the top performers are not those who created imaginative content, blogs, and other types of the Matt Cutts utopian "great content" but those sites that are the most impersonal syndication MLS listing sites: Trulia, Homes.com, Zillow. This forces agents to either expend large sums of time and money trying to outperform them in their markets or lining up to pay the referral fees that these sites demand. It is generally felt among agents that these websites exist for no other purpose than to force money out of real estate agent coffers by bullying them out of top positions in Google search results.
No doubt, those syndication sites generate leads but those kind of leads are the least valuable. Leads who want "that house" that has been off the market for a month and always leads who are emotionally disconnected from the agent who never got a fair chance to introduce themselves and have some kind of rapport built up with the home buyer or seller.
My take is to be cautious in how you earn or build or attract links and don't go off the deep end in forced anchor text but continue diversity in strategies, not just anchor text.
Dave Keys, not #1 today for "real estate SEO" but I attract the most attention!
Hey man, good article. Thats just about every single thing i have done for the past 10 years ;o(.
However, i still believe you can use some of the tactics you have listed above to generate traffic. Plus, if you do these on pages that are deep in your site, it still may help get them indexed and start to eventually rank and generate traffic.
I agree, i dont see the immediate response in ranking (up or down) that i used to see when we would do some of the items you listed above. But, i think you simply just cannot stop everything and start writing.
You just have to be smart about it and be less spammy about it. Keep hitting your pages that are deep in your site and get them more attention from search engines.
Just my two cents.
great post chap
Very well written and professionally delievered, Carson. I think it's hard for people to hear that their methods of link building won't work in the long-term. You can't convince them, even after Panda, Penguin, etc. You have made some great points about what won't work in the long-run, and I appreciate it a lot. I was building links to a domain that was redirecting, not meaning to spam, but I realized it really looks spammy. Will be changing that.
As Rand mentionned, STOP GETTING LINKS... START EARNING LINKS!
Where's any of the data or proof to back up your claims on single post blogs or web 2.0's being dead? I've seen well written Squidoo pages being passing on mozrank of 60 and being the sole reason small niche site ranks (with no other links) still after Penguin.
Hi,
Just personally - I am not sure it is saying at this very moment - You will loose all your rankings if you use these tactics, or even that they do not work.
I think the spirit, and possibly the reason it was promoted is due to the future - and there is really no data to speak of to predict the future.
I personally think it is more of a "Cautionary Tale" stating the diminshing effectivness and elevation of risk hence a lower % of chance for ROI.
If you feel it is incorrent, then do not follow the instructions, SEOMOZ is a community of learning and discussion, so you could be 100% right, I personally agree with the poster 100% as he gives cautionary advice - it is up to you how risky you want to be and calculate your risk accordingly (based on the new evidence of sites/tactics that are being devalued/de-indexed)
IMHO
I agree seo is a art and everyone chooses for themselves how to express it.
I would only add it is science as well (Art and Science)
I could probably devote an entire post to Squidoo, but I left it out precisely because it deserves a longer explanation that I would have been able to offer in this post.
This was a post about getting past the short-term and thinking about long-term business goals. Getting links from one domain is fine, but it doesn't amount to a strategy.
"I could probably devote an entire post to Squidoo"
Would you? I'd definitely want to read it.
While the tactics listed in the post may still work, they are probably providing limited value. I think the point of the post is really to point out that:
Building these types of links is probably not the best use of your time as they will either stop working in the future (best case) or you could be penalized for some of them as they violote Google's quality guidelines. Further, engaging in these tactics could put you or your client at risk in the future.
One man's valuable content is another man's spam.
This was just a great post and I found the discussion very interesting too. Despite all the changes, what a great time it is to be in SEO.
Interseting blog and great comments
Yes It is correct. but most of SEO activities are in above list. A new time is for natural SEO-And Natural link Building, It is a 100% result oriented link building. It is best for organic SEO.
great post and better "ambient"... thanks for share
Thank you for the good article! But i don´t agree in all the points you mentioned. The most important thing is to deliver great value to your customers and the website visitors. Write great content to solve their problems etc.
But in my opinion the seo companies have to build links smarter than before the penguin update. More anchor variation and no "1000 links in a day"-services with only a few money keywords. That´s it.
I need some help regarding getting hit by penguin. I have a site that is full of real, quality content and traffic has fallen off dramatically. I've been reading everything I can find, but nothing seems to have the answer. I'm now exploring the inbound link sources to the site and there are two things that stand out. Webmaster Tools show two referrers as those "who link the most" with 25,026 and 19,164 links! These are both legitimate sites. One a tech trade newspaper website and the other a trade group site. Both instances appear to be sponsorship ads for my client. So, could it be that these innocent banner ad and sponsorship logos (with no "no follow" attributes) are to blame?
Can anyone offer any insight? Sponsor and Advertiser beware?
Thank you for your help.
After reading the post & all the discussion which has been done by all the people i just want to know how small business get backlinks or what will there starategy to get backlinks if they are selling office equipments or other stuff when there niches is small as compare to other. After reading the above Post what i understand, Correct me if i m wrong, that Organic SEO is finsihed for them they should know focus on Marketing or paid SEO....
Thanks for this information !!!!!!!
Good Article and this article very helpful......
First of all some clarification would be helpful. I read that Panda was an algo change with several updates, the last being Panda 3.5 But Penguin is a filter which was put into action on 4-24. Anything to that?
Wow Carson!
I think you might be in the running for "most commented post" in the end of year Roundup!
A timely reminder for those prepared to rest on their laurels and hope that the axe never falls. Fascinating to see so many people even with the sand shifting beneath them still advocating no change until things stop "working".
Sha
Search in facebook for
Boycott google PPC for one week.
and like the page and get a dialogue going.
