Google Webmaster Tools has taken a new stronger stance. Where many companies have relied upon mildly manipulated links to help strengthen their search based marketing, now Google is cracking down. More and more users are seeing notices popping up telling them that they should keep an eye out for links that could be considered either unnatural or artificial and that may being used in order to artificially inflate PageRank.
It is interesting to note that Google’s update, nicknamed Panda, was meant to
help scrub the net clean of the sort of mass-uploaded content with the sort of quality only a third or fourth grader could produce. Now though the newest move by Google appears to be a direct attack on discovering backlink profiles and the individuals or companies that create them as a means of manipulating their PageRank. While it seems like the hardest hit groups are blog networks, time is marching on and others are beginning to suffer the wrath of the “Big G” as well.
This raises a very important question, no matter which end of the spectrum you inhabit. What does Google consider to be “unnatural?” One thing we do know is that when it comes to bought links, the answer is definitely a huge NO-GO. That being said, finding the answer lies within information that has been released over the past few years. One great example includes the Google Webmaster Help YouTube channel. While there are some strategies that work on time tested methods (humor, research, etc), in the end it all comes down to being able to produce original, attention grabbing content.
If you haven’t quite gotten the gist of where this is going, then here it is – while Google took a stand bought links, now it seems as if they are saying that you cannot build incoming links at all. The trouble with this is that they are not saying exactly why they have added the no-go sites to the bad boy lists. It seems that we are all left simply guessing. Upon taking a closer look, it seems however that anchor text is the main offender this round.
Ever seen link profiles that contain the same info over and over again? Imagine how it would look to see anchor text containing the brand name again and again, or thousands of links containing the same keyword phrase being linked to the same anchor text. Any of this could easily have the new Google algorithms seeing red. Some people have a hard time imagining how anyone would spend time doing this, but it happens all the time.
With all the warnings rolling in, people are definitely beginning to jump ship from some of the blog networks and perhaps for good reason. There are rumors that Google is offering to take it easy on any company or individual who turns snitch on the SEO company that came up with the offending links. Keep in mind that even though this could be true, it is no good reason to dump your link profile unless absolutely necessary or even to sacrifice your SEO company without even knowing that they had a hand in causing the issue.
Ever wonder why Google throws everyone into a panic when they make changes like this? Those who do have such a strong reaction typically rely on the “Big G” to help grow their revenue stream. The trouble is that everyone ends up doing all of Google’s work by jumping the gun and reporting themselves or killing all their own backlinks. While it is obvious that both paid and unnatural links are out, the drop in traffic that can come from deleting all your backlinks could flat out decimate your site. Rather than take that chance, it is important to first look into creating high quality, positive backlinks that are Google friendly before you start cleaning out the ranks of so called “unnatural” ones you may have lurking in the underbelly of the web.