Any recent discoveries or observations on the "Official Line" of incoming link penalization?
-
I know this is always a contentious issue and that the official, or shall we say semi-official line is that you can't be penalized for incoming links, as you can't control who links to you (aside of course from link buying, and other stuff that Google feels it can work out).
I was wondering if anyone had any recent discoveries or observations on this?
Obviously there's the problem that is usually brought up where you could damage a competitor buy link building to them with spammy links, etc... hence the half denial of it being an issue... but has anyone seen or hear anything on it recently, or experienced something relevant?
-
There definitely are and have been for a long time... I was one of them for a while, I linked spammed with software to get sites up. That is until I realized what proper SEO was, and how much better it is, especially in the long term. That's just the problem though... it did work to a certain extent, but it came with its problems.
-
Actually, this makes a lot of sense. Probly there are many spammers doing this already?
-
Yeah that's pretty cool, but still leaves that same question hanging there though... does link spam in fact work well, and if so, what are Google going to do about it... because inevitably is something works, it will get used.
-
Ah cool, thanks Dejan. I didn't realise they'd started being so much more open about it all. All the stuff I ever found tended to go around the questions rather than actually answer them lol.
I don't get how the algo could tell the difference though, between if I went out and built a whole bunch of spammy links to my own site or to somebody elses, so surely the resulting rankings from doing that would be the same. Meaning, if the competitors get a boost like that... link spam is worth doing on your own site, and then you could just submit a re-inclusion if you got caught and blame it on sabotage.
-
I read an anecdotal account on a less than savory SEO-related site in the last week or so about someone who blasted a competitor's site with spammy links, and they said they noticed a drop in the competitors SERP rankings...but that within a week the competitor was actually back on the first page, and ranking higher than they were before.
Obviously there are a million variables that could affected that outcome, but I enjoyed reading it knowing that the person trying to sabotage their competitor actually ended up further "behind," when they could have spent their time doing something constructive for their own site.
-
There is absolutely no mystery about whether inbound links can harm you or not. Apparently Google is very good at determining whether it was you buying links or somebody trying to sabotage you. I had a chat with Tiffany from Google's web spam team at SMX in Sydney and she said that there has been no cases when they got it wrong when they issue penalties.
I have a different theory however. To get penalised you need to demonstrate consistent link buying pattern over time. What typically happens is that SEO people buy high PageRank links only with very closely matched anchor text. Often these links are sold to other webmasters with different site topics. This is very easy for Google to spot.
What happens though is that during this process the rankings will shoot up like crazy and if you were to try and sabotage your competitor you would have helped them in the process and also spent an incredible amount of money. All that for them to submit a reconsideration request to Google and be out of jail within weeks.
As far as I know attempts at cheap forms of link spam in order to penalise competitors have so far been unsuccessful.
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
-
My compatitors destroy my website with huge spammy links!
Hi
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | amirooo.sh123
My competitors destroy my website with huge spam links! Its more than 400 high spam (80-100% spam score) unique domain, link to us sitewide!!! I disavow on search console. But its not enough! All pages ranks down and we lost everything we had....
What should we do now? If you can, please help me
Darookhaneonline.com Capture.jpg0 -
Why Google not disavow some bad links
I have submitted bad links that I want to disavow on google with the Moz Pro hight spam score. Its almost 4 months completed yet I have a bad link that exists with high spam score any solution? https://fortniteskinsgenerator.net/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | marktravis0 -
Why There is No link Data Available in my Webmaster Tools even the site has lots of links and webmastert tools account setup properly
i have few account in my webmaster tools that are not showing any link data even the has lots of links. i checked the setup and its everything is good. is some one tell me why there is no data coming through? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | OnlineAssetPartners1 -
What is your opinion on link farm risks and how do I explain this to a client?
Hi All, I have a new monthly retainer client who still has a $600/month "linkbuilding" contract with a large national advertising/directory organization (I won't name them but I'm sure you can guess). I just got a "linking" report and it's filled with garbage: Comment spam (on huffington post). Fake G+ Account Links from multiple sites with Domain Authority of 1 (http://encirclehealth.net/, http://livingstreamhealth.co/ , etc). These have no "about" sections, no ads, no products - just blatant link farms. I've told the client that these links pose a danger in Google, that he should get them to remove them, and that he should request a refund. Their rep is pushing back hard and saying there's absolutely nothing to worry about. Am I overestimating how bad/dangerous these are? How would you explain to the client the risks? I've already shared a report and my recommendations with the client but am really just looking for some affirmation of my position that these MUST get removed. Any advice much appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PlusROI0 -
Has anyone had experience with the Disavow Links tool? If so did you notice positive results from it?
I recently noticed a large number of backlinks from low authority directories coming in for one of my clients. These links were either purchased from a competitor or from a directory service site that knows we might be willing to pay to have bad links removed. I've contacted the website admin and they require a payment of $.30 per link to have them removed from their directory. Has anyone had a similar experience? I'm also considering using the disavow tool but I've heard the outcome of using this tool is usually bad. I'd appreciate any feedback, thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Leadhub1 -
Link Building Plan Need some tips
Okay so I want to start focusing on SEO for my Web design company and I have been reading and reading and am now working on my off-page optimization and have some questions. My words are competitive words and a few of them are finally increasing to top 500 and a few in top 100. My current MozRank for my domain is 2.28, but my mozbar shows my homepage to be MozRank to be 3.35 Link Building Plan -Around 50 Directory submissions to high PR directories and high MozRank domains Free listings Paid Listings -3-5 articles written for guest posts Around 25 Local Business directories such as brownbook.net, whitepages, etc -Around 20 dofollow forum profile creation and backlinks from signatures -Squidioo Lens Creation( I will be creating high quality content related my website which would be web design, internet marketing, seo services.) -Hubpages Creation My question is should the content used on squidioo be 100% original, like can I post the content to other directories as well? -Article Directories Okay so from what I've read this is method doesn't really give much benefit with the recent updates, is this true or should I still at least submit some articles to article directories. I am also confused wouldn't distributing your articles to article directories be considered duplicate content? 20-25 Blog Comments on related blogs that support dofollow blog commenting, also will build some nofollow blog comment links for link diversity
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | azokaei0 -
Advice on links after Penguin hit
Firstly we have no warnings or messages in WMT. We have racked up thousands of anchor text urls. Our fault, we didnt nofollow and also some of our many cms sites replicated the links sitewide to the tune of 20,000 links. I`m in the process of removing the code which causes this problem in most of the culprit sites but how long will it take roughly for a crawl to recalculate the links? In my WMT it still shows the links increasing but I think this is retrospective data. However, after this crawl we should see a more relevant link count. We also provide some web software which has been used by many sites. Google may consider our followed anchor text violating spam rules. So I ask, if we were to change the link text to our url only and add nofollow, will this improve the spam issue? We could have as many as 4,000 links per website, as it is a calendar function and list all dates into the future.......and we would like to retain a link to our website of course for marketing purposes. What we dont want is sitewide link spam again. Some of our other links are low quality, some are okay. However, we have lost rankings, probably due to low quality links and overuse of anchor text.. Is this the case the Google has just devalued the links algorythmically or is there an actual penalty to make the rankings drop? As we have no warnings in WMT, I feel there isnt the need to remove the lower quality links and in most cases we havent control over the link placements. We should just rectify that we have a better future linking profile? If we have to remove spam links, then that can only be a good reason to cause negative seo?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | xtopher660 -
Are there tools out there to determine when a link linked to your site? I want to know when a link farm was done a site.
In Webmaster Tools I discovered that a client of mine with signed up for or hired another company to get links. The links are poor quality and from other countries, so it looks like a link farm was done. I want to know when they links were linked to the site, and not sure how to find that information out. Does anyone know how to find this out?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | StrategicEdgePartners0