Facebook -- boycott google ppc for one week
In this article I will be a great benefit.I did not link the right way I have a spam score in 15/18.
i totally disagree with the most of the part of the post .... It cant be possible ... link building with relevance is almost wellcome from google ... but remember every thing in moderation is good and if all of these will finish in future than the buyer switch the search engine i bet you
I thing these are all activity spam so what are the next link stratergies we can follow in future?
whats its user added links and content, as far as im concerned, its spam. Social media platforms deal with a lot of spam. Matt Cutts has a job because he has to figure out every waking moment how to stop spammers from figuring out Googles practices. When you open up platforms for user generated content, spam is what you will get. It has to be heavily moderated. You can't link this or link that without wondering if you are spamming or if the webmaster is going to remove and block your link/content. Someone, someday will come out with a better idea of how to do it. Twitter has a good concept but needs to be improved , but even they have a ton of spam and junk accounts on their platform. You just can't win. Welcome to the world-wide-web
We are a flooring manufacturer and we're thinking about starting an Authorized Dealer program where we ask our flooring dealers to put an Authorized Dealer image on their website (B2B). Ideally this image would link to a page on our website but we also sell direct to homeowners (B2C) so we would need to send this traffic to a disconnected page as to not compete with our dealers business. As the links begin to appear I realize this isn't going to give our domain much of a bump (*since the page is not connected), but I want to make sure it isn't going to look spammy to Google and penalize us?
Anyone ever have a link building campaign for a disconnected page?
Wow what a great post but I think it really should be a 2 part post. One thing from reading the comments is that a lot of people are a little lost. You pretty much eliminated every link building strategy that many people use and while I agree with a great amount of what you said, I feel the post was a little 'depressing'.
My 2 post suggestion means why not follow up with what works. Or more to the point how what used to work has now changed i.e guest posting is a high quality organic form of article marketing.
I like to feel good when I read articles, especially in SEO. I love articles like this that say what you should not do...but it needs to be finished with some answers, some solutions, something positive.
Hi Jon,
This post had a job, and it was to tell people to stop doing terrible things. There are plenty of posts (e.g. on Moz) that do a good job of telling people what to do.
I knew some people were relying upon the tactics that I shot down, but I didn't guess that there were so many people using these tactics as their only strategy! It was quite shocking to read comments suggesting I had shot down every link-building method in the world - especially on the SEOmoz blog, where so many quality link-building strategies have been shared.
Look for plenty of link-building advice coming in the future :)
Hi Carson,
You did do a really good job with this post, it was well worth the read. Also I am glad you will be writing some link building advice posts in the future. Will certainly watch out for them! :-)
Hi, i have 3 website or domains (principal ergotron Venta de pcs ) I have noticed big differences for example in the detection as spam links on the web ergotron I detected many links spam , but I checked the links and the majority of external sites are as no-follow and sites I link are not detected as spam now pcalmacen.com have on this web spam link 52 % red and the sale of PCs is only less than 10% https://www.seomastering.com/audit/ventadepcs.com/ and http : // www .seomastering.com / audit / pcalmacen.com / who they think they can be ? the only difference I find is that this system only detects about 20 links in analyzing pcalmacen.com , thanks in advance
Our Q&A forum is a great place to get advice on your site's SEO.
you know what? I would say 99% of SEO agencies or practitioners are using at least a few or the listed strategies above. Lol... Strangely they are still ranking high one google after all the animals updates. They used doorway pages, link spam, private blog networks and etc. .....
As far as i can make out, and i'm not an expert, unless you write great content, on a well constructed site, and get it shared by others naturally, getting votes and tweets etc from social networks without asking or paying someone, I don't see the point of getting any links at all from anyone any more.
Just got around to reading this great post (found it in the top posts of the year - congrats). It's good to get a clear definition of the various types of link spam out there. Unfortunately they still have a very significant impact on your Google rank. I'm currently analyzing our competitor link profiles and within my industry I would say 8 of 10 first page search results can be directly attributed to these methods. The more I analyze the more it seems like following some of these techniques could provide a more immediate boost in ranking (short-term solution while you build great content).
So, what have I got from this lengthy thread of comments... I now understand that we are all completely confused. We need to remember that Google is not a person and it does not have feeling... If it were a person it would probably be a lot easier to build links! I'm just going to out this out there and would be interested to hear some thoughts..
I am a sales person, a people person, I like to talk so, if I were to approach a site that I have some great content for, lets say PR 4 - The response I get from them is ok yes, but we charge for post with links, £50. In kick my sales skills... I build the relationship, I talk to them and after a few days they have said, 'oh OK well we'll let you guest post for free'
This then means, to me, I cant have my article on this site because they are charging for links, even though they have wavered the charge to me? Google doesn't understand admin, it doesn't read my emails.. and it is not a sales person.
I'm sorry but I have to disagree with the whole "Content" is king principle. Yes content is important, but Google has no artificial intelligence, how is it to understand a good piece of content? links are and always will make up a majority of a websites authority.
Creating good content alone is not enough, this is advocated by the search community for quality reasons, which is great, but realistically, links rule!
Write good content and then promote that content like made through social media, PPC and even advertising options in Facebook etc.
I see people saying "Oh loads of bad links don't work" really? Why do I see so many poor quality websites in SERPS still?
Hi there,
The point you're attributing to me is not mine. I did not say that links don't matter, nor will I as long as Google values them. I did not say that none of these things work right now - I know they can. This was a post about avoiding unsustainable and short-sighted linkbuilding tactics.
Cheers Carson,
nice and succinct picture painted!
Great piece of advise. This is an important thing to concern. Glad you pointed out the major ones. Link spams have to be avoided in the phrase of seo. Otherwise, Google has gifts ready for them.
