SEOmoz and I don't always see eye to eye on industry issues, but I still have a lot of respect for the company. In fact SEOmoz is still the website that I send people to, when they want to learn about SEO or get into our industry. Rand kindly invited me to the SEOmoz office when I was in Seattle this week, for a chat and the opportunity to present a Whiteboard Friday.
This week's Whiteboard Friday covers the recent Penguin Update, including what to do and what not to do. I certainly wouldn't say that it's a comprehensive guide, but it does discuss the issues and causes that I have witnessed. Fortunately Ayima's campaigns have been unaffected (other than increases) by the update, but we do monitor our client's competitors and their agencies to a very granular level using in-house technology. Off-Page SEO has been changing dramatically for a while now, and it's important that agencies and in-house teams don't get left behind. Always ask questions and never just assume that Google whacked you by mistake, even if you are "White Hat".
Video Transcription
Hello, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Rob Kerry. I'm co-founder of an SEO agency called Ayima. Today we're going to be talking about the Penguin Update. There's been a lot of talk in a lot of communities out there, a lot of SEO communities, about the Penguin Update. A lot of false information being chucked around out there as well. Hopefully, this video clears up quite a few things.
The first issue is that a lot of people still use the term white hat, grey hat, black hat. Now, this terminology was taken from the hacking world and adopted for SEO reasons. It's actually in Google's best interest for us to use this terminology because it makes SEO sound like a risky, dangerous, almost illegal thing to be doing. Whereas if you actually use the hacking terminology and adapt it to SEO, the only thing that is black hat SEO is hacking someone's website and embedding links into there for SEO reasons. Everything else is basically white hat, because you're either getting permission from another webmaster to have a link on their site, or you're making adaptations to your own website, all of which would be classed as white hat.
Rather than looking at whether you use a white hat SEO provider or a black hat SEO provider, actually have a look to see what techniques are being used. Even if you're not buying links, you can still get affected by the Penguin Update. This isn't an update about whether you are buying links or not buying links. This an update about how you're trying to manipulate Google.
If your white hat SEO provider is currently just putting links into your site for commercial terms or even only putting 50% of the links in using commercial terms, let's say we're trying to rank for the term "penguin," if half your links or more are saying penguin in them, then you're going to get tripped up in this kind of filter because you're seen as manipulating Google, even if those links were acquired through directories or through asking for links or through viral campaigns.
So, rather than looking at that, we need to look at the footprints that are going into your site. Quite a good case study for that is we have a client who works with a lot of seasonal campaigns. We were about to run one at the beginning of this year for an event, which they sell products for. A competitor SEO agency in the UK works with one of their big competitors, one of the big competitors of our client. We were basically monitoring to see what that other SEO agency was doing. Three months before the seasonal campaign needed to launch, they started building links into their client's website using the commercial anchor text, so people putting links in saying penguin, penguin, penguin, going into those client pages. Whereas, we went with a different tactic.
We actually changed the way that we do SEO in terms of off-page SEO about a year ago, predicting that this kind of update would get rolled out. With our clients now, as long as the on-page is optimized properly and there are a few links going in using commercial terms, then we basically just build up the authority and the trust of our client website.
It sounds like kind of a lame idea, and it goes against traditional ideas of SEO, but it does actually work ever since this update rolled out. So, whilst we were starting to go up and up and up in the rankings, eventually hitting number one place for the biggest term for this seasonal campaign, we noticed our competitor going down and down and down.
There are even complaining on Twitter that Google might be broken, there's an algorithm issue, just because they didn't understand why putting loads of anchor text with commercial terms going into the client's site wasn't working. It's basically because Google has been working towards this kind of thing for quite a long time.
So, have a look at your anchor text ratios. Go to Open Site Explorer, type in your website, click on the anchor text link, and that will order it by, I think, group linking domains. You can actually see what links are most used on each URL of your website. If your commercial terms are quite near the top, let's say in the top 10, then you need to really work at getting better links going into your site and maybe even taking down some of the links, which are overly optimized. This is basically their step towards an over-optimization penalty.
There's another thing, which is content providers, who as soon as the Penguin Update rolled out, we got a barrage of emails from all of these people saying, "We can fix Penguin by building lots and lots of more pages of content for your site." These would actually negatively affect you, because one of the things that Penguin's trying to do is further penalize the production of crap content.
Rather than paying thousands and thousands a month to have 200-words news articles put onto your website, get rid of those if they're not actually bringing any traffic in. Look at actually creating a good quality resource of information on your website to become the authority in your industry. A few pages of great content is a lot better than just hammering Google with loads of news articles.
The big thing is there's no quick fix. If you get an email from a company saying that, "We can fix all your Penguin issues," it's likely not to be the case, especially if it's like a $35 fix. You just basically need to build a better campaign for your website. Look at taking down content which might not be unique or useful information. Get rid of some of that from your website if it's not driving any traffic directly to it.
Also, look at just making your website look as natural as possible. Build authority into the pages that you want to rank, but don't start over- optimizing on the anchor text. If you start doing that, not only will it fix Penguin issues, but it will also help you to rise up in the rankings. Thank you very much, and that's about it.
"Even if you're not buying links, you can still get affected by the Penguin Update. This isn't an update about whether you are buying links or not buying links. This an update about how you're trying to manipulate Google."
This quote pretty much sums up the update. However, I believe it's less about anchor text and more about the quality of your link profile. Links on crappy websites created for the sole purpose of ranking is what I see hit. I do believe some folks that have never bought a link in there life got hit and that just doesn't make sense.
In other news:
-don't buy links
-hope nobody links to you from shady websites
FTW:
-comment spam
-link exchanges
OK, I'm not a fan of either (nor do I advocate them) it's just what I see winning in the SERPS.
apparently you can add don't distribute free themes to that list as well:
https://wpmu.org/wordpress-penguin-google-matt-cutts/
but it does seem weird that matt cutts would point out those links to a newspaper. You would think a better list would be the various sitewide links from other sites owned/associated with wpmu.org.
I found some issues where Wordpress themes were putting in hidden links, particularly those that have the option to enable/disable the footer link. When disabled, it was still there, but hidden. Along with some other parts of themes (such as blog titles). I don't want to name and shame, but one of them is in the top ten most popular themes (and the author is far from co-operative about the hidden elements, they think it's fine). They should focus more on that kind of issue, than links that are out in the open (maybe these are "manipulative", but not deceptive unlike hidden stuff).
Klarke, that was a great wordpress article by WPMU. The new seo engineer needs to pay attention to his tools or the trade nowadays.
