Climate of fear in the world of SEO
-
There certainly appears to be a certain climate of fear about backlinks at the mo, and not without reason.
I was wondering why Google moved from simply discounting links to punishing site owners for their backlink profiles, many of which were built up when the risks of punishment weren't there?
I mean, I could send them the names of at least 1,000 sites in linkfarms / blog rings - you name it. I'm sure most of us on here could do the same.
Responding to the whims of Google is such a waste of time and resources. Why doesn't Google simply choose a direction and stick with it? What is their strategy exactly?
-
Some great feedback here - firstly, thanks EGOL - I'm focusing 100% on content on a new site. Should be interesting - and that's a good point re: vandalism. I am concerned with the consequences of negative SEO / scrapers, clones, etc., though. Would be so good to be able to cut nasty incoming links in some way (I can but dream...) Love that saying too Donnie!
Good points there Marie - yes I get plagued by that stuff too - I'm beginning to wonder whether many of these comments are more about hoping some lunatic will click on the link than about manipulating SEO though.
To be totally honest, I wouldn't mind if Google laid down specific rules for linkbuilding. We advise that site owners should only proactively build no more than 10 links/page from relevant sites. The rest should be generated naturally. Something far more specific than we have at the moment.
And thanks Arpeggio. A very good point indeed. I agree.
-
The more advanced technology and logistics etc. becomes the further away human accountabilty becomes. I think thats a major challenge in the modern day in general.
-
I think the latest changes made by Google are accomplishing exactly what Google wants. They want website owners to stop "building links" and instead make the best possible site that gives the user the best possible information.
If they simply discounted links then many people would still go on building them "just in case" they helped. I mean, everyone knows that nofollowed comment spam is very unlikely to be helpful, but I get thousands of crap automated comments on my blog each month that are killed by Askimet, so people are still doing it.
But by building a culture of fear around links they've managed to get a lot of people in the SEO world saying, "Man! If I keep building links I could get a big penalty and my site could tank." The result? People stop building links.
Now, there are some links that are not a bad thing to build and this is the scary thing. People will be afraid to get ANY links to their site and that's not right. I know of someone who got the Better Business Bureau to remove all links to their site because they thought it could look unnatural. That is a good link
-
Thanks
-
"Give the people what they want and Google will give you to the people"
Thanks... that's a great saying!
-
I was wondering why Google moved from simply discounting links to punishing site owners for their backlink profiles, many of which were built up when the risks of punishment weren't there?
Google finally realized that merely "discounting" the links was resulting in a continued vandalism of blogs and forums as linkbuilders deposit their rubbish.
Why doesn't Google simply choose a direction and stick with it? What is their strategy exactly?
I think that they have "stuck" with their use of links for way too long.
Responding to the whims of Google is such a waste of time and resources.
A method to try would be to place 100% of your effort into building content and allow the links to slowly build on their own. This will start very slowly but will build to a rate that reflects the value of your content.
-
They want to give users the best results possible, by ensuring that their SERPs are not easily manipulated they can ensure a better overall user experience.
My saying has always been:
"Give the people what they want and Google will give you to the people"
Its quite simple.. they want sites that have a natural link profile and a great user experience (bookmarked, linked to, or shared)
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Anyone suspect that a site's total page count affects SEO?
I've been trying to find out the underlying reason why so many websites are ranked higher than mine despite seemingly having far worse links. I've spent a lot of time researching and have read through all the general advice about what could possibly be hurting my site's SEO, from page speed to h1 tags to broken links, and all the various on-page SEO optimization stuff....so the issue here isn't very obvious. From viewing all of my competitors, they seem to have a much higher number of web pages on their sites than mine does. My site currently has 20 pages or so and most of my competitors are well in the hundreds, so I'm wondering if this could potentially be part of the issue here. I know Google has never officially said that page number matters, but does anyone suspect that perhaps page count matters towards SEO and that competing sites with more total pages than you might have an advantage SEOwise?
Algorithm Updates | | ButtaC1 -
Dramatic drop in SEO rankings after recovering from hacking
A few months ago my client's website was hacked which created over 20,000+ spammy links on the site. I dealt with removing the malware and got google to remove the malware warning shortly within a week of the hacking. Then started the long process to do 301 redirects and disavowing links under Webmaster tools over these few months. The hacking only caused a slight drop in rankings at the time. Now just as of last week the site had a dramatic drop in rankings. When doing a keyword search I noticed the homepage doesn't even get listed on Google Maps and for Google Search instead the inner pages like the Contact Us page show up instead of the homepage. Does anyone have any insight to the sudden drop happening now and why the inner pages are ranking higher than the homepage now?