And Adwords are not paid links? As long as they benefit Google, it's not a violation of their policies?
So yeah, basically most things we've been doing :D Many of the headings are attention grabbing, perhaps even shocking, but I can see most of the topics being true on some level.
Participating in forums, social sites, and comments are all great ideas. Making connections, building relationships, and building awareness is fine. Dropping thousands of links everywhere and hoping to rank based off those alone is what won't work. Thanks for adding that.Really great post thankls for sharing this article.
A great article. However being a web developer i am worried about one thing you mentioned Site wide links, we put side wide links on the pages that we develop, not just for the seo part but also we get business when people who like the site go down check who developed it and visit our website and call us. Now if google decides to penalise us then this is going to be a big problem.
How do i protect myself from this or is removing links the only way to go forward..
You may find my reply to a comment in another article useful in response to your query...
Hi Carson,
Can you write an article about Good SEO Link Building next time? I would like to try something that works instead of understanding what does not work better.
From what I have read it seems that sponsoring events might be the whitest SEO.
I still see it as a paid link but I understand one you are trying to help the community and the other you just care about your site. One is $1000+ where the other is maybe $50.
But Still i seen Social bookmarking is good :)
Buying domains is definitely an interesting one. I've seen it work quite well from a number of perspectives. I've seen businesses that have bought domains and redirected them through purely for the link juice and that's the practice Google is going to want to stamp out, I've also known businesses that have combined there several websites into one, have rebranded and needed a new domain or have acquired another business and merged the brands. Getting round this and not punishing businesses for legitimately going about their business is going to be tough.
I wonder if one day it might be better when just your "Brand Name + Keyword" is mentioned on good sites whithout any link.
Wow! complete post and very easy to understand that great content is on the center of the web now. SEOs gonna work with designer now ;)
content is always but we didnt give importance to it
Hi there guys, I only have this article I posted that proves Google has double standards when it comes to Penguin https://goo.gl/FyfCS
Carson, Thanks for sharing information about different types of link spams and avoids those techniques, In this article some of activates actual (original) meaning sharing knowledge and solves your problems but doing seamy actives form SEO and others originality is changes, some example are following
Guest Blogs: Actual User is use it for share their experience and reviews for guest blogging but in spam actives its only work for back links
Article: Article useful for collect information also
Press Release: Its use full for share new services you release or new product you lunch then its help full to reach more online audience
Forum: as per my knowledge we use Forum for Discussion of various topics and problems but in spam way it’s totally change
Comment: Commenting is use for, when someone is read article and like then they put comment like same as everyone comment here Those are good way for use all site,
Thanks
OH!!! guy
now I don't know how to do next!!!
Look here: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4
I easily overlook some spam issues. This guides helps a lot to rethink my linkbuilding strategy. Still have to look deeper into how to apply linkbuilding the right way for my website
Directly or indirectly you have labeled all the link buiding techniques as SPAMMING. So basically the ultimate option is "Become as much stronger that people can't forget you forever". I'm also agree with Rand, Earn the links.
I going to earn now. LOL
No, there are enough techniques left: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4
With this in mind, what link buuilding tatics would you advise? Thats the billion dollar question
Hi Kevin, check out WebProTechnologies' comment above for a few good ones!
I would advise anything natural that provides non-worthless links.
Currently, it seems those with a lot of strong branded links and a handfull of strong varyed targeted links are ranking best where I currently am.
I would generaly advise improving your site, service, marketing and just generaly improving quality. Very natural, high quality sites are the only 'safe' option right now. (In terms of avoiding massive drops, and conversions).
And also to keep an eye on said natural stuff. We have a 'natural' partnership like catagory that is bringing in a lot of varyed links that by the nature of it are recipical. We're watching it closely to make sure we don't trip a false positive somewhere along the line.
With this in mind, what link buuilding tatics would you advise?
In other words, what's left? :)))
With full possibility of getting umpteen thumbs down and virtual brick bats I again quote what I have been stating since time immemorial :)
As I always say that the term ' link building' itself is a wrong term - Links should not be built but they should get built in the process of the web journey of the website on the WWW because of great content and information that you offer to the WWW.
In Feb. 2012 there was a relevant post on https://www.webpronews.com/links-not-always-the-best-indicator-of-relevance-2010-02 and our comment included ".....Don’t run after links. Let them come to your website genuinely..... "
What we call things is really just semantics, and spliiting hairs - Using metaphors and ideologies is not a strategy.
No matter which way you slice it, you are building Links through relationships - it is not the words that need to change, it is the actions.
And just giving blanket words with no substance on how to change is not a strategy \
IMHO ;)
Exactly, the shift is in the focus. Rather than focusing on Link Building and acquiring and counting links focus on creating and sharing quality content in various ways (Some of them are mentioned above) which not only help in building a brand and getting links as an offshoot .
Link building as an activity is executed in order to get links right, but instead of focusing on link building as an activity focusing on quality web presence so that you get natural and organic links is more beneficial in the long run and adds the creative edge to SEO.
Both ways you get links but the route taken is different.
Sure,
But just stating "Change Your Mentaility" is not a strategy either.
This has been my only point with both you and ann...
Just giving people a popular talking point, is not a long term strategy - That is the way politicians work, not reality
:)
LOL I am done now - have more Puppy Cuddling to do
Without link building how would people get know about your brands??? Is there any other way???
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4
This is very helpful, and thanks. I had a question on how a search engine can determine spam from good quality content in a somewhat boring/smaller niche (low search volume) for an article. If I create a great piece of content linking from an authoritative site and my competitor creates a pile of waste from the same site, do both sites get the same value? (Keep in mind small market/low conversion)
If site A is a blog for a company site B and site A links to Site B multiple times with many variations, is that spam? All relevant content, however smaller market (small interaction)
Now lets say I find a potential link partner doing the same thing (authoritative and relative) potential link partners blog C potential link partners site D
Would guest blogging on site A and linking to site to site D in exchange for guest blogging on site C and linking to site B be considered spam? Is this not an attempt to manipulate the search engine?