I found the idea of free themes with embedded viruses coded into the footer...highly revealing. Their free theme gets used by a hacker schlep and the developer who made the free WP template gets fried by google because crappy products point back at them.
I agree anchor text is one of the issues that should be addressed but as a whole its more about the link that you are building should contain value and it shouldn’t b there for the sole purpose of getting links pointing to your website.
I am not sure about the idea of removing content pages from the website but I think the better idea would be to build great informative content and not only get links to domain and major pages but try to get links from content pages as well.
Good Review on the Penguin Update!
But what if my website has 1000s of links coming from innumerable sites that I didn't create or have any knowledge about? I don't think there is any other solution than asking those website owners to take down the links, but we never get a response from them. Is there a practical solution to get around this problem.
I think in that case building high quality links to diluting the overall link profile will help! I would love to hear Rob's opinion on this one!
Thanks Moosahemani for your tip. That's the only practical way I guess :)
well said moosahemani...we need to try to get quality links at this time
It's a good question and a task that we sometimes have to perform for new clients. We often have to pay webmasters to take down links, as many won't make any changes unless paid to do so.
If you've already been hit by Penguin, a 301 redirect is unlikely to help as a long term solution. Your only choice is to build much better links as cleanly as possible and then submit a re-consideration request disclosing what you've done to clean up the site and which links you feel are unnatural and need discounting.
Thank you Rob for your response, will follow your advice.
Great Video; Having Read the question I came up with an idea. Would it not be great if Google Would add the following option in Google Webmasters Tool:
- links from which sources would you want to exclude from your linking profile?
That you just can add URL`s which are linking to you against your will.
That would me much cheaper than paying malicious Webmasters. :)
That would be great.
I'm pretty sure some not-so-honest people will soon start practicing Negative SEO to their competitors pages. And Google, of course, also knows that so they should start thinking about a way of preventing this.
Absolutely, that's exactly the option that I am desperatately looking for in WMT. I really donno how Google is going to address the Neg SEO problem.
- links from which sources would you want to exclude from your linking profile?
Great Idea ! I hope Randfish or someone can tell Matt Cutts about it !!! Thanks, we all need people like you.
Could you not also just remove the pages that are getting bad quality links or rename them? That would also discard your valid links as well but if that page is getting a ton of poor quality links I would think its the content that is attracting them or a bad off page campaign.
If you dont 301 the old page and you just leave it as a 404 eventually those links would be discounted in Google or removed by the webmaster whos linking to you I would think.
Yes that's a good option, but the majority of my Backlinks are to my Top Level Domain :(( I think now I need to transfer my entire website to a brand new domain, that's the only option left for me.
I think the best way for google to go would be to, not penalise websites for having poor links (negative seo) but just to simply ignore them links, and remove them of any authority that they pass.
That would see an end to the negative seo tactics!
Great answer. Webmasters in general react when you propose something in exchange. Sometimes when some changes are made on a client websites we offer a gift to webmasters who change the links pointing to our website.
I also think that a lot of people under estimate the re-considaretion feature in the GWT. In my experience this has help us a lot whether when we bring changes on such pages or for links purposes.
Its tedious, but you can look up those domains on whois and contact the hosting company. This actually works.
Great tip, thank you very much :)
There is a practical solution. I just read that google will accept a communication from you if you let them know are getting "link spammed". It seems that they might ignore those links you tell them about.
A great page with all the Google Rules and a link at the VERY BOTTOM that says, "submit your site for reconsideration"
https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
They seem to be reaching out, so utilize this opportunity for them to upgrade your site in rankings.
Gabriel
Chances are that if you didn't create the links, the anchor is natural - click here and stuff like that, so I wouldn't worry about unsolicited links
Nice info
What's your take on the sites that are getting to the top spot by just hammering links to their sites and getting to the top quickly? Once Google kicks them out of the SERPS, they have a bunch of domains that they can use and do it all over again. I've seen it happening on payday loans/auto loans industry.
Hi Rob,
thanks for this WBF incursion at SEOmoz, which - from a personal point of view - means a lot about the respect real professionals must have one each other even if they don't agree in many things.
So... straight to the point:
we basically just build up the authority and the trust of our client website
Does that mean that you are not getting obsessed by exact matching anchor text, am I right? And relying in crafting Off Site SEO campaigns over a more Content Marketing strategy? Asking in order to have confirmations, as that is what I too am doing with my own clients (and the reason why Penguin has not affected them).
In that case, my only doubt is about the anchor text itself: if a too strong "manipulative SEO" pattern is dangerous, have you instead seen a good correlation with branded anchors (i.e.: McDonalds hamburgers, Pirelli Gears...)? Wondering about their effectiveness and importance since the Vince Update.
Also, don't you think that Penguin is - somehow - very strongly related to the Reasonable Surfer Patent, somehow its application on steroids, and the concept of Entity?
Thanks again for the WBF and I hope to see you whenever I'll be able to attend again a LondonSEO meetup.
This is a great point. Both Rob and Bill mention commercial anchor text as a possible variable.
Also, I do think anchor text weighting is influenced by other factors, for example exact matches could have opposite effects depending on the authority and trust of the linking site. When it comes to anchor text in general, I'm starting to feel like less is more (from authoritative sites).
I too would like a more in depth explanation of this part of the talk. Creating great content that people want to share is important, but for something as specific as "build up authority" a roadmap would be very interesting.
Another question would be regarding sites that are multilingual. For example: a site that is expanding from just English to providing Spanish language services as well is going to have a great deal more authority than its competitors in the Spanish language market. But just because they put up some landing pages in Spanish doesn't mean they are going to rank #1. Do you feel that branded links and great content will still override anchor text linking?
I agree that "basically just build up the authority and the trust of our client website" needs a further explanation. Are we talking about having content with a variety of anchor text pointing towards the page?
Yes, that's easier said than done. Essentially, if your client is Coca Cola then you need to tell them to make their website more appealing, not just to consumers, but to other websites. If CNN and the BBC publish TV episodes that say that Coke rots your teeth and links to coke.com, then you are building authority from a linking perspective. For a lower-budget client, you want to buy them a listing in the 3-4 reputable (but paid) directories.
You can also try and get the client featured in an article in a reputable online magazine/newspaper, e.g. WSJ. This could be a citation or a link, depending on the policy of that site. Nice work if you can get it and the client can pay for your time.
Hi Gianluca,
Sounds like you're carrying out a similar client strategy to us, which is indeed why your clients weren't affected. Commercial Anchors can now be seen as more of a confirmation of target terms or site topic, rather than the 1 factor propping websites up. We now build brand recognition and authority more than traditional SEO links, showing Google that our client is the most recognised/liked brand in X sector. This works particularly well with product landing pages, where commercial anchors can be almost non-existant and a page will still rank #1.