Algorithm Updates | | FPK0 -
Parallax Scrolling when used with “hash bang” technique is good for SEO or not?
Hello friends, One of my client’s website http://chakracentral.com/ is using Parallax scrolling with most of the URLs containing hash “#” tag. Please see few sample URLs below: http://chakracentral.com/#panelBlock4 (service page)
Algorithm Updates | | chakraseo
http://chakracentral.com/#panelBlock3 (about-us page) I am planning to use “hash bang” technique on this website so that Google can read all the internal pages (containing hash “#” tag) with the current site architecture as the client is not comfortable in changing it. Reference: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started#2-set-up-your-server-to-handle-requests-for-urls-that-contain-escaped_fragment But the problem that I am facing is that, lots of industry experts do not consider parallax websites (even with hash bang technique) good for SEO especially for mobile devices. See some references below: http://searchengineland.com/the-perils-of-parallax-design-for-seo-164919
https://moz.com/blog/parallax-scrolling-websites-and-seo-a-collection-of-solutions-and-examples So please find my queries below for which I need help: 1. Will it be good to use the “hash bang” technique on this website and perform SEO to improve the rankings on desktop as well as mobile devices?
2. Is using “hash bang” technique for a parallax scrolling website good for only desktop and not recommended for mobile devices and that we should have a separate mobile version (without parallax scrolling) of the website for mobile SEO?
3. Parallax scrolling technique (even with "hash bang") is not at all good for SEO for both desktop as well as mobile devices and should be avoided if we want to have a good SEO friendly website?
4. Any issue with Google Analytics tracking for the same website? Regards,
Sarmad Javed0 -
Is there any SEO value to Infographs?
I purchased Piktochart to make what they said were SEO friendly infographs. Hearing conflicting responses on the SEO value I figure I should ask SEO's. The program is easy and you can download as an XML. Any responses are welcome Thank You
Algorithm Updates | | polarking0 -
Multiple Listings in Results fading Local SEO
Lately I am noticing multiple listings for results seem to be fading away. Example is one domain being listed twice for a search phrase The Home page for example and an Internal Page. Is anyone else seeing this? Safe to say Google wants to see 10+ individual domains per results page?
Algorithm Updates | | bozzie3110 -
Negative SEO?
I have a large content site that's 8-9 yrs old, a PR4, DA of 66, and has many thousands of backlinks. It has ranked well for it's primary keywords for quite some time. This morning I noticed rankings dropped significantly. My #2 keyword went from 1 to 150. I started trying to figure out what was up and when I signed into GWT I had the notice from Google on 2/25 that they noticed un-natural linking tactics. Hmm....weird...I dont use un-natural linking methods. So I pulled open a couple back link analyzing tools and when looking at Majestic SEO I noticed that about mid February I had a spike of about 2500-3000 links coming from roughly 350 unique domains. Hmm..weird..We hadn't been doing any major content marketing or link building during that time or for probably a month to month and half before that. Upon analyzing some of those links it appears that a vast majority of them are from some type of blog network. Not sure which but you know the kind I'm talking about. ALN or something similar. What appears to have happened is someone pointed a bunch of spammy links at my site and this has caused Google to penalize me. I know this isn't suppose to be possible but just recently on a forum I visit I noticed a thread where someone was able to successfully do this to his competitor who has held the number one spot for over a year. He used the same technique of a couple hundred blog network links with varied anchor text and his competitor dropped about a hundred spots. So curious if anyone else has seen this or has any advice on my next step. I have filed a re-inclusion request and outlined what I think happened. I am also attempting to figure out which blog network it is so that I can request they remove those links but if I can't I'm not sure what I should do next.
Algorithm Updates | | jmacek070 -
Is it hurting my seo ranking if robots.txt is forbidden?
robots.txt is forbidden - I have read up on what the robots.txt file does and how to configure it but what about if it is not able to be accessed at all?
Algorithm Updates | | Assembla0 -
Does my overly dynamic website hurt my SEO?
I have heard from a couple of people that my overly dynamic URL's hurt my SEO tremendously. Can anyone verify that? Of course my provider says it doesn't matter but I take what they say with a grain of salt. Another thing, my web crawls show a TON of errors for duplicate page title and overly dynamic url and duplicate page content. How big of a deal is this? http://www.nvclothing.com
Algorithm Updates | | sviohl0