This is a really great question. Firstly, I'd question the true value of a site that would let your competitor build a pile of crappy content.
Putting that aside and making the large assumption of equal visibility, the links will probably count about the same in the short-term. In the long-run, your superior content might get a link that your competitor doesn't, or a share, etc. An update like Panda might also trash his articles - though a domain-wide thing could hurt yours too. This is a good reason to avoid sites with no standards.
Small niches can be tough - sometimes really tough. I've found success lately in getting creative and finding ways to talk about the company or product in a way that interests people who have no interest in the industry. Does the company have an awesome backstory that businesspeople would love? Do they do something in the city they do business in that local journalists would care about? Etc.
This makes perfect sense to me, better quality is a safer way to go and it protects our reputations on the web.
What about this:
If site A is a blog and site B is the company site. Site A links to Site B multiple times with many variations, is that spam? All relevant content, however smaller market (small interaction)
Now lets say I find a potential link partner doing the same thing (authoritative and relative) potential link partners blog C potential link partners site D
Would guest blogging on site A and linking to site to site D in exchange for guest blogging on site C and linking to site B be considered spam? Is this not an attempt to manipulate the search engine?
Is this considered a link wheel? is this a good or bad practice?
Hi SEO Friends & Carson,
Thanks for sharing this infomative update. It's really hard time to SEO peoples who doing only
link building activities. About above Carson article, i think again and all time "Content is King".
Now a days off-page submission or Link Building is very sensitive case.
Now a days Focus on on-page, Smart in Off-page and Creative in on-page content.
Thanks,
Thse are the things that each SEO guy acn take care of and do the proper SEO using ethical seo techniques.
I saw an interview from Matt Cutts once discussing web spam - he conceded it is impossible to stop it, but Google just tries to frustrate the spammer. At the end of the day Google will deliver good results for long tail searches anyway and just wants to make broad tail searches difficult to rank for so that only legitimate companies investing in SEO (i.e., websites with at least something to offer) will rank. "Spam" is only a real issue for Google if it means crappy sites can get rankings quickly.
To me it is more about Google making it "hard" as it is an actual page rank algorithm that reflects the world %95 of links on the web are either Nofollow (like Wikipedia) or irrelevant to the landing page.
can we update this post with good versions of both. There are obvioulsy good methods to directory submissions - yahoo directory and things like it, as well as othe rmetnions in this post
A very good article but, while I agree with all of you points, I still think article marketing has its place when done well and in moderation.
One or two articles, marketed well, are okay in my opinion. Where as masses upon masses of article links are not.
Also remember that the content must be good as this article represents your site. My general rule is that I will not publish an article unless I would want to read it if I stumbled across it. While these may be lower quality links they are still useful in moderation.
Hi David,
You're right that not all content on an article site is garbage. What happens if someone else publishes a load of garbage on the same site though? Their links count the same as yours, and you'll all fall together if the domain clearly has no quality standards.
If you can find a good article site with really high guidelines (which, as it turns out, is not to be confused with a high home page PR), it might be worth getting a link there. I'd generally prefer to publish great stuff on my blog rather than giving it to someone else, but there is, as you say, a place for quality articles on quality article domains. Thanks for helping clarfiy.
I enjoyed the post... and the comments section. The comments here and the disagreements and conversations were enlightening. I don't think we are screwed as SEOs but I definitely think we have to work a lot harder these days to build quality links that will actually count for something.
This article is a pointless "puff peice". Matt Cutts has already answered definitively what everyone needs to do to rank #1 on Google: https://www.youtube.com/v/b7W0o65tTIQ
Talk about quality content, the comments from this post are possibly more helpful than the post itself (which is also great).
That usually happens. The comment section on this site is AMAZING.
Carson,
Can you please tell me if all these methods are link spam. What method should we follow for future link building?
According to me Link Bait can not be link spam. even Forum Posting is one of the Googld method. Their moderators always alert and immediately bann the spammer.
And Even Link Farm and Blog Networks are the same method. Is it n't?
so if these all spam means, what are the link stratergies we can follow in future?
Rand pointed it out already: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4
https://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
https://www.coconutheadphones.com/linking-strategies-the-complete-guide/
I am seeing daily activities in SEO. checking ranking daily on my websites. Google develued lots of things in SEO Promotion. do you think What the important factor to improved rankings. My mind is thinking here add good qualities content, write good blogs on your relevant niche & share with top social media websites to get rank high.
But many of the activities liked directories submission, web 2.0, forums signature & many other factor now dead. So every webmaster don't be used on these activities.
Question, If I am starting out with a brand new site without any backlinks would it be a good idea to use some of these link strategies to build enough traction to make more advantageous strategies easier?
For example, say I make posts to a blog network to build a little authority so that I can rank higher now so that my quality content is more visible -easier to find easier to share.
Is it good to use what works right now as a jumpstart to a more longterm strategy or should this kind of link building be avoided like the plague?
Hi Carson! Thank you for sharing these 17 types of link spam that we really need to avoid. I honestly think that we should really avoid link farms. Anyway, I will be sharing this to my friends for them to be also aware on what to avoid. You got a very helpful and interesting post here.
I got a good laugh out of the people that honestly think "Build good content, people will find it!" ... You all have apparently gone insane. Waiting on so called "People" to "find your content" ... ROFFLES.
Sorry.. but "link building" will continue so long as there's a link based algorithm to game. All this "quality content wins the game" garbage is just that, garbage.