Hopefully see you at LondonSEO next week :)
Rob
Rob, what's your advice on negative SEO attempts?
I see a daily stream of blog comment and pingback spam of people pretending to be us targeting our main keyword. It's not only puting us in potential risk but is also reflecting on our brand negatively.
Negative SEO gets harder as the target site gets stronger. Your best defensive is a good offensive, and in this case it's making yourself look like the biggest cat in town (your sector) via strong trusted links.
As Rand has discussed on here, Negative SEO is a lot harder than people make out - incrememntally harder based on a site's authority. Taking out my personal blog using Negative SEO would be quite easy, I only have around 48 Root Linking Domains and my only asset is links from the UK domain registry. 1000 RLD links using a commercial anchor would probably topple my site. SEOmoz on the other hand (please don't try this at home) would require many hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of unique RLD links in order to topple it.
By building a trusted, natural and authorative backlink profile, not only will you rank higher but you'd also need an Anonymous styled comment spamming sit-in to topple your site.
This is a great reply. It seems everyone is overly worried about negative SEO, but as always the best thing to do is to just focus on building a great site with great content.
Hi Rob,
I like these kind of posts because I can show them to people who are starting to panic about the Penguin update, SEM and SEOs alike have been throwing down links left, right and centre recently trying to 'outrun' the Penguin update, which imo isn't possible.
It's just Google's way of trying to pick off the low hanging fruit in the SERPs, sites that have been overoptimising for particular anchors and have been getting the edge on sites that actually mean well...
I agree. It took the panic away. Now I see clearly that is about the keyword diversity in anchor text. Actually it makes the work of decent SEOs more easy.
Totally agreed Rob, you talked about two important things that we need to consider one is Anchor Text Diversity and second one is quality content. Anchor text diversity has been around for a long period, however recently it has gained the attention of SEO's and webmasters. With Penguin update is has become indespensable for webmasters to have a keen eye on the ratio of anchor texts that they are using to link their web-page.
There should be a mix of brand anchor text, commercial anchor text and non-commercial anchor text. The percentage of branded anchor text should be round 50% while rest 50% should be the mix of other anchor texts.
Another important thing that I can perceive through this post is that SEO has now become user and content centric. The more happy your visitors are with content higher are your chances of getting higher rungs in SERP.
Again Thumbs-up you Bob for your valuable post.
"There should be a mix of brand anchor text, commercial anchor text and non-commercial anchor text. The percentage of branded anchor text should be round 50% while rest 50% should be the mix of other anchor texts."
I am not disagreeing, but this statement can also be construed as manipulative. Your goal is still to 'trick' Google into thinking the linking is natural.
Good presentation Rob - sound advice indeed.
I'm a fan of the Penguin update. There's been much debate over whether it was a good move on Google's part - I think it's rather interesting when we must change the definition on what is considered "white hat". Like most other things in life, a good balanced approach seems to always win out in the end.
I'm just very upset in how Google has penalized sites for using anchor text. Since Google's inception... anchor text of incoming links has been the highest weighted ranking factor. You could rank a page to the number one position for a pretty competitive keyword... and not even have the keyword anywhere in the meta tags, or content of the website!
Now all of a sudden they penalize you for using keyword anchor text! Sure... if you used these on link schemes or link networks... but they penalized Quality links with keyword anchor text!
Not a fan of the Penguins handling of anchors.
Yes, it is a slap in the face for those who followed the former rules.
I am not sure whose "rules" you refer to. I didn't hear @robkerry saying that they don't use any keyword anchor text links. They use a "few" links from normal "commercial" sources. These could have an anchor text of the company name or at worst the URL. e.g. better-known directories. Add a few natural links and citations, which large businesses tend to get through normal business practices. I work with large sites where there is budget for on-page stuff but very little for off-page, so they have never had to worry about dodgy links.
The sites that went to town on generating/buying thousands of backlinks (and had seen a benefit) are the ones suffering now. These could be small businesses who went to people who call themselves SEOs and who were not afraid of using any tactic that "worked". There's a big difference between a tactic that hasn't yet been addressed by Google and one that is unlikely to fail.
Google has been heading in this direction for years and it's up to us as professionals in our industry to keep up with their changes.
I to look back fondly on the good old days of hammering anchor text in links, or even over-optimising on-page factors pre-Google.
There's no reason why you still can't be #1 though (unless Google sticks a massive affiliate box above your listing in the SERP), it's just a matter of learning what works now and what doesn't.
Algorithm/Filter Updates are good for good SEOs, as the people that stay ahead of the curve are the one's that reap the rewards.
Don't really agree with this statement - since Google's inception it has told webmasters to use relevant and useful keywords to link back to a website but in the industry we've used the money terms far too much, the glory terms that aren't really useful to someone reading an article - most of the time visit example.com would be far more useful than widgets, I think this is a great opportunity to change the way we've been doing things and add some creativity into likn building again. Overall, although some of my clients and in fact some of my own sites have been slightly hit by this I am really excited to see where this new twist takes us.
I agree greenbergb. Can I also ask the general question.
If the weight of targeted keywords is too high, can they 'diluted' by modifying the actual links? (assuming thats possible of course) or do they need to be removed completely?
Glad to see you on an excellent WBF, Rob.
It's a good thing that you and other SEOs had the foresight and wisdom to avoid overdoing it on the anchor text. There was a lot of bad info out there telling people to continue using exact-match anchors everywhere, and that's clearly backfired. There's still a lot of bad info out there, and I'm glad to see that you've shared some good sense.
I'm not sure, but it sounds like you're saying that black-hat SEO isn't a real thing. If so, I have to disagree. Black-hat hacking is illegal and can get you sent to prison. Black-hat SEO violates search engine guidelines, and can result in your site losing search taffic. Obviously it's not the same thing - no one is suggesting it is. There is a qualitative and useful difference in distinguishing between tactics that do or don't violate said guidelines.
I think you would agree with me that people should be honest with their clients and provide value. I'd hate the thought of someone using your words to say that they're white hat, and misleading a client to believe that they're following Google's guidelines - even though they don't, and just mean they're not hacking. I realize it's a matter of semantics, but in this case it matters. Moving on:
"This isn't an update about whether you are buying links or not buying links. This an update about how you're trying to manipulate Google."
I couldn't have said it better. Thanks again, Rob!
Hi Carson,
Black Hat hacking is indeed illegal, but apart from hacking, Black Hat SEO isn't illegal. Google isn't the police and shouldn't be treated as such.
