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What Google Added To The Link Schemes Document Found In Webmaster Tools

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By Matthew Schmoldt

Recently, Google updated the “Link schemes” informational document found in Webmaster Tools. The change was easy to miss. There were no large scale announcements.

Unlike a Wikipedia document, there is no easy way to see what was changed. Thankfully, the Internet has the wayback machine for such matters. The tool shows that two records have been kept this year for the page in question. One archive is from June 28th, the other is from August 5th.

As you can see, there seem to be significant changes. The June 28th version of the link schemes page had an opening paragraph that explained why external links were important and why Google uses them as a key influencer in search results. Now the document begins with a stern warning:

“Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.”

To many, this paragraph is not only troubling but troublingly ambiguous. You will notice the use of the word “intended” in the paragraph. How does Google determine if a link is intended to manipulate PageRank? In the second sentence, is Google saying any link building efforts will be considered manipulation?

On July 10th, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team, was interviewed and said the following:

“No, not all link building is bad. The philosophy that we’ve always had is if you make something that’s compelling then it would be much easier to get people to write about it and to link to it.”

Does the July 10th interview with Matt Cutts answer the questions of the August update to the link schemes document? My guess is, yes. Google seems to be preparing to take the webspam fight to the next level and has updated their official link schemes document with a hardcore and broad stance.

In the same interview, Matt Cutts said:

“I would concentrate on the stuff that people write, the utility that people find in it, and the amount of times that people link to it. All of those are ways that implicitly measure how relevant or important somebody is to someone else.

Links are still the best way that we’ve found to discover that, and maybe over time social or authorship or other types of markup will give us a lot more information about that.”

It is clear to me, that link building is quite appropriate and still legal. But, shift from thinking about link building to the idea of link earning. High quality links from high authority links should be the target. These sorts of links are earned and not built with a few clicks of the mouse.

What else was changed in the link schemes document?

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank. This includes exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links; exchanging goods or services for links; or sending someone a “free” product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link

The above paragraph seems to be fairly black and white. Google doesn’t want people to sell links for money or for products. But, what If you sign up for a Chamber of Commerce and pay a fee. Have you just purchased a link from their site? Should you request a nofollow of your link just in case?

Matt Cutts has said that you should only pursue a link if it is something you would have built or pursued if SEO did not exist.

Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking

The use of excessive and exclusively are ambiguous and troubling in this new entry in the document. It is impossible to know where the line is with this rule. But, remember, Google wants you to do things naturally. They want you to do things that make logical sense. If you are a flower shop, it makes sense to have a linking relationship with the local chocolate shop. It may make sense to link to the local cookie shop, to the local wedding dress store, etc.

Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links

The ambiguous word here is “large-scale.” To me, I refer back to my rule of link earning and not link building. If the link is too easy to get, it’s probably not the kind of link that is desirable. Removing the easy to get links removes most of the ability to create a large-scale link building operation. The hard links take time to get. Also remember, Google is targeting keyword-rich anchor links and not generic links in articles.

Using automated programs or services to create links to your site

This seems to be the one area where Google was decisive. Do not use automated means to build backlinks. If you are tempted to use automated programs, don’t. Google is constantly indexing the Internet and can detect a sudden and unnatural increase in backlinks.

Author’s Bio: Matthew Schmoldt is an Internet marketer who has been published at Yahoo and Moz. He has four years of SEO and social media experience. He is the owner of Cool Things To Buy Inc. His website features amazing gadgets other neat stuff.

Why Automated Link Building is Bad For Your Business

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By Rob James

A few years ago, it was common practice for businesses and Search Engine Optimisation marketers to use automated link building to increase links to their sites, with the aim of boosting a website’s PageRank in Google. However, with Google clamping down on “black hat” SEO strategies in their Penguin and Panda algorithm updates, automated link building isn’t going to do your business many favours; instead, it’s better to focus on “white hat” and organic SEO to get the most out of search.

Primarily, automated link building is all about quantity, whereby you run software and join directories to multiply the number of backlinks to your page – blog comments, and filling blogs with low quality repeated content could also enable a single website to generate large numbers of links. However, while this might be an effective method for building up a page’s ranking, automated link building is less invested in getting good quality links from relevant sites, and has been increasingly punished by Google.

The main problem that Google has with automated link building is that it can effectively represent a form of spam – multiple links from low quality sites, or spamming comments boards with links, and posting content with awkwardly placed content distorts the actual relevancy of a page for users. In this context, your business may have a high search ranking, but not one that’s necessarily made up of the right kinds of associations.

Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates were consequently designed to prevent PageRank, the main Google algorithm, from being manipulated. Panda has received 24 updates since February 2011, and crawls pages for low quality features and links to duplicate content – the emphasis with Panda is on duplicated and “thin” content, where the use of links isn’t contextually motivated, and closer to spam.

By comparison, Google Penguin, introduced in April 2012, comes down even harder on automated link building through directories – if you have a portfolio of links that are mostly from link farms and other low quality sites, then Penguin will ignore or rank these links as less relevant. It’s not perfect, but it means that Penguin is going to punish your ranking if you have too many links from low quality pages.

So, what kind of actions can you take to improve your SEO without automated link building? The most straightforward method is to focus on creating original content, and on getting high quality guest posts on blogs and pages that aren’t going to get singled out by Penguin – while there are ongoing questions about how effective Google can be at identifying the right pages to disregard, it’s clear that businesses will have to spend more time on creating great content.

It’s also important to optimise existing content and pages, and to ensure that your HTML and CSS on pages is clearly set up to ensure that they can be picked up by search engines; moreover, businesses can do their SEO a big favour by investing in social media content, which can be easily shared and recommended via social toolbars and buttons. The more organic links that you get from high ranking, trusted sites, the higher the chance will be that Google will increase the value of your own website.

Author’s Bio: Rob James is an online marketer and recommends DeepBlueSky web design to help you build a high quality site. In his spare time Rob can be found blogging about the many different linking techniques out there, which ones to apply, and which ones to avoid!

Five Timeless Tactics Link Builders Could Learn from Spammers

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Finding the Lessons

Note: of course, this post is not meant to idolize spammers; however one should never shy away from learning a thing of two, even if it is coming from the devil itself.

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Internet and spammers are inseparable. If you are online, you’re bound to come across some spam every now and then, be it your inbox; forums, blogs, website, or social network, no place is out of spam’s way, just a little opening or negligence on your part can result in a flood of spam emails, posts, or comments … but no matter what form it takes, the spam continues to be a nuisance, especially if it is carrying Trojans or malware with it.

But this post is not about the evils of spam; instead it is an earnest attempt to wheedle out some invaluable lessons out of the adventures (rather misadventures) of these spammers. When we look at it, there’s a lot to learn for link builders in the shenanigans of spammers, let’s take a look at some of these lessons.

1. Tireless approach:

It’ll be interesting to try and find out the first spam message that was generated over the Internet and the first lucky recipient. But whoever it was, the spam has continued to exist for ages. One of the most impressive things about these spammers is that they never get tired of sending spam, then following it up with more spam, and then following up the “follow-up” with even more spam. That’s dedication for you, and that’s what you need to learn. Please remember that I am not directing you to start spamming the hell out of the website owner with a request to link to your website, I am just telling you to take inspiration from the dedication and apply it on your link building strategies.

2. Lack of remorse:

A good salesman is never shy of marketing its product or services at whatever platform or opening it gets. If you are a blog owner, you must have got some of those spam and promotional articles that make you wonder if the sender really thinks that you are going to publish this crap on your blog or website? But a spammer doesn’t think that way; they will give it a try without bothering much about the receiver’s reaction. Again, the lesson is not being indifferent to other’s feelings or thoughts, but to be a little bolder in your proposals and link building efforts.

3. Opportunism:

Spammers have this tremendous ability to sense the opportunity, as soon as they find a little opening, they’ll fill in the inbox with dozens of spam messages. When they look at a certain platform like social media websites, blogs, or forums, all they have in mind is to see if there’s an opportunity to spam. That’s the kind of “eye” you need to have, only difference is that you will be looking for a way to acquire link and not spamming.

4. Reach:

Spammers are good at reaching out and finding new platforms all the time, they can crawl the internet with the ferocity of Google’s crawler. They won’t spare a website in a foreign language, they won’t shy away from spamming an abandoned blog, and they won’t think twice before promoting a link building service to a link building agency. That’s the kind of reach or coverage a link builder needs to have to keep finding new domains and opportunities for getting a link.

5. Flexibility:

One of the most admirable qualities of spammers is to quickly adapt to all new technologies and shifts in trends. No matter how complex is a system, and no matter how many checks are in place, they will still find a way to spam. And even if they can’t find a way to spam, they will keep trying to find one. They are also the fastest in adopting to new changing trends, from email to social networks, and from forums to blogs, they have managed to leave their marks on each and everything which has exist on Internet. What a link builder needs to take out from all that is the flexibility to adopt with the new technologies and trends taking place, and finding a way to build their link building goals around these trends.

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Author’s Bio:

Rahil is an online entrepreneur. At his website Weight Loss Triumph you will find a 6pm promotion and you can redeem a discount for Shoe Buy. In addition to current deals and discounts, you will find many different coupons to help you save big on your shopping.

3 Easy Steps to Persuade a Quality Blogger to Link to You

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Linking Relationships

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The blogosphere is a web of connections made by links from blog to blog. The strongest relationships and the links that last longest are those that are made between bloggers.

If you want a link from a blogger you’ve not yet met, you’re really asking for a vote of trust. The link I give to your blog or your blog post means that I’ve tied my name to yours. Naturally any blogger would be more inclined to give your link a home, if you show it will be in the blogger’s best interest.

Who wouldn’t want to link to you if your link improved their readers’ experience in some meaningful way?

3 Easy Steps to Persuade a Quality Blogger to Link to You

Choose carefully when finding home for your links. Hopefully, you’re starting a long-term relationship. You want to be part of a network of quality people. Let’s imagine that the blogger you want to link to is me.

Here’s how you might persuade me in three easy steps.

  1. Do Your Homework

    2. Get to know me and my blog. Make a a project of finding out who I am and what I write about. Study my blog and my readers’ comments. In other words, do a little homework.

    So many people peddle their blog posts from blog to blog without even bothering to read the front page. You’ll stand out if when you say, “I’ve been reading your blog . . .” and what follows that shows that you really have. Chances are, if you show a real interest in my blog and your idea is off, I might suggest a new idea for you to try.

  2. Plan a Link that Adds Value

    3. No one needs a link on their blogroll. No one needs a random blog post that’s unrelated to a blog’s readership. Find a reason that your post that ties well to one I wrote. Show how your post expands on a topic that my readers have an interest in. Explain how the subject your content compliments mine or offers a point of view my readers might enjoy.

  3. Persuade an Individual (not sir or madam)

    4. When you send that email, be personal and gently persuasive. Don’t talk about yourself; talk about what you are offering.

    Please be simple and brief. Realize that I wasn’t waiting with nothing to do until your email came and that I probably still have plenty to get done. Doesn’t everyone these days? I want to see a compelling reason for your using your link. I can’t say “yes” to everyone, but it’s not fun to say “no” either. It’s real luck when a clear thinker comes along — someone who knew exactly what to offer that really does add value for my readers.

You lose nothing if I refuse. Make a good case, and a friendship could be starting. If you researched the blog you want to link, you’ve probably learned a few new things.

If your post goes up, you’ve made a connection to a quality blog. Hopefully that blog will grow into old age with yours, sharing many links along the way. We’ll all meet to discuss how the bloggers who come asking for links never seem to do their homework, don’t show how they’ll add value or personally offer a compelling reason why we might want to link.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!