Somehow people still do not understand, Quality content DOES NOT mean no manipulative links. Google rewards for Links, people build them. Google rewards for content, people write great content. Google MASSIVELY rewards for Links + Great content... So people do both.
Telling ppl to sit on their ass and wait for the links to come it setting them up for failure. Put bluntly, if I would've "waited for links" 3 years ago when I quit my job... I'd be working another job right now.
- - - - - - - - - -
Take the propaganda with a grain of salt... I use most ALL the methods listed above, and they work great. In fact, they work so great that I'm on track to have my biggest year of revenue in 2012, even AFTER Penguin.
Cheers!
I'm not sure you're in the right thread here. Who told you not to get links? Who said they didn't matter? What are you talking about!??
This was a post about stopping with these types of spam links, and links that look like spam links, because they won't get results in the long run.
I'd love to hear how you're currently succeeding with spam links. It would definitely make for an interesting case study in my view. You would, of course, have to start by sharing a site or using your name.
If you're asking me to hand you my business on a silver platter, the answer is.. respectfully, No. ;)
I think you may have missed the brilliantly subtle nature of the last paragraph. :)
Also, what are you talking about? Is it possible that you have personified white hat SEO into a convenient straw man? Because your comment is quite out of place and odd.
If you read the post, you would see nothing like "don't try to get links" or "spam never works." In fact, he admits in many instances that spam works. He just argues it wont always work and isnt worth it.
I hate to break it to you, but almost all of that stuff still works. You'll get penalized if you don't know how to work the system, but you can make networks of natural looking "spam" and rank like gangbusters in uber-competitive spaces.
Most of the people who got penguined were using the same anchor text over and over again, like true tards. So long as the linking website is somewhat related, it doesn't even matter what the anchor is.
If you want to build a brand, don't play around with what most people on here consider "spammy" links, because someone will try and call you out on it eventually.
If you're smart...and all your eggs aren't in 1 basket...grey-hat is the way to go. I have no respect for people that spin garbage content over and over for links, but I don't think there's anything wrong if you're buying links and the content is legit. I don't understand why people hate on it. Is it because they don't actually know how to buy good links that aren't going to get them penalized?
This is very intaresting information expain about the spam avid. Spam is big proble of every site.
You pretty much are saying we are fucked??!?!?!?! What else is there to do? You covered everything I've ever done. How about now writing an article about 17 things that work post penguin.
I think that were all over reacting or even exaggerating things that is not at it's ripes, this is just an assumption of Mr.Carson, there is still no Solid Proof and even Solid Formula i pressume, because Google just struck us once with Penguin and like the Ants we all are, scattered everywhere and freakin' out! Let's just wait for some more findings on what Google's next move so we can find a footprint and create a way to adopt to that in an SEO way. If for some reason link building will be dead, that is not because of the Big G, but because of the presumptions of SEO's which G finally notice and decided to give that judgement.
Two months ago they banned a bunch of blog networks and link rings. Today they banned a large number of directories. Whatever's going on at webspam, Google's clearly woken up to the idea of penalizing and removing value from manipulative linking, and to presume that they'll go back to sleep and forget about it seems reckless and short-term to me.
yes @Rand i agree with your point but @ricky010 has a point that we need to aggree on.. We (I am not blamming every one but most of us (SEOs))create the hype as i did so much research on this topic but still not find any solid reason as we just hitted by penguin. I think if any one comes with the reason like they did some project or impliment some new techniques a part from the old ones.. after penguin update and get good result then we can go for that els currently most of us are just go with flow only.. even we also working on some new techniques that we are waiting for result to come..
The reason 99% of websites were hit by Penguin is because they did some form of manual link building. 1% would be accidental i.e. EMD's where google considers the anchor profile too targeted. Really my advice would be to build a brand which can withstand scruitiny.
As opposed to those who rose in SERPs doing automated link building right?
" to presume that they'll go back to sleep and forget about it seems reckless and short-term to me."
Microsoft and Bing have, potentially, all the resources and money Google has to improve their search engine. If Google doesn't do a great job with it's index, someone else will and they know it. No way is Google going to back off from these efforts. In fact, I had one client that got hit with Penguin (a fall in impressions according to Google Webmaster's query report) and on 4/24 I saw the SAME FALL in Bing's Webmaster Tools Query report. It's hard to image that Bing is not closely following these changes at Google.
Ricky, I'm not telling people to run around in a panic tearing all of their links down. I'm telling them to stop building spammy links, because it's not a long-term strategy. I'm also not suggesting that these links will all stop working tomorrow, but several years from now none of the tactics above will work. If you don't want your business to last several years, fine, but make sure the people paying the bills don't either before carrying out a short-term strategy.
Its really superb content over here on SEOmoz. - Blog comments always not seems to be ok from last updates in Google algorithm - Others factors are also not important to say - that can be spammy and can be used to make it over spammy. but - Google did good job. finally.
Thank you SEOMOZ
Regards Certified SEO Professional Denish Verma Skype - Denishverma
??? bad post!
Maybe I am just in a really cranky mood, but posts like these are really starting to bug me
This post is just shy of 3,000 words and there is virtually no data here at alll, just a re-hash of conjecture, supposition, imagination and old established facts. Yes, most of these linking tactics are spammy, and yes many of them are unsavory, but how much of this information is new or noteworthy?
It's all been said before and it's going to be recycled a hundred times again. I know i am in the minority here, but if you can't bring it better than this, don't bring it at all
Well, this is the first time I've seen it all listed in one place, at least. It could be used as a helpful guide. For example, my boss is always asking me if I've found any new directories to place our site, or if I know of any more links we could buy. I try to tell him I'm not doing that anymore but if I could print out this post and hand it to him to read, I can see the value in that.