Apart from SEOs that sell themselves as "Black Hat SEO", everyone else sells themselves as "White Hat SEO". Where's the line? Everyone draws it differently and Google's Guidelines are too opaque to based it around.
Companies buy "White Hat SEO" services from Agency X or hire an in-house "White Hat" thinking that they're safe, then get whacked by a big-ass King Penguin. They think that it's an algo bug, as surely "White Hat SEO" is OK by Google?
The only way to be 100% safe in SEO is to not compete or bother at all.
Yet many agencies still acquire directory links, PR links, viral links and widget links in the thousands with commercial/broad anchors and still call it "White Hat". Clients need to be told that this is just as risky (if not, more risky) as buying links.
We should have had this discussion over beers last Monday, rather than chatting Politics ;o)
Stupid white-hat SEO is just as (or more) dangerous as black-hat SEO - I think I can agree with that. And you're right that we shouldn't treat Google like a law enforcement agency. If they were, they would be fining people for failing to use G+.
Googles guidelines are vague, and perhaps the line is unclear. That doesn't mean there's no line or difference at all. Writing a good blog that people read, love, and share is something Google would be fine with, while buying links is clearly not.
There's certainly an element of stupidity (or at least poor foresight) that gets an SEO caught manipulating rankings, but that's another issue altogether.
I especially agree that we should have discussed this, but I did learn all types of things about overseas air travel from you :)
Great part of this video is "We can fix all your Penguin issues" yes this happns lot since the update roll out...
than the great answer for this is (as mentioned in video).. "The big thing is there's no quick fix"
So many ppl who hitted by this update are blindly follow them who provides "penguine issues fix" services...
we must share this thing around that "The big thing is there's no quick fix" just stop manipulating google and u'll be there soon... :)
Missed you Rand..
Not sure why you got thumbed down on this comment! I totally agree that as Google makes their algo updates more public and named, it has indeed resulted in more cowboys emailing people saying that they have the magic cure for X.
It's the same as any new term in any industry (think Y2K bug, killer bee vaccine etc), labelling something gives something for people to fear and there's always a few people out there that'll have a "fix"... at a price.
Hey thanx Rob..
I m not worried by getting thumbed down as far as you noticed it and find my comment right and best part is that u too agreed with my thoughts..
so i guss i got thmbed down from them who actually not able to get my point but its not big deal as it happans.. next time will try to be more specific and try to write the way every one can understand easily. it's learning comment for me as i get suggesions on how to write next comment.. :) Tumbs UP for u ;' ;-)
"With our clients now, as long as the on-page is optimized properly and there are a few links going in using commercial terms, then we basically just build up the authority and the trust of our client website."
Amen. This, all day long.
Wow, I see this as a major deal. Because it changes the idea of going out and securing backlinks to your site with good anchor text.
Also, Like Rob siad, what if my compeditors just go out there and build stacks and stacks of backlinks to my site with the anchor text for the keywords...??
Can a compeditor do this to my site to de rank my search engine results?
Or has Google got a special way of filtering out the links it does not like in its search engine?
I hope Google is aware of that and just devaluated money keywords anchor text links.
Google has confirmed that there are lots of checks and balances present in it's algorithm to prevent spammers from indulging into such kinds of negative SEO. However, there is no evidence that can prove that Google has enough evidence to support it's notion tough we too have seen this trend and many competitors are doing this. If someone gets some relevant information plerase let us know the same. here is the link where Matt Cutts has confirmed about the same. https://selnd.com/K5cyfM
It looks as though they're on the case... https://www.seobythesea.com/2012/05/how-google-might-disassociate-webspam-from-content/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+seobythesea%2FTesr+%28SEO+by+the+Sea%29&utm_content=Google+UKI just hope this can be implemented before any real damage can be done
Hi Peter, I've just commented above about Negative SEO, which hopefully answers your questions. It's still something to monitor (you can use Open Site Explorer and ascend the column by TrustScore), but it's hard to topple a strong site.
Ok, when it come to removing crappy sites from your own domain I would like to what would be the filtering rules. How much percentage bounce rate is still ok. How much minutes is still ok (when the bounce or exite rate is high <- how high).
Hi Rob. Big surprise to see your face on SEOmoz when I logged in this AM! Thanks for the post.
I don't think Google is penalising sites purely because they use optimised anchor text, it's the Excessive use of the SAME anchor text which is quite clearly 'spammy' and doesn't provide value to the user.
Think about the page your link is on, what a user might be doing on that page, what they are likely to want to do next and what would encourage them to click on YOUR link. As far as I know (and correct me if i'm wrong...) Google is striving to deliver the best results for thier users for any given query, if Google sees your site is providing quality content, which is valuable to thier users, you'll get the rankings you deserve.
Google is a business trying to make money from adwords. And this updates more about obediance then quality.
Right now there are a lot of poorer sites outranking better sites because they have a cerain type of link profile.
I'd like to think google were doing it to improve the web, but they've had a track record of doing things for their benifit alone of late (not provided e.t.c.).
A real cynic would go so far as to say googles deliberatly making the results poorer so that it encourages ad use/spend, thouh I'm not sure they are that far yet.
Sure Google is a business, but it's within any company's best interest to keep it's customers happy, hence them striving for more relevant results.
I'm not sure how you can quantify what constitutes a 'poorer' site - Google looks at a lot of indicators including traffic numbers, time spent on site, interaction etc. which we don't have access to... sure there are results for many queries which likely don't deserve to be there, but that's why the algorithm is being constantly updated.
Don't get me wrong, i'm all for a bit of healthy cynicism but I think if we all start to adopt the 'Google is out to get me' attitude we'll never get anywhere.
Quality content doesn't make you win the race, it helps you qualify. Unless you're in a weak/unmonetized sector, links are still the key to making you win (it's why we're all using Google and not Excite today). Don't be fooled by what Google tells you, on-page factors are still pretty weak in the grand scheme of things.
Using the same commercial anchor many times is the same thing as over-optimized anchors.
I agree. My question Robkerry is if I can work to create links from articles,blogs,videos, PR, and Bookmarks that point to my main blog which points to my money site? Assuming I create unique content and change my anchor text and sites I point to. It sounds like this practice is still okay with the new penguin update because they are primarily going after websites that are spammy. I'm discouraged right now because I don't know what to do. Everyone keeps saying to build a great website that offers people a good experiance and that gets visitors but that sounds weird because thats exactly why I'm doing all this seo stuff in the first place. They want me to get the traffic so I can get more traffic!? So how do I start getting the initial traffic? By building links through articles,blogs, videos etc right? I think I'm just going to keep using my magic submitter and see what happens. keep in mind I use Magic Submitter but constantly change my anchor text, keywords, and content I post to make it uniqe. Its as clean as possible. Am I right?
