How to Rehabilitate Your Site After a Google Link Penalty

There may be few things more gratifying in the world of SEO than an incoming link from an authority site with stellar page rank and domain authority. Hopefully, all of your site’s incoming links are beyond reproach. But, as Google becomes more adept at spotting what it considers to be unnatural incoming links, you may be the recipient of an unnatural links message from Google.
If Google has taken a manual or automated spam action against you based on incoming unnatural links to your site, what, if anything, can you do?

First, ask yourself what you may have done to trigger this action. Google will not send you a complete list of the links it deems unnatural, but it will give you an example of your unnatural links via your Google webmaster console when they detect evidence of paid links, link exchanging and other unnatural linking schemes you may not even be aware of. Basically, anything that goes against Google’s quality guidelines is up for scrutiny. Google engineer and prolific blogger Matt Cutts suggests:
“One great place to start looking for bad links is the ‘Links to Your Site’ feature in Webmaster Tools. From the homepage, select the site you want, navigate to Traffic > Links to Your Site > Who Links the Most > More, then click one of the download buttons. This file lists pages that link to your site. If you click ‘Download Latest Links,’ you’ll see dates as well. This can be a great place to start your investigation, but be sure you don’t upload the entire list of links to your site — you don’t want to disavow all your links!”

Steps to Deal with a Google Link Penalty
If Google believes your site has been engaging in link spam over a period of time, they may consider it a severe case and will reduce the trust of your entire site. If specific links are a problem, Google may let you know about that as well. If this is the case, rather than taking trust away from your entire site, Google may just penalize those specific links. Your ranking may not fall, but you may be barred from ranking on some phrases.
There are actions you can take to get your site back into Google’s good graces, but you need to take a methodical approach.

1. Try to get the links taken down on your own. Attempt to contact the linking site and ask for the links to be taken down. You may have some luck here, but if you’ve been on a big linking campaign, there may be others you can’t get taken down.
2. Use Google’s disavow links tool to show which links you weren’t able to get taken down. Wait for the disavowed links to get into the system. You can’t just disavow the links without trying to get them down on your own, however. Google can compare which links were up when they took manual action, and which links are still up when you engage the disavow tool. If there’s no difference between the initial action and the disavow request, Google can tell you haven’t tried taking down any yourself. If you really want to get back into good graces with Google, you need to get as many links taken down as possible on your own before you try to have them disavowed.
3. Allow at least a day to pass and submit a reconsideration request. As Matt Cutts explained to Search Engine Land, “We want to reiterate that if you have a manual action on your site (if you got a message in Webmaster Tools for example), and you decide to disavow links, you do still need to do a reconsideration request.”

How Long Can it Take for Your Site to Recover?
Once you’ve followed these steps, the Google manual team will check your site to see if it now adheres to Google guidelines. They may then remove the manual actions penalty from your site, but there are no guarantees, and it could take several weeks or longer to see an improvement in your site rankings once you’ve followed the steps above.
“It can definitely take some time, and potentially months. There’s a time delay for data to be baked into the index. Then there can also be the time delay after that for data to be refreshed in various algorithms,” Cutts writes.

---

Kristin Marino in SPN
How to Rehabilitate Your Site After a Google Link Penalty

The Strength of the Web: Hyperlinks and Information

As you might have heard, right now there’s a big debate regarding the future of the web. Some people argue that the web as we know it is dying, and that it’s going to be replaced by a closed web, experienced through individual apps like the mobile ones. Others argue that this won’t happen, and that the web will remain open and accessible mainly via the browser, be it on a mobile device or on a desktop computer.

Given the rampant growth of the mobile industry and of the closed app store eco-systems (mostly Apple’s and Google’s) it’s easy to see why so many people believe that the web as we know is going to die. But can apps really substitute all the web has to offer?

I started thinking about it, and I came to the conclusion that no, apps can’t substitute all the web has to offer. More specifically, there’s one key aspect of the web which I think is its greatest value and also the hardest aspect to substitute: its open architecture based on hyperlinks.

We take it for granted, but when you think about it you can see the immense power behind an open architecture based on links between the various elements inside it. It basically creates an eco-system that is:

• dynamic (i.e., constantly changing)
• self-adjusting (i.e., the good stuff eventually rise to the top, and vice-versa)
• meritocratic (i.e., the better the stuff you create, the more benefits you’ll reap)

And this eco-system becomes a perfect platform to store and access information. For instance, imagine Wikipedia without hyperlinks. It wouldn’t be half as useful, right?

Sure, closed and independent apps are useful in many cases, and they probably are here to stay, but until someone comes up with a better structure to organize documents and information the web will remain pervasive.

Source: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/the-strength-of-the-web-hyperlinks-and-information/
The Strength of the Web: Hyperlinks and Information

Link Building in a Post Panda / Penguin World

Few algorithm updates have shaken the SEO industry like Panda and Penguin. Many SEOs confuse the two, believing that Penguin is an extension of Panda. This is not entirely true, though there is a relationship between the two. Both address quality issues and manipulative practices, but in totally different ways. However, there is a relationship between Panda and Penguin for link builders, as getting links from pages that have been caught by either update is not advisable.
As the algorithms have evolved in how they evaluate the web, so must SEO best practices for website development and promotion.

Panda Safe Link Building
Panda has little to do with off-site link building. Generally speaking, Panda is an algorithm dealing with on-page and on-site quality. It can affect the entire website if there are too many low quality pages, but the inbound links to each page are not the main target of the algorithm.
Ensuring that target pages are high quality is vital in order to get the most from any link building campaign. This can be done by using dynamic sidebar navigation plugins, careful and descriptive interlinking, media rich pages with useful and unique content, and avoiding duplicate content issues.
Pages that adhere to these principles will have no problem remaining Panda compliant and earning a high quality score in the algorithm or from a human reviewer.

Link Building in a Post Penguin World
Penguin is the algorithm specifically dealing with link spam. Any link that is bought or manufactured solely for the reason of manipulating rankings may be classified as link spam by the search engines.
The key is to get links from quality pages on related websites. Sites that have their own audience and can send traffic through a link pointing to a page on your site are the best source of quality inbound links.
Any Penguin friendly link building campaign with a chance of withstanding future iterations of the algorithm will include extensive relationship building and outreach. Social media sites like Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook are ideal for forging connections and building the relationships that lead to links.

What about Anchor Text?
Anchor text is a recurring theme when discussing the Penguin update. Current evidence indicates a penalty may occur when exact match and buyer intent keywords (typically two word phrases) make up 60% or more of the links pointing to a page.
When conducting any outreach activities with the purpose of building or requesting links, focusing on brand names, bare URLs and a smaller usage of exact match anchors seems to be the best and safest practice.

Be Specific, Be Useful
Finally, if an SEO strategy puts little emphasis on exact match anchors, how can Google determine what a page is about? The answer is to optimize the body copy without keyword stuffing, and to optimize title tags and meta descriptions for the target keywords. Quality inbound links from relevant articles to pages with proper on-page optimization will handle the rest.

It Is Simple, But Not Easy
SEO is not difficult. Link building is a taboo term in many circles these days, but for those who invest the time and effort to acquire the high quality, hard to get links, the payoff is incredible.

Why SEO is important?

The web is bringing in billions of dollars every year now, mostly from advertising, but also from all types of other revenue sources like affiliate sales, professional services, products, and so on. The ways any particular website can make money are almost endless. But all of these methods come down to a single starting point, a single bottleneck, called traffic.

Many web experts will tell you that traffic is king, because it doesn’t matter how wonderful your site looks like, or how useful the product you sell is, if nobody comes to your website, you won’t make any money. That’s why understanding and practicing good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques is crucial.

To make money with SEO, you can either apply the techniques you learn for your own site, or sell your services to other sites who may not know what SEO even means. As the title says, Search Engine Optimization is all about making sure that people who search for a particular topic find your site. There are many things you can do to ensure that, and other things that you should not do.

First, it’s important to understand how Google and the other popular search engines rank websites. When someone types in “sleeping bags” in the search box, the results will be listed in order of relevance. How the algorithm determines that relevance is the whole secret. It’s based on how much good, high quality content the site has about this particular topic, and how many other sites link to that site.
Let’s see how to optimize both criteria. First, SEO will never replace good content. You must make sure that you have that first. But then, you should make sure that Google knows you have good content. To do that, you have to use “meta tags” on your site. These are special tags in the HTML pages that tell Google the page’s title, description, keywords, and so on. Most programs used to create sites have options to add meta tags, and it’s crucial that you add them. Also make sure the pages themselves are easy to read and not cluttered. Modern search engines notice that and can penalize you.

The second criteria, the number of sites linking to your site, is called off-site SEO. This is about getting other sites to link to your content. This is a much slower part of SEO, because you need to go out and put in links on other sites. You can use forums, comments on blogs, directories, and so on. Anywhere that allows you to put links.

Finally, it’s important not to give in and try to do illicit SEO techniques, such as spamming your site’s address on other unrelated sites, or filling your own pages with unrelated keywords. The search engines are smart and will detect that, and can even delist you. Overall, SEO isn’t that complex, it’s just a long list of little things you can do to improve your site’s presence online, and thus make you more money.

Link Value Factors: How to Pick the Best Link Sources

by Richard Gilmore


Links are the fuel of SEO and just like gas they may have different octane rating called link value. Fuel your car with low-rate gas and it won't take you far. Same is true about links. You need to power your site with high quality link fuel if you want to make it to the top of search results and make it fast.

No two links are created equal. When building links it's important to be able to forecast the effect they will have on your rankings. The value of each link depends on a variety of factors that determine whether the link will give your site a huge jump in the rankings, help you climb a couple positions up or quite oppositely may result in a ranking loss.

That said let's see what factors contribute to link value and how you can evaluate the SEO efficiency of your current or prospective links.
Here are some of the most significant link value factors that make up the SEO value of a link.

These factors break down into 3 categories: the properties of the link itself (we shall call them link factors), the qualities of the web page where the link is placed (page factors) and the properties of the linking domain (domain factors).

Link Factors

1. Anchor/alt text

The anchor text or alt text in case of an image link has a huge effect on your rankings, particularly it determines for what search terms your site will be ranking higher. Having a good keyword relevant anchor text will help you get ranked for these search terms, however it's also need to vary your anchor texts to make sure your link profile looks natural.

2. Nofollow/dofollow

If the link has a nofollow attribute search engines don't count it when ranking sites. However there are speculations that nofollow links do pass some link juice. Anyway there's nothing bad about having nofollow links. In fact many SEOs believe that nofollowed links contribute to a natural looking link profile.

3. Link type (text or image)

Text links are considerably more valuable than image links, though the latter are also helpful.

4. Link age

Just like domains and web pages links tend to accumulate value over time, however poor quality links usually remain just that - aged poor quality links.

5. Total number of links on the page

The link value is distributed among all the links on the page therefore the fewer links on the page the more link juice each link carries.

6. Link location on page

The links placed higher upon the page get more value than those below. The value of the footer links and sitewides is said to have been devalued over time, though they still can give you a nice push up in the rankings. The best quality links are in-content links with an anchor text that is relevant both to the content on the page and to the page it links to.

7. Reciprocal/one-way

One way links usually pass more link value than their reciprocated counterparts. Despite all the talk around how reciprocal links are dead, two way links are still valuable, given that they originate from relevant sources. Reciprocal links can be and often are a natural phenomenon. Sites from one niche tend to link to each other all the time, so there's nothing wrong about having two way links. More over many experts believe that having different types of links makes up for a more natural and more effective link profile.

Page factors

1. Excluded from indexing (robots.txt)

If the page where your link sits is excluded from indexing, your link won't be indexed as well, so the search engines won't even know it's there.

2. Context

The textual context surrounding your link is just as important as the anchor text. If you get a link with 'web design company' in the anchor from a page about making an apple pie that link will be as effective as the one from a page about building a website.

3. Page authority (PR & link popularity)

We've heard it a hundred times and again. Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) does not equal the 'real' PageRank and should not be treated as such. We've heard it from experts, we've heard it from Google themselves that we shouldn't measure the authority of the site by the green bar on Google toolbar. Still since there's no way we can find out the actual PageRank, TBPR still remains the only indicator of that important (though not the only) ranking factor.

Alongside with PR it's important to take note of the quantity and quality of links pointing to the site, the number of indexed webpages, the cache dates (the more often pages are crawled and cached, the more important the website is for Google), mentions in social media, etc. All these factors contribute to the overall page authority.

4. Page Age

Google and other search engines tend to put more trust into the aged webpage, so a link on a older page tend to pass over more link juice. However you need to consider other factors that can magnify or degrade the effect of the page age. If the page has not gained trust and authority in the search engines, its age doesn't matter much.

With the release of Google Caffeine Google tends to put more emphasis on fresh content putting newly created pages from authority websites high up in the search results. So if you get a link from a new page on a trusted domain that may also add to the effect of the link on your rankings.

5. Relevance of outgoing links on the page

If your link sits on the page that also links to sites on gardening, PC gear, airplane designs and latest celebrity gossip you're not pulling much juice from it. On the other hand, if the page only links out to relevant sites in one niche the effect of those links is much higher.

6. Amount of textual content vs links on the page

The content-to-links ration on the page is an important link value factor. All-link directory type pages tend to pass on less value (unless they come from a highly authoritative site like DMOZ or Yahoo! Directory) than links on pages with a considerable amount on textual content on them.

7. User-generated vs editorial

If everyone and his dog can get a link from a page, there's not much value to those links. Search engines tend to put more trust into editorially created links rather than those that sit on user-generated pages.

8. Search rankings

If the page where your link sits ranks well for your target keyword (the one you use in the anchor text) or relative terms this makes your link more effective.

It's not quite a link value factor, rather an indicator of the page's overal authority, but it's an important thing to keep in mind when building links.

Domain Factors

Domain link value factors pretty much mirror those related to the linking page though there are some unique domain factors as well.

1. Domain authority (PR, link popularity, etc.)

Same as page authority only applied on the domain level.

2. Domain Age

Older domains tend to accumulate more trust and ranking power.

3. Domain relevance

Same as page relevance only applied to the domain level. It can be much harder to tell whether the domain is relevant or not because many websites tend to cover a variety of topics, so page relevance seems to be a more important factor.

4. TLD (.com, .org, .gov, etc.)

It's arguable that links from .gov and .edu sites are more valuable than links from .coms or .nets. The TLD doesn't play a big role by itself, it's just that .gov and .edu sites tend to accumulate quality links from other trusted sources which makes links from these sites more effective.

Bottomline:

These are some of the major factors that determine the SEO value of a link. Of course the more powerful your links are the better, but don't get obsessed with building only one type of links (e.g. only high PR one-way link). Having a natural link profile ensures better results in the long run.

This list is by no means exhaustive and unless Google discloses its ranking algo we won't be able to come up with a complete list of link value factors. If you have more factors to contribute, stop by and leave a comment.

P.S. Checking link value factors by hand is a hell lot of work to do, and is just plain impossible if you build links on a scale. This free backlink checker will help you quickly analyze large sets of backlinks and pick the best link sources.

Optimizing Your Existing Links

By Peter van der Graaf, Search Engine Watch, Aug 12, 2010

When your website has been around for some time, but you still aren't ranking high enough for your desired search terms, optimizing the incoming links to your site is the best next step. Existing link partners are a great help, but they aren't all perfect.

What Can You Optimize?
Links you receive as a result of having great content, being talked about, or a request aren't likely to be perfect in many ways. For instance:

• Is the link located on the best page within their site?
  
• Is the anchor text good for ranking on your desired search term?
  
• Is the link directed at the page you want to have ranking for that search term?
  
• Is the link natural in the eyes of search engines?
  

All these factors could be optimized easily. After all, these link partners have already shown their willingness to promote your site.

Splitting up Link Building
One strategy I often use is splitting up link building into two stages. First, focus on getting a link from your desired site. Then, after a few months, try to convince these link partners that changing it is in both of your best interests.

It's much easier to hide search engine optimization (SEO) as an ulterior motive, or even to introduce it as just one of the many reasons how it could benefit both sites.

Reasons for Changing a Link?
With your request to change a link, you need a probable reason why they should do so. This reason is always linked to what you want changed (exit page, anchor text, or landing page) and how you initially got the link.

If you have a time sensitive link (e.g., one archived in a news article), don't waste your time. If you have a link that is almost perfect, but probably is only still there because they forgot about it, you're probably better of leaving it alone. But if the link is on their site because your site provides additional information on a topic they write about, this is the perfect candidate for optimization.
To get a perfect anchor text, you could initiate a URL change. This might sound weird, but it goes like this.

You should provide even better information on another URL or change the URL of the original content, backed up by a redirect. Now contacting your link partner with a good reason is easy: "You're currently linking to a redirect. Could you change the URL to [insert URL here] and while you're at it change the anchor text to [search term you're optimizing for here]?"
In my experience, 75 percent of the requests are honored, including the anchor text change (of the remaining cases, 10 percent change the URL without changing the anchor text, 10 percent do nothing, and 5 percent remove the link entirely).

Pitfalls in Link Optimization
Changing many links in a short period of time indicates to search engines that you had full control over the link changes. So this might be seen as unnatural and could trigger filters that dampen the value of those links. To avoid this, spread the activity over a longer period of time.
Perfection isn't the goal of link optimization. So don't try to get the exact same link from every partner. A natural mutation should be the aim of your effort.
Select specific link partners that are likely to change a link. Start by testing with less important partners to get the hang of it.

The previously mentioned 5 percent of partners that remove a link after a change request can be much higher. Selecting the correct partners is the most important stage of link optimization.
Don't focus too much on just the search term you're working on right now. Any change in incoming links can and will negatively effect the existing ranking for some other search terms. Make sure these are the less important ones.

Conclusion
Link optimization is an effective way to increase your ranking, but it requires some practice. The pitfalls make it easy to slip up, so start small and test before you start contacting everyone linking to you.

New Strategies for Getting Links from Newspapers

By Jeremy Bencken, Search Engine Watch, Aug 4, 2010

Getting a link from a newspaper article is a fantastic way to build your site's authority.

Do something interesting lately? Have a unique site with a controversial twist? E-mail a few reporters who cover your beat, pitch your story, get the ink, get a link, and your site is headed for high authority and the top of the SERPs. If you're really good, you can pitch a story that gets syndicated nationally or you can find a way to localize your story and reach out to news outlets in hundreds of cities nationwide.


Sounds great, right? The only catch is that more news outlets have recently stopped linking out to websites they cover. For example, in a recent Wall Street Journal story about websites that provide on-demand book printing, of the five sites discussed, the reporter inexplicably only links to one of them (yet finds time to include nice photos of the CEOs of the top sites).

During a Q&A session at an advanced search engine optimization (SEO) conference, I took the opportunity to ask to Alex Bennert, in-house SEO at the Wall Street Journal, "Why do WSJ journalists not link to a website they write about, even when the story is about the website?" Her response (on stage) was, "They should be."

After identifying several egregious WSJ stories that were inconsistent with Alex's comments on my blog, Alex responded in a comment, "I strongly encourage them to [link]. But when it comes down to publishing an article, some do and some don't. I imagine that for some, it's a workflow and time issue."

Two weeks later, I had a similar experience with my local paper, the Austin-American Statesman, which gave me inconsistent explanations for their inconsistent linking policy. At first, a reporter wrote, "I got official word from our Internet editor, and the policy is not to include links with news stories."

But then I got an e-mail from the Internet Editor, Zach Ryall, who wrote, "We love to link...Our content management system however, does not support [the ability to create links] at the user level." So to add a link in a news story, the reporter has to make a special effort to request it from the Internet team, which creates a major procedural disincentive to link to websites mentioned in the newspaper.

• So to recap, why don't newspaper link? Here are the stated reasons:
  
• Links take time/effort to include in a story. They're easy to forget.
  
• The publishing systems don't make it easy.
  
• It's not always appropriate to link. As Ryall told me, "I don't want to confuse [linking] with providing free advertising that lacks any journalistic purpose."
  

And putting on my cynical reporter hat for a moment, here are some more cynical motives for not linking:

• To keep readers from leaving the newspaper's site.
  
• Reporters question the "value of the link economy."
  
• Nicholas Carr's recent screed in the Atlantic that Google (but really links) make us stupid.
  

I won't get into an argument over the value of links in a news ecosystem, except to say that forcing readers to copy and paste URLs is a good way to annoy people, and seeing "somesite.com" on a web page in black text without an underline is a digital faux pas. New Strategies to Obtain Links Here are some tips to counteract the reasons reporters don't link, and help your public relations efforts yield links:

• Screen out non-linkers from your media list. How to find out? Try Googling "site:nytimes.com intitle:website" (but replace nytimes.com with a news outlet you want to pitch). Find a few stories expressly about websites, then see if they've linked to the websites.
  
• When the reporter asks you to spell your name and other information, make a point to verify your correct website URL (even if they don't ask for it). It's a subtle hint, but it might just help.
  
• If possible, position the story about your website, not your company. You can do this by creating and pitching online-only linkable assets that virtually require a link (e.g., infographics, reports, calculators, quizzes, or other online-only content).
  
• Always include the ".com" in your company name whenever talking to the media.
  
• Pitch the newspaper's bloggers, not the newsroom. Assuming the newspaper has bloggers who publish on the same domain as the primary newspaper, you should approach them first with your story.
  
• Target syndication. Just because you don't get a link in your local paper doesn't mean it won't get links if it's syndicated; other newspapers may automatically hyperlink website addresses in stories. Your PR rep can help strategize general stories that are likely to get picked up in syndication.
  
• Give exclusives to bloggers and online-only publications where you're most likely to receive a link.
  

Building links via public relations is an effective strategy, but it must be done right. The recent difficulty of obtaining links in news coverage requires some adjustments in strategy for link builders, particularly the number of subtleties that we must help our PR professionals to understand. Getting a link in a news story is the difference between attracting a few thousand readers and gaining the authority that moves your search rankings and helps your website reach potentially millions of new visitors.