With all due respect, I hear what you're saying and I think that that's part of the problem.
When your boss asks you about buying links or directory links, hand hand him or her a blog post written by some guy on some site about a bunch of things that might be a problem a few years down the road?
Wouldn't it be better to make an actual business case for or against these tactics? Rather than show a blog post, why not say 'You know what boss? We added 50 directories last month and saw no progress whatsoever. I don't think directories are a good use of our resources. Here is what I think we should do instead..."
My sense is, if you had this to your boss and they eat it up without thinking about it, start polishing your resume right now. In my experience, any boss that knows what they are doing are going to want data to back up these assertions/conceptions.
Really? And who do you work for?
I don’t need to send my boss to any post. I can send him to Google’s blog. Just about everything on seomoz checks out with Google’s guidelines. If my boss wants to be stubborn he will have to pay when rankings fall. Especially if I sent him the post and he voted against it.
My sense is you dont have a boss and if you did you would show him upmost respect and shut up when he makes a final dission. After all who cuts the check at the end of the month?
"Wouldn't it be better to make an actual business case for or against these tactics? Rather than show a blog post, why not say 'You know what boss? We added 50 directories last month and saw no progress whatsoever. I don't think directories are a good use of our resources. Here is what I think we should do instead..."
That’s like saying.. Wouldn’t it be better to try and re invent a light bulb rather than going to the store and buying one.
Why would I invest my time in case studies when Carson has already done the research? No offense but I trust his judgment over yours. Instead of wasting time follow guidelines. I see you mentioned your having somewhat of a crappy day, well these type of post will only fuel your fire. If you want the help to rank, be friendly and respectful of someone's work and stay positive.
That’s like saying.. Wouldn’t it be better to try and re invent a light bulb rather than going to the store and buying one.
I disagree - it's saying that no matter what decision you make, it should be based on data and facts, not something you read in some blog somewhere. In other words put on your big boy pants and think for yourself
I think this type of post is more of a personal matter, and you should send Carson a PM. Instead of sabotaging, and since you seem to already know it all why don’t you add something he did not mention? Your comment is exactly what Google does not want irrelevant waste of space.
I never said I knew everything, only that there wasnt any real data in this post, and that there wasnt anything in this post we havent seen before
so, in the end, nobody really knows what to do :-)
?? How is that the takeaway here? I'd say that more clearly than ever, marketers should be getting the clear message that building real brands, engaging in practices that earn editorial links and growing communities is a better bet than it's ever been.
I feel the small businesses (that many of us serve) are being left behind to larger brands with budgets and the ability to develop and post content that may someday result in inbound links. The future of Google and SEO seems like it's reserved for the larger brands and well financed startups.
I respectfully disagree with you Mark. I have had several small business clients that were able to develop and post content that resulted in inbound links. The difficulty with big brands and big budgets is that every change on the site requires so much oversight that it can be months before any of this appears on the site. Small businesses have their advantages.
Hi Stephanie,
I think what Mark is saying is that the trend is gearing towards Big Brands which for sure will eventually dominate the ranks itself as rankings are becoming more and more brand oriented eg. "creating a brand for your company"
You can clearly see how large companies can put in more funding into their endeavors thus creating more effective content, or ads, or viral videos that for sure will have much more quality than a low budgeted counter part.
Right now yes, small-medium sized businesses can take benefit but going forward and as these companies learn of what is happening in the industry - for sure they would have distinct advantage over the small guy.
Just my 2c.
Not exactly Rand. It's easy to say as it makes sense, but look at the results. Have every SEO look at their keywords they track. If you got hit, what replaced you? Real brands? Ha! Not quite. If websites that built up real brands and real value were ranking well in Google, I would say this is a no-brainer.
However, I had several brands I built up. Social profiles with followers for each one. Active blog community. A pin on pinterest with over 500 repins. But it got hammered by Penguin because an SEO company nearly 3 years ago wrote some articles and made some blog comments and bookmarks.
So we had a brand, also had some spammy links, and got nailed. Meanwhile, we got replaced by sites that hadn't been updated in years, had 404 errors left and right, nearly all backlinks, (what few there were) were spammy, and I have to wonder...why is building a real brand so important again?
So I agree that building a real brand is the right way to go, that's the way we are going, and our time is spent in removing links and nothing more at this point. But that message is not clear to many an SEO for a very good reason...Penguin didn't just punish non-brands and reward brands. It punished plenty of brands and rewarded plenty of non-brands.
If Google showed any consistently remotely in the Penguin update you migth be able to sway other SEO's. But when we see garbage outranking us and it has nothing but spammy links, well, I wonder why I do agree with you.
Google's pretty consistent in their inconsisitency of fighting spam. No update's going to catch it all, but the message should be loud and clear. Penguin, like Panda, will continue to be updated and refined. Every time it rolls out, more and more stuff is going to get whacked. Having a good site isn't going to be a defense - even having the best site in the SERPs isn't a defense. It's link practices that need to change if we want to keep our heads, and I think Carson's post does a great job of illustrating what has to be avoided.
Garbage will outrank you in the short term, and different garbage might work next round, but that doesn't mean you can copy garbage techniques and expect to survive long term.
Did a WB+ on this topic here: https://plus.google.com/u/1/112544075040456048636/posts/hHaXg8Rs5Lf
I get the feeling the new penalties overpass other important factors (IMO). We are working on ranking locally for SEO Fort Lauderdale and we are at 3rd however type SEO fort Lauderdale in Google and click on the first result. The page does not even load, and it’s been like this for a while. I guess Google is really attacking this spam and focusing less on other important factors.