It sounds like Google is making it harder for websites that do not offer valuable content to rank.
They seem to have this grand image of the web where each search takes you right to a grand source of information that satisfies your inquiry to a T.
Using something that blasts out your content probably raises a flag in Google's eyes.
" I don't think Google is penalising sites purely because they use optimised anchor text, it's the Excessive use of the SAME anchor text which is quite clearly 'spammy' and doesn't provide value to the user. "
I fail to see why the excessive use of the same text is spammy. Why should that fail to deliver value to the user? I would suggest the same unwavering anchor text suggests absolute consistency in communicating what lies at the end of the link.
That's what everybody thought before Google Bombing... Although I do like your answer and I agree that there isn't a correlation between excesive number of same anchor text and Spammy or trivial content...
I am totally in the support of Google for the changes in its algorithm. Penguine is the best way to reduce the effect of Black Hat SEO.
I was thinking of Penguin in the sense of it being an update for "relevancy" as well as the excessive amount of [EXACT] anchoring without variation, internally and externally.
Google wants good content that makes sense. I get it! They have been singing the same song since my SEO journey began a few years ago.
My takeaway is this..
· Make sure your site makes sense link within context.
· Linking between pages that contain similarities (both sites mention the same or similar terms).
· Look for authoritative qualities prior to linking.
In my opinion the anchoring is the easy part... I can even go back and change anchors if I wanted to... The perfect linking structure:
· Linking to your Brand 5 out of 8 links.
· Use Keyword Variation for the 3 non-brand keys
· Don’t always link home spread your keywords strategically (2-3 kys per page max) and within context.
· Only link where link benefit after (in Yoda voice). If no one cares about the link, Google wont care for it. However, if there is a great amount of these "I don’t care links" (AKA spam) it may hurt results.
That anchor test thing really has something to it. For a long time, my competotors were outranking me because they all had many links with the exact keyword anchor text, and our anchor text was a lot more varied. Finally after Penguin, we are now #1, and a lot of the competitors are on page two, including the one who used to be #1.
Congrats! You just need to hope that Google doesn't get interested in your niche now! (like Finance, Travel and Fashion)
Very nice and timely WBF Rob. What do you consider to be overly optimised anchor text in terms of percentage of commercial keywords in external links?
Also shall we take into account the raw number of links containing the anchor text or just the number of domains linking containing that anchor text?
We look at 2 factors:
Check your site on a per URL basis, not a per domain basis - if you have 90% commercial anchors going into /carinsurance/, but 40% commercial across the whole site, this is not OK.
Depending on the dirtyness of your sector, try to make sure that commercial anchors are no higher than 5th in your anchor list for each page.
Also remove any dodgy sitewide sidebar or footer links using commercial terms. Sitewide brand links are OK if they're on a trusted/non-spammy site.
To all the people, including this Whiteboard Friday guest, who think anchor text is now irrelevant as a ranking factor, I give you:
https://www.google.com/search?q=click+here
Still think anchor text can't get you to rank for something? I agree that if more than 50% of the links coming to a page all have identical anchor text and if it is not the URL or brand name then yeah, that can probably hurt you.
But let's not think for a second that anchor text with keywords is now something to be avoided. The very fact that Adobe still owns the top spot for [click here] in Google is proof that in spite of completely irrelevant content to a search term, lots of anchor text will still get you to rank.
Erm, I never said that anchor text is irrelevant, quite the opposite. I said that Google is more sensitive to over optimisation of anchor text.
Also in your example, [click here] is the 6th most popular keyword for Adobe's ranking page according to OSE, with a fraction of anchor text ratio compared to image links with no alt text or brand in general.
Ok I should clarify. All the post-Penguin advice is to rag on anchor text. Yes, too much keyword rich anchor text may now be hurting. But any advice that hints at ignoring anchor text is bad, bad, bad.
Adobe ranks #1 and #2 for [click here] in spite of the fact it is not in their top 5 terms in anchor text. So in spite of most links ratio-wise saying one thing, and in spite of the fact that they are un-optimized completely for [click here] they still hold the top spot, for one reason and one reason only, anchor text.
So to all SEO's, don't let your takeaway be to ignore anchor text or to only focus on non-keyword anchor text. Don't remove all links with keyword anchor text. You still need them. You just need more of the other stuff. Hopefully that is more clear for people.
I agree Dan, on a theoretical level, and my logic is this: If all the above was true, would exact match domains simply disappear from main KW rankings because much of their organic linking would contain the main KW in the domain url, and therefore be penalised? Looking at the performance of EMD sites performance might be one way to test the theory?
Great article Rob! What we can predict through your article is that Anchortext diversity and quality content are some of the most important factors that has come into the scenario after Google Penguin Update! SEO is becoming more user centric with this update. Another thing that is going to gain traction after this update is "Social Media". SGoogle is trying Social signals and metrics a lot these days and after this update update it is going to be more important even.
I wonder if it still helps to get Facebook likes. On one website of mine I collected in 5 month nearly 8500 likes but it didn't help much with the rankings. I guess Google is more interested in Google's social signals (like Google Plus).
Michael, We need to do a bit of research and analysis about if this is true. Though I do agree that Google is trying to get a little bit biased with the integration of Google+ profile data in the search engine result page. If this is the case Google is indulging in an unfair competition compelling other Social networking sites to file a lawsuit.
But Google is a private organisatzion. Why would they not to be allowed to have preferences? I think the lawsuit would be not successfull.
As per the US unfair competion Act other social networking sites can file lawsuit. Undoubtedly Google and Facebook are private organisations but they are under the radar of US Government. All of we remember the fact when various companies filed lawsuit against Microsoft for indulging in an unfair trade competion and they had to change their policies and strategies.
interesting
I'd highly suspect facebook likes was more corellation and not so much causation.
I don’t think Google should use any type of social signals as rankings. If they did they would have to use some sort of category type calculator. That can determine interest levels in each niche to determine real from fake. For example:
I can buy 10,000 likes for $5
I can buy 1,000 G + for $5
If Google counted these bot's imagine what damage I can do for $200. Social signals cannot be reliable.
Also, I have collected 1,000 Facebook likes from a Facebook ad targeting a relevant demographic for a boring niche. After collecting these likes I have discovered that the user interaction with our posts was just as low as it was prior to having 1000 likes. A boring niche is a boring niche.
