Bad Links Or Link Buying Can Really Cost You
I generally don’t pay any attention to the countless “SEO proposals”, link building, link exchange and link buying “opportunities” that have been trying to clutter my inbox for more than a decade. Unfortunately, other people do.
Google Webmaster Guidelines:
What Everybody Should Know By Now
Google has been taking action against Link Spam and Link Schemes for a very long time (see “Information about buying and selling links that pass PageRank” from December 1, 2007!).
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines’ list of (potential) violations is long, it includes anything from cloaking, loading your page with (irrelevant) keywords, and – not only since the most recent high number of attacks on WordPress Sites – watching out for messages in Webmaster Tools that your site might have been hacked (yes, it can, should and will get you penalized).
The Whole List of Violations Can be Found here.
In a “reminder” (“A reminder about selling links that pass PageRank“), published on February 22, 2013, Google states on their Webmaster Central Blog:
We do take this issue very seriously, so we recommend you avoid selling (and buying) links that pass PageRank in order to prevent loss of trust, lower PageRank in the Google Toolbar, lower rankings, or in an extreme case, removal from Google’s search results.
Links, Links, My Kingdom For More Links!
Just recently, during a discovery meeting, a potential client asked me: “How many links are you going to get us? I don’t see that anywhere on your services. I need to know how many links you’re gonna get for us. You do that, right?”
Unfortunately, it seems that businesses nowadays are so desperate, they will literally buy anything those “companies” sell.
“Link Building” proposals and other flat out ridiculous claims by those “Outsourcing SEO companies” just fan the fire we have to fight when Google penalizes the site.
A real “Link Buying” facebook Ad
As if those emails and all the other promises were not enough, I see this ad on facebook a couple of days ago:
(I reported them for violating Google’s Webmaster Guidlelines.)
The Uphill Battle (Against Ignorance)
Not too many clients will ever see a Webmaster Notice like this (since the “Outsourced SEO company” most likely won’t let them):
And if clients see it, certain SEO companies blatantly give out this “advice”:
“How to Respond to the Unnatural Links Notice in Google Webmaster Tools: In most cases you should do nothing.”
Well, if you follow their “advice”, the following might happen to you:
Your page has been blocked from our index because it does not meet the quality standards necessary to assign accurate PageRank. We cannot comment on the individual reasons your page was removed. However, certain actions such as cloaking, writing text in such a way that it can be seen by search engines but not by users, or setting up pages/links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index. Please read our Webmaster Guidelines for more information.
Once you have modified your site so that it meets our guidelines, you can submit your site for reconsideration.
You can find the Violations of the Webmaster Guidelines message here.
Instead, do what Google’s Matt Cutts (Matt Cutts on Twitter) tells you to do in this video:
Google’s CleanUp Crew at Work
What To Do If You Are Affected
The most important piece of advice: Take action!
Sitting still and not doing anything (or ignoring the warnings) is not going to make it any better. You have to be proactive.
First, take a look at your site’s Webmaster Tools to see who links to you (and when those links were discovered).
You will then have to go through the list, check the incoming links, and try to get these links removed by contacting the offending sites’ webmasters. Sounds like a lot of work? You bet it is.
Websites like Remove’em: The Bad Backlink Removal Tool and Service let you check how many “bad” backlinks or sites might be linking to your site and (for a fee) offer a service to remove them.
We ran a test on the aforementioned potential client’s existing website, an existing client’s website and our own website on Remove’em:
In this video Google’s Matt Cutts explains what the “Disavow Links” Tools is and when you should use it:
Takeaways
– Don’t think you’re smarter than Google. Others have tried. And failed.
– If you do receive a warning message from Google, you have to take it seriously and you have to make an earnest effort to clean up your site (and your act).
– You always get what you pay for. Now you have to spend more time and more money to get the mess cleaned up.
Talk to us – we are happy to help you with all of your website issues!
About the author:
Nina Khoury is a computer scientist, software engineer, data and information junkie and online marketer. She taught at various universities for more than six years and worked on projects for Fortune 500 companies including cisco, Intel and HP.
5 Responses to “Bad Links Or Link Buying Can Really Cost You”
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I would never buy links. However, the thought occurred to me as to people who comment at my blog. Does this raise any concerns as sometimes it is hard to know if they are just spam or genuine comments. Can allowing these comments to sit at your blog create problems?
Hi Steven,
comment spam can become a problem when
a) the comment system is unmonitored and literally “everything” goes live without admin approval
b) when the “nofollow” link has not been set on comment links
We all get those “comments”, and fighting comment spam is a big issue when you do not want to completely disable commenting; it’s another part of your website that requires the same amount of TLC as everything else.
It seems everyone is still looking to force a link in there after repeated announcements from google stressing they just want to see better content. More focus need to be on page optimization and making unique and original content frequently.
Great information it is….!!!
Hi.
We’ve got two sites that we outsourced to an SEO company. All seemed legitimate – they was number 1 for seo company, their reporting was great, all seemed well.
We stopped using them due to funds, but 3 months later both sites have been deindexed. We didnt have access to their webmaster tools, so we set up new ones.
After some late nights and a lot of investigating we found that they actually created a web of spammy links. Anchor text in blog submissions, etc. The blogs had nothing to do with our industry and we’re actually ashamed to be represented in that way.
We’re happy to disavow every link to these sites, good or bad, just to get the sites listing again. But after 20 days we keep getting knocked back from our reconsideration requests.
Weve had these sites for years, and had great ppc presence – but know its all suspended.
Any ideas? We’re literally tearing our hair out in frustration. So annoyed about the seo company too!!! But what can we do?
[…] and to clean up the mess those guys will undoubtedly be leaving behind (Read our article “Bad Links Or Link Buying Can Really Cost You” if you want more information on […]