I think there's a fundamental problem here that isn't so much Google's fault as the nature of the beast. Any time you crack down on one (or a few) spammy tactics, the assumption is that what's left over will be better. The practical reality, though, is that everything else just moves up. So, let's say the #2 and #3 spot for Keyword X got Penguinized. What happens? Well, #4 moves up to #2, etc. Just because #4 wasn't hit by Penguin doesn't mean it's a great result (especially in niches where 60%+ of results are spammy). Of course, the goal is that the overall algorithm improves, but this core problem of the stuff below the newly defined spam moving up is inherent to the nature of any modern search engine.
Penguinized. That's almost as good as mathographic. LOL.
Loved the term "Penguinized"... thats what forced me to log in and make a comment here. :)
There is much peace in being a silent reader :)
actually, we all know what not to do! Don't try to manipulate the rankings to compensate for a website that isn't good enough to rank.
I like that advice. Even if you're doing good sorts of linking, why bother ranking a site that's not going to delight, engage and impress visitors. There's far too few talented web marketers to waste talent on sites that don't deserve your precious time :-)
Seems that what to do is pretty obvious. Google doesn't want links built for the purpose of boosting rankings. Build links that help relevant, interested, qualified potential customers... find your site / content. If for the most part most links out there have been de-valued by Google then the only reason for link building is to bring in traffic. I see that as a really positive shift from a marketing perspective- make smart decisions about how to drive the best traffic for your stuff, rather than focussing on moving up an arbitrary list.
Actually the best way to learn is to test things 100's of times over, if you do SEO for 7 years and you work in a huge amount of niches on small, medium, enterprise sites you do have a very good feel for the market.
I'm really concerned if cutting the tactics above leaves you with nothing to do. This was a post about what not to do, because I think it needed to be said. If you've ever listened to Rand speak, you should have some ideas of what to do.
Carson - Exactly, I think some people are just waking up to the fact that they need to build links to right and legit way now. It looks like a lot of SEOs have been using these 17 methods to build links before, as their sole method. There is nothing here that says "dont get editorial links" - you are spot on.
So in short dont do any link building. Simply build content and wait for others to find it
Haha, this made me laugh since I keep hearing this more and more...what are we to do!?
I've only been link building for 3 months and I agree.. I am utterly confused as to what to do! There are so many people out there telling me what I should be doing but not how to do it. I am so confused as to what is acceptable and what isn't. I absolutely agree also with the fact that even if everything I am doing right now is whiter than white, but next month Google will probably class it as Back hat! I personally think that all these white hat methods make us look really black hat and un natural.
No you don’t have to wait for it you just follow the foot step of Rand on this Post and if your content is Good it surely go viral and finally got lots of link without any link building.
Exactly what I was about to say..
But! Guest posts and genuine blog comments still do work.
Okay, what does mean by genuin blog comment? means you're commenting on my blog from a link right? then gonna spammy :)
Still I'm not sure, on which way I have fo follow by getting back links for my website.
I mean, making a valuable, worthy comment on a blog post in an teempt to build relation and credibility, rather than building links.
Heydarian - no offense, but this comment (and the attitude behind it) irks me severely. If the only way we can conceive to earn links to either A) manipulate the web with spam tactics or B) sit and hope that someone will find us and share, we don't deserve to be marketers. Ours is a profession where the vast multitude of options is so expansive as to be overwhelming. To callously dismiss this great challenge and great opportunity to express our creativity saddens me.
We are better than this.
It is like the old saying, "you can have the best site in the world but it is worthless if no one can find it". SEO in todays market is more about leveraging your current assets to let the community work for you. You need to wise up and use methods that will be in googles eyes natural.
Things such as:
- Using contents on social media to drive natural links.
- Reaching out to blog owners to let them know about your content, sending them some goodies.
- Finding out great content competitors have made which worked really well, make your own version re do it 100% unique and then contact all the same websites which link to competitors and say "hey we have XYZ content, a new version"
- Reaching out to find niche sites which can work for you.
I mean SEO's need to start building relationships with blogs, social and every where possible even in the offline world such as meetups you can really get your ideas out quickly.
Hi James.
Massive thank-you for posting a few items on the *positive stuff* SEOs should be doing.
There were so many tactics flagged as spam in this post that it was beginning to look like 'everything' you have ever done as an SEO is eventually going to be considered spam. The article had become a depressing read.
I would love to read a counter post focusing on the positives and opportunities still available and actively encouraged for SEOs. An article informing about safe, long-term SEO tactics. Tactics that are sustainable and practical to deliver for everyone from SMEs through to major brands and enterprise clients.
From reflecting on the above post it seems that you will be punished in the present day for tactics that were widely adopted by SEOs years ago. You'll be punished in the present day for using tactics that had previously been considered okay & actively encouraged by the educators and the forums.
If all of the above spam items are true, there is a lot of off-site SEO undoing to be done. Especially by the agencies that have been established for a long-time and therefore have a history of 'testing' or 'dabbling' (call it what you will) in each of the above tactics before the loop-holes were closed out.
re: "I would love to read a counter post focusing on the positives and opportunities still available and actively encouraged for SEOs"
Might I suggest https://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4? There's literally thousands of tactics, nearly all of which are high quality and work exceptionally well in the post-Penguin era.
Thank you for the link Rand. I'll take a very good look at the tactics highlighted in that section.
Google affected a lot of things with the Penguin that were normal marketing, and a few things that were black-hat.
We got penalised because we had footer links to other sites in our network (business network not farm) , which is perfectly normal( if someone is buying a computer maybe they want a printer also..) and the sites that appear now on the first pages are 2-3 html pages with no credibelity or value.
So i don't know what Google strategy is but i don't see how this is added value to the search, except maybe Adwords value...
A lot of my business coleagues (we are not SEO's but understnad the principles) are now looking to start a business directory(which promotes value) in Romania to face with Google new strategy.