In a niche where one does not get any user interaction with or without likes. How can Google determine if these likes were earned or paid for? I doubt they can. Just like we cannot control everything Google does. Google cannot control everything we do or what open source sites such as: Facebook, Twitter and other social networks do. Better yet, what we can do in these open source networks. Now, Do you really think they are using an external factor such as Facebook (BTW… Facebook is a competitor!), as a ranking factor?
Like i said :) i Poland is real huge change in SERP. Who next hehehehhe :) I'm Fine.
Any suggestions for what to do when your brand name and your domain name contains a "commercial" term?
I.E. in trying to build brand signals you are inevitably also building a bunch of links and references to your site that has a "commercial" term in it.
We have seen slight dips in traffic, but nothing egregious, so hard to tell if it is just the seasonal nature of our business or something more.
Do you think that a site and/or a link network has to be a cetain size to catch the "attention" of the Penguin update? I realize this is just the beginning of these types of updates, but I see some small-market sites engaging in obvious and blantant link exchange and one way link building schemes, and they seem unaffected so far.
Being in a smaller market, sometimes it appers that a lot of questionable tactics seem to fly under the radar.
after watching this video if you read this thread, I am sure things will be more generalized and easy to handle.
https://www.seomoz.org/q/does-anyone-have-any-suggestions-on-removing-spammy-links
Rayn Kent really cover the issue so greatly.
Don't miss it
pretty big opinion oriented opener ..
For people defending this update, they have no idea what they are talking about. There is no relevancy in the results at all now. If you business is relevent to SEO, for example, of course all the anchor links should be SEO or SEO something. Even naturally, that makes sense!
You comments please:
Hi, I have a small number of short TLD's in Polish. The translations would be CarInsurance MotorcycleInsurance LifeInsurance HouseInsurance under the dot com code / brand. I am in the process of developing a aggregator / price comparison platform. It is my intention to develop four individual, websites under the keyword root domains each being authoritative to its subject URL. Is it permissible to use the same price comparison platform for each website ? or should I single out the comparison platform for the individual insurance cover specific to e.g. Life Insurance in isolation from the entire comparison platform option? I ask the question as I do not want any duplicate content problems even though the platform is a service to the public.
One thing I have found hugely disturbing about the Penguin update is that Google seems to have disregareded the need for a quality search in the battle against linking.
Now while they obviously do there best to get rid of as many spammy links the fact is that many well respected sites which have useful information for clients have been hit by these because they have in the past built manipulative links to there sites.
While site owners and webmasters try there hardest to delete these links Google must be well aware that it is a task that is futile in some respects.
While these good sites have been penalised, many without webmaster tool warning but just hammered with page penalties the top 10 spots for many search terms are full of sites that are either
Previously these sites have been ranking around the page 5 or 6 mark and now they are at the top of Google. So in short Google are affecting the user experience by punishing websites. That is the long and short of it. Perosnally I have been fortunate not to of been affected with Penguin but some of my closest colleagues have been hit severly.
I know many would say it is there own fault for basically buying links but these people realise this now. I challenge any small business owner without a clue of SEO to honestly say that they have read Googles terms of service that says you cannot buy links. Google should really try a warning system with perhaps a 30 day slap and say if the linking continues then the block will be permenant.
Even as a user it is frustrating using Google at the moment, irrelevant results for the search terms all because part of the search term is in the domain name. So who ever said EMD's were dead, oh I think that was Matt Cutts! Google rattles on about being open and honest but they are by definition insular and protective. Of course they have to protect against the black hat world but it does seem that penguin has pushed Google back to the days of old!
Rob,
I'm a little late to the party, but fantastic post. And thank you for leading off with the clarification about blackhat SEO. When I tell others about some of the "blackhat" tactics I've dabbled with, I get that "You just robbed a bank" kind of stare. I hope those starers watched your video - and read my comment ;)
Also, this is more of a request than a question, but I know a number of us would love to see a complete post about the importance of Anchor Text Distrbution. Would you or the Ayima crew consider writing one? Something that talks about which tools and excel functions to use, the overall process, how to find the "natural" ratio in each vertical, how it relates to penguin, how to scale this process across a dozen verticals, or whatever else you deem important. This topic hasn't been talked about enough about in our community.
Thanks so much for doing this WBF!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FEnofh7TdLg#!
^ funny and relevant
Succinct and informative! Nice presentation.
Actually this thing with the diverse anchor text works...I have been working on a website and I am creating only relevant links while constantly using different copies of main keywords (I use prefixes and suffixes to diversify my backlinks)....and I have got some fruitful results I have to say.
And regarding the reconsideration request I don't think that'll help.....this was also said at search engine land,
can anyone suggest me how to improve my website (www.giftbig.com) organic traffic. Please drop your suggestion at joydas85 at gmail.com.
Great post! Easy to understand. One company has approached me offering a tool, a snippet reads, 'a user-generated SEO solution that automatically creates optimized landing pages based on visitor search activity on your site', along with the Panda update won't this tool actually hinder a site's performance. It sounds like it will look at what search terms people are using to find your site and then almost keyword stuff new landing pages based on those terms?
Love this video, explains everything clearly and makes a lot of sense. Will be sending it to all clients this month in the hope that it clarifies the world of SEO & Google for them. Thanks :)
I thought this was a very clear WBF on what the Penguin update was all about, and how we can learn from it in the future. Good tips on watching the anchor text.
Hello Rob,
Thanks for sharing these helpful clarifications. These advices are really critical. It delineated the realistic estimations on the impact of the new algorithm update. Indeed, some steps may be dangerous because the rules of the game have dramatically changed. Hats off for this excellent post!
According to me only the uses of the anchor text and create relevant backlinks is all enough for the Google penguin update, and it is not only for the domain but use it or the major pages.
Thanks for the video, Penguin is something we all want to know and understand better.
Hi I am confused! Cany one help? Like David Above I don't know what is the difference between commercial and anchor text.
Also please advise- first ON Site- what is meant by the post about with 40% and 90% -should we be using anchor text within our own site?I have my own product-it is ok to put a link on each page to the product page? Is it ok to link within yur site-if not how will people know where to go?
Also regarding exteral inbound links: My keyword is in my domain name is this a probelm? What should my inbound look like? Now it is mostly www.domain.com, domain.com, https://www.domain.com or domain but some a keyword (that is also in the domain) Is this good or bad?
Thanks for anyone who can clarify
40% 90% If the the keyword is part of the root domain you do not need to overtly use the keyword. The Keyword is an advantage in seo & cognitive marketing. Link pages to each site tailored to its distinct product while at the same having one brand. No point in eventing the new wheel, go to other successful sites and do the same thing, same way most seo "experperts use forums, Google create more & more seo's by adding layer cake to what is still very basic a Turing machine. The analyists are the smart ones to model.