My favorites:
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-noob-guide-to-link-building
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/creative-link-building-for-ecommerce-sites
I love Creative Link Building For Ecommerce Sites! Especially the Pintrest sharing video!
Nice one Rand - a perfect example of why Google will continue to look at some blog coments. The link is useful, and highly relevant. And a good example of how link building isn't dead.
Ok the truth is cheap SEO is gone .. time for some real stuff .. ping me If i am wrong :)
Hi Debdulal,
Please explain what is real stuff, what defines quality link? I really don't understand why people are not coming up with alternatives/solutions that looks natural? Why should we bother so much about the problems?
The thing is when 1 or 2 poeple is following an strategy or using a resource , it is not a SPAM. But when millions are following it and things look crowded, people are calling it SPAM.
Please tell me 10 one liners that we should follow to avoid spams. Also ensure me If I continue the same for next 10 years, what is the assurance that I will not be called as a spammer. Does Google assure what we do today WHITE won't be BLACK tomorrow?
re: "I would love to read a counter post focusing on the positives and opportunities still available and actively encouraged for SEOs"
Optimize your ideas, not your content, optimize what you're about, what you do, how you do it, and communiate that in your online content. Use a tool like Google Analytics to get feedback about how well your content and site are doing and work to improve them. Google Analytics is also great for finding new idea for content (i.e., showing you where you're not meeting your site visitor's needs).
Also use a tool like Google Webmasters Tool (and Bing's tool) to make sure a site is technically SEO friendly.
This link has a lot of great details of what to watch for. Thanks for posting it.
Rand, and others, I was being mostly sarcastic as most SEO people (only) use the methods mentioned in this post.
The days of SEO (search engine optimization) power are over. Today's white hat strategies are mostly marketing than SEO. SEO has started to be synonymous with 'marketing' only in the past two years or so. so hopeully we'll start seeing more SEOs actually reading marketing books or learning real marketing tactics.
That being said I feel more and more people are slowly moving away from an all-google-strategy and putting their eggs in more baskets. Perhaps with the Penguine update Google is hoping to push more people into spending on Adwords rather than SEO since fewer people have (real) marketing skills.
[Edit] I repeat again, in short this post (correctly) says "don't do any link building". The white hat SEO methods are not link building; they're relationship building.
I took the comment as sarcasm as well, no offense taken. I think Rand and you are are on the same page in that the SEO world is changing. It really is becoming about marketing and producing great content that is marketable. The SEO's job is quickly becoming about HOW to market that content, and WHERE to market that content. Old tactics like producing crap content to get links is DEAD. SEO should be evolving to as questions like "how do I solve my customers concerns and questions, and get that content on the web" vs "how do I get links to my site".
Love this discussion, great post Carson!
I'm not saying, "don't do link building," but this comment is spot on. I wish I'd been able to cover how to earn links as part of a long-term strategy, but that's a big topic. I thought to myself, "surely people know that there are lots of posts on how to legitimately get links. This is SEOmoz, after all."
Dear Carson,
We understand covering "how to earn links as part of a long-term strategy" is a big topic to discuss.
Would you favor me listing them in a few bullet points here? It is really embarrasing to see people only talking about problems , not a viable solution or a trustworthy resource.
Please share your ideas here or you can mail me at [email protected].
I would look forward to your answer.
Who will put link to the commercial site?! If user have bought something in my online shop - he go to link to it? No. If I created few niche-related sites/blogs with site-wide links - it is a "spam".Other example: few dozens dentist's offices in one area. Every site looks similar; no one want to link to the competitors; so, how to earn links? Ask patients to establish blogs and link to the dentist's site? OK. I can do it by my own - and it will be "spam" in the new Penguin reality.All this looks just like war against SEO itself.Btw, what can I see in the dental-related sites? If dentist hired someone to create an awesome site, and it was done, and then he hired SEO-specialist - the site is now dropped of irrespective how really good site is. Those, who didn't invest to the site and SEO as well are awarded now.Is it not stupid logic?
oh dear. We are much better than this, aren't we?
Simply build content that people want to see, go find those people yourself and get to know them.
I won't waffle on but it's like building a bird table, (apologies for including my own article but it saves me time)
Thumbs up for writing such a great article, enjoyed that one.
Was that sarcastic or serious?
Hey Heydarian, he is telling us that we have to do link building but in White hat Manner.........
"So in short dont do any link building. Simply build content and wait for others to find it"
You know -- it works. People balk when I say it takes me 3+ hours to write a great post, but it does. That's the work it takes, but when I do it 1) readers find it generally honestly new interesting and useful (compared to all the junk out there on the same topic) and 2) my posts have been linked to by huffpo & the Washington Post bloggers and my industry specific sites and blogs -- all w/out asking. And, sure, I also do guest blogging and writing, but that's not any easier, not if you want to be asked to write again.
The purpose of language is to communate, communate thoughts, ideas. Ideally, when we write and speak, it's because we have something real to say. SEO has (up till now) effectively destroyed online writing. Sites that do not try to do SEO the way 99% of people do it usually have much much better quality content and Google, with its Penguin update, is trying to reward that. Other site and blog owner who know and care nothing about SEO will naturally seek out & find great content and read and link to it. It's these site owners and their needs that Google is trying to help.
Heydarian Simply build content and wait for others "copy it, to put on their blog without linking back" - that's is sad truth of where my best content goes.
ha ha ha.. spot on man. Seriously, the start ups with low marketing budgets get royally screwed.All they could afford is a good looking website and good content on their service pages.
Things are getting very difficult for companies with smaller SEO/Internet Marketing budgets.
i agree, its getting more difficult too. Google and search engines want that because its more money for them.