I see "commercial term" being used allot in this discussion when talking about anchor text. Could someone tell me the meaning as it is being used.
Thanks,
David
Today I read 1 article "Using a 301 Redirect with an Aged Domain to Increase Your Domain’s SEO Value - https://www.anticareer.com/usin... "
I want to confirm few points here:
1) If one website who is penalized by Penguin do you think 301 will be useful if we go through aged domain. 2) Will be any bad effect because someone used unnatural link in old website.
3) May be transferred all good backlinks to new domain after 301 redirection.
4) Will be rank effect in Google after 301 redirect. If "YES" how will be time taken to back rankings in Google.
Thanks a lot for this post. But can you please elaborate what terms google treats as commercial terms.
In Seo the keyword research is one of the most important things.
Hi Rob,
Nice presentation, and it makes a nice change to hear an english voice talking about SEO for a change.
Cheers,
Steve
I don't buy this looking natural thing, lets say I own a a site selling iPhone cases. I have a back link catalog of about 400 domains, 320 of them contain some slight match anchor but are mostly branded / no anchor etc.
Then 80 of them are exact match anchor saying "cheap iphone case" so I can rank for the TKW.
You think Google think this is "natural" ?
They obviously know, they just have no better way of ranking sites at the moment, they ban the occasional link network etc but G know if they nailed everyone for exact match anchor text the search results would suck.
I think Google are mainly looking at are all these exact match anchors from scummy sites?
I'm giving this WBF a thumbs up. At 1st I thought it was going to regurgitate Penguin info. However, I think many people are going to start article marketing and build anchor text with terms like "click here" "visit their website" or any non-commerical (exact match) anchor text.
It looks like someone didn't like this post that he went down ALL the responses and gave us all a thumbs down. :(..... LOL
Thanks for your information. I insist that the content, value content is the king.
Great WBF Rob, some great advice to follow.
I'm starting to totally loose hope and faith in this "SEO thing." I think Google's intention is the get rid of SEO completely. I believe that one of these day SEO itself will be penanized.
@huggy kids - SEO is not only a link building, so don't say that Google wants to get rid of it. SEOs makes very good thinks, which are good for search engines and users - better optimization, greater user experience, better accesibility etc...
If i wanted my twitter account or facebook page / profile to rank high for my brand name should I continue to link to them with my brand name as anchor text as they will have Zillions of different links to them with different anchor text already? Or would G treat a page on say FB as a seperate site and apply the same rules?
There is an hour and a half video on reputation management on SEOmoz you can watch for this. Its very Good!
https://www.seomoz.org/webinars/online-reputation-management-branding-for-serp-domination
I am afraid that this could be the beginning of a terrible "Negative SEO Age". There is no escape: you can devalue spam/manipulative tecniques but when you start penalising it it's dangerous..
This is why i think Google should take the route of just simply ignoring poor links on sites rather than penalising them. This would surely put an end to all this Negative 'SEO business'
It's a nice idea, but I remember a Google Engineer (perhaps the illusive Mr. Cutts?) saying that such a policy would result in a "see what sticks" approach to SEO.
Agreed! But at the moment penalising sites is a good way of cleaning up the current SERP results. If penalising means getting rid of a few thousand EMD AdSense farms I’m cool with that!
"The big thing is there's no quick fix. If you get an email from a company saying that, "We can fix all your Penguin issues," it's likely not to be the case, especially if it's like a $35 fix."
Agreed! If a site owner came to my and wanted help recovering from Penguin, the first thing I'd say is there is no guarantee what we're about to go is going to have an immediate effect. You have to make one change and give it a few weeks/months to take hold. If that doesn't solve the problem you move on to the next thing you think might be the problem.
Excellent post about SEO..Video posting detailed many things.. all are such a wonderful news about recent penguin updates.
For those interested in this discussion, seobook has a fascinating discussion in the comments section of this article: https://www.seobook.com/negative-seo
I have nothing to do with that site btw, just found the discussion pertinent to this WBF.
Hi,
I need a help. Can you help me? This is my www.halftonesystems.com/ page. Please visit my page. It's a Joomla page. But I did not change it's title. Please say me, How to change this page title. I already change globle configaration. Please help me. Please send me a mail with solution.
Thanks,
Nila
Hey Robkerry. Nice job.
I'm in agreement that over optimized anchor text is one of the primary targets of Penguin. I'm not sure where the theshold is, but I suspect that you want less than 50% of anchor text to any page to contain your keywords. The rest should be the url, the name of the site, or generic phrases like "click here".
For a long time I subscribed to the philophy that a rising tide lifts all boats -- that you build high quality links to your site and all of your rankings should be lifted. But I was getting beaten out by companies with tons of over optimized anchor text. It would be nice if the tide had really shifted to reward good content, but the results I see for key terms in our industry are largely trashed. Google is returning WORSE results for many of the most highly coveted keywords / phrases in our industry.
At this point my feeling is that Google so badly wanted to stop people from gaming the rankings, that now they've destroyed their product (the best search results) in the process. Bing is returning much better results for keywords in our industry. Matter of fact, they look a lot like the good results I used to get in Google.
A few months ago we noticed our rankings were falling on the key word searches. Where we used to appear on the first page of results we had slipped to the third. Our business has been around for a long time on the web - since 1996. The fall in rankings has meant less business for us. Since I own the business this has made me take more interest in SEO than I have in a long time. To be honest I knew a lot less than I should of and thought I knew more than I actually did.
A great deal of my time has been spent in this site and on the blog page. We signed up for the SEO tools, which are very useful; and we hired a SEO specialist to help us, one who came highly recommended by one of our customers.
I have been trying to understand why our competitors are STILL ahead of us in rakings on keywords no matter what we do. What I found was shocking to me. Everyone above us was (and is) using link farms. Also, I found domain after referring domain where a blogger had signed their name with an embedded URL to one of these high-ranked competitor websites. It's really bad; one of our competitors has 900 inbound link domains and 890 of them are using these two SEO tricks. To make things worse - surprise - many of these "black-hat" links are from high PR domains. How they got those rankings I have no idea.
I have heard and read that Penquin was going to stop this - but it hasn't happened in our area of business. None of our competitors using these "black-hat" techniques has gone down even one position since Penquin took place. So what do WE do now? Do we do the same thing they have done? We have never used a link farm nor have we done any blogging under names with hidden URL linking. I am really confused. Our SEO guy says we should wait it out and eventually the winners at this 'black-hat' game will be caught by Google, get penalized and loose their rankings. So how long do we wait for this miracle? A month, two months, six months - a year? I must say I have huge doubts that they will ever get caught or penalized.
Soon I will have to make a decision and I don't know what to do, are any others of you facing this?
If these guys are using link farms, why don't you report them to Google? They might have overlooked a few sites.
Thank you for the advice - I went and filed out the form. I wonder if Google reads them - they must get 10,000 a day.
Guess they do, but probably at a slow pace.
I have proof that the lack of diversity in anchor text can be a major problem.
This site was newer, say 3-4 months, and the links were few. With open-site explorer research, it showed the top keyword anchor text.
There were only 2 varieties. One regular and one inverted. They were in this pattern.
Keyword Phrase 1: "Keyword1 keyword2"
and
Keyword Phrase 2: "Keyword2 keyword1"
There was no instance of, "Keyword1 in the town of Keyword2" or just even a single, "Keyword 1" variety at all. That site dropping makes sense. It looked like seo that was created. We always have to remember natural is better.
It also makes sense from a web user's higher quality experience as well. Google prefers more "natural" sites. Natural being easy to read...as a person. They've gotten better at creating an algorithm that can see variety.
Or in this case, lack there of.
Duplicate content on premium directories such as yelp, merchantcircle, etc... is another issue, make sure it is unique on both ends.
I think Google launched this update to penalize those doing unethical SEO activities regardless of company size and clientele. It affected even some big companies too since their SEO activities were suspiscious or against Google standards. Fortunately our company though its a small firm but due to its credible SEO services and genuine clientele we did not lose our PR and remained clean in the eyes of Google.
[linkdrop removed]
Hi Robkerry,
First of all thanks for WBF I really like this.
I made two conclusions from this WBF...
My First Thought
"So you are saying that we just need to rely on our on-page tactics to rank for commercial terms because whatever the links we get for our commercial terms either they are authorities or not, there is a chance to get penalized. "
My Second Thought
"So you are saying that if we get more links for non commercial terms such as "brand names" and make ourselves an authority in the particular niche than there is a chance that we will also rank for our commerical terms too."
Can you please provide your thought on these, I will really appreciate that.
Thanks Again!!
Hi Robkerry,
Thanks for sharing us about Penguin. I can't properly listen your voice but i read the Video Transcription.
It's really good and infomative presentation.
Thanks,
I think this update drives content marketing as a link building tactic even harder. Basically old link building tactics (emailing webmasters, reciprocal linking, etc) are going to continue to get devalued.
Create rich creative content around the terms you want to rank for that you would honestly be happy to wind up at if you as a user were to search that term and you will be rewarded with a long lasting ranking. If the content revolves around the term you want to rank for you will get a varying combination of anchor text that is focused on that target term and also a more natural looking link profile (because it is naturally created).
Stop thinking about link campaigns as one off activites and start thinking of scalable ways to create good unique content that is relevant to the your target keywords. If you can tie that content in to your main conversion action thats the silver bullet of SEO.
Not just devalued, penalized even. That's the reason for all the outcry in the SEO community. Bad links aren't devalued, their penalized.
And the age old problem with content marketing is traffic. In order to get a good ranking in Google, you need links and traffic. In order to generate links and traffic, you need really great content. In order to get enough traffic to generate any amount of decent links, you need to get a good ranking in Google.
It's a vicious cycle. Those who don't have a big social presence and who don't have a good Google ranking are completely dismissed by Google because they aren't getting any links. And often times they have the best content. Creating content is not enough. You need to promote it and share it. And then you need to pray like crazy that people link to it. And any marketing strategy that involves prayer tends to not go over very well with the owners ;)
So basically the same thing Randfish said and everyone else. I've seen sites affected dramatically with extremely natural looking anchor text signals, and hardly any money keywords as anchor text. There's got to be some other factors here too.
Obviously there are other signals and metrics too that Google is looking at to check if your link portfolio is spammy and manupulating and anchor text is one of the components.
Welcome to WBF Rob, you have discussed some hidden facts regarding penguin update thanks to share for your experince BTW the funny part is you sounds like 70's news anchor :)
Thanks Syed, my first WBF was in 2008 - I like to leave a 4 year gap in-between each one ;)
Thank you for the WBF, Rob. Nothing actually new for anyone who's been tracking inbound.org for the past 2 weeks.
My question is - okay, Google doesn't want us to use the same anchor text more than 50% of all anchor texts in our backlinks. But, how about big brands? How about Coca Cola, Apple, Microsoft etc? are they being hit by Penguin? I guess no. Next, what about if some splogs start building crappy links to these sites? again, nothing bad is going to happen to them.
So my point is - as long as your link profile is balanced (crappy links are negated by the good links) and as long as you act like a brand(you send the the same signals to the world as the big guys do) you should not be worried about the animals in Google's zoo.
it is a warning to all who thumbed down! if you dont like the post by the author, you directly vote against the author.why should you thumb down my comment.as a new comer i try to learn something good about internet blogging community.dont try to intercept on my way.as far as i am concerned the post is good
Hi Velmurugan, I believe people thumbed down your comment mainly because you used all caps. In the future, please refrain from using all caps and you'll have a better experience. Additionally I've emailed you privately about another matter. Thank you, Jen
Google's penguin update is really good for most of the black hat SEO and over optimization SEO sites. But still there is problem in this updates. One of the our clients domain's blog page where we just put one link to homepage and this link also show as the unnatural link in wemmaster mail.
This is how I interpret this white board Friday. He used to buy anchor text links for clients...but a year ago he predicted that google was going to penalize sites for over optimization of anchor text so he stopped (All of us dummies thought that anything that happened offsite couldn't hurt us, remember?).
So, he still buys links (just can't admit it) but the links he buys don't come with the money terms in the anchor text. He uses on site optimization to get the money terms to rank. His competitors are falling because of penguin and his clients are gaining.
He is so smart and if you have a big budget (not $35), you should hire his company. He will help you look natural, because after all looking natural has changed since Penguin.
Hahahahahaha! I almost miss people like you. Good flame Sir, good flame :o)
THE POST IS USEFUL TO ME AS LIKE FOR A SCHOOL BOY. I'VE STARTED BLOGGING BEFORE 5 TO 6 MONTHS. SO I JUST USE TO LEARN ABOUT TRAFFIC, SEARCH. BUT SAYING IN ACTUAL, I DON'T UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE LINKS AND DIRECTS AS MENTIONED BY YOU. ON THE OTHERSIDE YOUR POST RESEMBLES-SOUNDS LIKE AN ADMINISTRATOR'S SPEECH.HATS OFF
https://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo