Received Google unnatural links message?

During the last few weeks, Google sent many webmaster notification messages about unnatural links. If you have received such a message, here's what you have to do to make sure that your website doesn't get penalized.

What is this Google unnatural links message?

Google has sent the following message to many webmasters:
"Dear site owner or webmaster of example.com.
We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team"

What will happen when you get such a message?

Webmasters who received such a message observed that many sites were penalized 3-4 weeks after the message. The penalty is for the keywords that are included in the unnatural links.
If most of the links that point to the website are unnatural links then the whole website might be penalized.

What are unnatural links?

There are several backlink types that Google finds unnatural:

1. Public backlink networks: Google doesn't like fully automated or paid backlink networks. If you participate in a backlink network that can be joined by anyone (even for a fee) then it is very likely that Google has already penalized the network or that the network is a target for the near future.
   
   If you can find the backlink network, Google's engineers can find it, too.
2. Private backlink networks: some SEO agencies have private backlink networks. Google probably has the technology to detect these networks without creating accounts.
3. Paid sidebar links: if your website has too many backlinks from the sidebars of other websites, Google might find them unnatural.
4. Over-optimized anchor text: if the links to your website all use exactly the same anchor text, it is likely that Google might reconsider the rankings of the linked pages.
5. Fake forum and social media links: some tools create fake forum and social media site accounts to get backlinks to your website. Chances are that Google can detect that type of link.

What should you do?

If you used one of the methods above to get backlinks to your website, try to get rid of these links as quickly as possible.
The formula to high rankings on Google is very easy:
Good content + good backlinks + no spam = high rankings
Optimize the content of your web pages to make sure that Google and other search engines know what your website is about. Then get good backlinks to show search engines that your website can be trusted.

Google has become more aggressive regarding spammy backlinks. In the past, a website might get high rankings for several months until Google detected the site. Now it seems that the it takes a maximum of 3 months until Google detects the spammers.

Do not fall for SEO solutions that promise quick and easy backlinks. It doesn't make sense to get high rankings for 2-3 months just to get penalized after that time. If you are serious about your business, you have to use strategies that deliver high rankings that will stay, even if it takes longer to get these rankings in the short term.

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How to create a content generation strategy

Tips and Tricks: Create a content generation strategy

Having a “good enough” content strategy is what puts you behind the competition. A content strategy needs to be more than high word counts and filling in white space. Your strategy needs to lay out an entire plan for the creation, publication, and control of usable and useful content.

The principles of a content strategy are centered on developing valuable website content to improve the user’s experience. Strategists need to build a structure for content to decide what content needs to be developed and decide why it should be published.

A superior content generation strategy will:

1. Build loyalty - With fresh content on a regular basis, your website or blog will urge visitors to return frequently. Consistency can help build industry credibility.
2. Appeal to search engines - Consistent and well-organized content can help you secure higher rankings in the search engines because it helps your website remain relevant.
3. Generate new traffic - Your content generation strategy helps you keep your site up-to-date and timely. As such, your website will spark more interest and bring in additional visitors.

Before you can create a content generation strategy you need to have your keyword research completed. Your keyword research will help you maintain a focus for your content generation strategy.

Creating a content generation strategy begins with brainstorming. Use your keyword research as a structure to appease the search engines, but find topics surrounding the keywords to be relevant to readers.

Once you have brainstormed topics and determined what you to write, organizing the information is next. From an SEO perspective, organizing your information prevents you from duplicating content.

You can organize your content by putting different topics in categories and lists. By mapping out your content, your strategy helps solidify quality content that will engage the right audience. Decide what type of content works best including blog content, eBook content, white papers, or even webinar content. It also helps to build a style guide for your site so everyone who will be contributing content will be able to work within your set strategy and structure.

By combining critical thinking with brainstorming and keeping yourself organized, you can maximize your content generation strategy by making sure to hit all the SEO basics such as creating links and including images, alt text, videos, and audio.

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The Successful Landing Pages

The Secrets Behind Successful Landing Pages

Generating traffic to your website is great, but it isn’t the ultimate goal. Traffic is only beneficial so far as you convert the visitors into customers. If you utilize email campaigns, pay-per-click advertising, or even if you gain website visitors directly from search engines, you could be losing the opportunity to convert website traffic into customers if you don’t create the right landing pages.

An all too common mistake businesses make is directing earned visitors to the home page. By dropping people off on your home page, it requires the visitors to navigate themselves and you are more likely to suffer from higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates.

Using a few key elements, building the right landing page is not only possible but more likely to be successful.

Where to Start

Landing pages are created for the sole purpose of promoting a particular product, service, or offer. These pages are designed to gather information from website visitors by introducing a lead generating form. If done right, a landing page will entice a visitor to fill out the form.
If people are looking for something specific, and you provide a valuable solution, your landing page should reflect this and provide a way for visitors to connect with you.

There are two critical questions you have to ask yourself prior to perfecting a landing page:

1. What do you want visitors to do on your website?
2. How can you ensure visitors do what you want them to do on your website?

Optimized properly, you can subtly tell customers exactly what to do and how to do it.

Getting People to the Page

Sometimes, you need to nail down the basics. First things first for a creating a successful landing page is making certain you take advantage of the title and meta data. The title is displayed in the browser and search results page as the link that goes to your site. Be sure to include keywords in the title. Write your title strategically, and try to include your brand. A lot of specialists recommend leveraging your brand because it can help increase click-through rates.

Writing the meta-description is of equal importance. The meta description provides a brief synopsis of the page and should entice people to go to your page. If you leave this section blank, the search engines will simply pull content from your site that may not be useful. It should also include keywords as well as a clear call to action telling people what to do.

Landing Page Pointers

When people get to your landing page, tell them everything with the headline. The headline of a page has a lot of responsibility. This single line has to capture attention, describe the page, include keywords, and read naturally. Because the headline of the landing page is the first thing visitors see, you want the headline to be straight to the point. A solid headline is a brief statement and should match up with the title of the page. It also happens to be the first thing the search engines index.

The actual content on a landing page should be visually appealing. Huge blocks of text turn visitors away. In an attempt to make your landing page engaging, consider breaking up the page with:

• Lists
• Bullets
• Videos
• Images

The content needs to be long enough to cover the subject at hand, but short enough to maintain interest. Try to be both descriptive and clear, and do not forget to have a call to action.

One of the most important things to optimize on a landing page is the actual lead generating form. The key to a solid form is to determine how much information you need from the audience. If you ask for too much information, you run the risk of getting less leads, but the leads you do secure could be more valuable. If you don’t ask for enough information, you may get more leads, but those leads might be a waste of time. Find a balance for your industry, and test it. A good start is just asking for a name and email address.

Perfecting the Landing Page

When all is said and done, it helps to get an unbiased opinion about your landing page. After you put your hard work in, an outsider’s perspective can help you see if you’ve missed the mark or have perhaps been a little too over promotional. If you want your landing pages to really pay off, a second opinion can help ensure it looks natural for better conversion rates—and that’s what it is really all about.

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Remove your paid links ASAP!

Google: Go As Far Back As Possible To Remove Paid Links

Google's John Mueller responded in a Google Webmaster Help thread to a webmaster who received one of those unnatural links warnings.

He made a few points that I wanted to highlight for SEOs:

Do Not Wait Out Penalties

Google said not to wait out penalties because they can take a long time to be reversed. Instead, submit a reconsideration request to help expedite it. John said, "- If you're serious about your site's standing in our search results, then I'd strongly advise not to try to wait the penalty out. These are generally not issues that expire after a few days, they can affect your site's standing for quite some time."

Remove All Paid Links Going Back As Far As You Paid Links

Google said that if you have been paying for links for two years, go back two years and remove those paid links. If it is five year, go back five years. Google wants to see a serious attempt to remove all the paid links you acquired over the years.

John said, "Regarding the age of the unnatural links, I'd work to have them all removed, regardless of the age. For instance, in the general case where a site has been buying links for 2 years, it would be a good idea to go back that far."

Getting A Notification Now Doesn't Mean It Is A New Penalty

Google stepped up their notifications, so if you get a notification today, it doesn't mean it is a new penalty. Google is sending notifications out for old penalties. John explained, "while we have just recently started sending out these messages, they may apply to issues that were already known (and affecting your site's standing in our search results) for a while."

John added a few more points we covered here a few times but feel free to check out the Google Webmaster Help thread.

40+ Google Search Quality Updates in March

This week, Google announced 40+ changes they made to search over the past month or so. Prior to this, 40 changes in February, then 17 changes in January of this year.

Matt McGee summarized the most important changes, as he sees fit, which include anchor text changes, image search changes, indexing symbols, navigation query changes and more.

One thing that really stands out is this one:

Improvements to processing for detection of site quality. [launch codename "Curlup"] We’ve made some improvements to a longstanding system we have to detect site quality. This improvement allows us to get greater confidence in our classifications.

Here is the full list for the most recent updates:

1. Autocomplete with math symbols.

2. Improvements to handling of symbols for indexing.

3. Better scoring of news groupings.

4. Sitelinks data refresh.

5. Improvements to autocomplete backends, coverage.

6. Better handling of password changes.

7. Better indexing of profile pages.

8. UI refresh for News Universal.

9. Improvements to results for navigational queries.

10. High-quality sites algorithm data update and freshness improvements.

11. Live results for UEFA Champions League and KHL.

12. Tennis search feature.

13. More relevant image search results.

14. Fresher image predictions in all languages.

15. SafeSearch algorithm tuning.

16. Tweaks to handling of anchor text.

17. Simplifications to Images Universal codebase.

18. Better application ranking and UI on mobile.

19. Improvements to freshness in Video Universal.

20. Fewer undesired synonyms.

21. Better handling of queries with both navigational and local intent.

22. Improvements to freshness.

23. Improvements to processing for detection of site quality.

24. Better interpretation and use of anchor text.

25. Better local results and sources in Google News.

26. Deprecating signal related to ranking in a news cluster.

27. Fewer "sibling" synonyms.

28. Better synonym accuracy and performance.

29. Retrieval system tuning.

30. Less aggressive synonyms.

31. Update to systems relying on geographic data.

32. Improvements to name detection.

33. Updates to personalization signals.

34. Improvements to Image Search relevance.

35. Remove deprecated signal from site relevance signals.

36. More precise detection of old pages.

37. Tweaks to language detection in autocomplete.

38. Improvements in date detection for blog/forum pages.

39. More predictions in autocomplete by live rewriting of query prefixes.

40. Expanded sitelinks on mobile.

41. More accurate short answers.

42. Migration of video advanced search backends.

43. +1 button in search for more countries and domains.

44. Local result UI refresh on tablet.

There are several places this is being discussed such as at Google on Google+, Matt Cutts on Google+, HackerNews and WebmasterWorld.

Lots of things here, some of them we covered previous in our April Google Webmaster report.

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Your Backlink profile and its importance

Last week, another large blog link network was penalized by Google. Having a good backlink profile has become more important than ever. How do you check your backlink profile, and are your rankings at risk?

What exactly happened?
Google's engineers are working hard on eliminating spam from the search results. Last week, they penalized websites that participated in a paid blog network with the name BuildMyRank. Another blog network was also affected by that penalty.

If you used one of these networks to get backlinks to your website, chances are that your Google rankings will be affected by this penalty.

Link diversity is the key to rankings that last
People who use automated tools to get backlinks to their websites create backlink profiles with a particular pattern. It is relatively easy to detect these pattern.

For example, if you participated in these blog networks or if you use tools that automatically submit your link to forums and social media sites, then it is easy to find out that these links are unnatural.

If your web site has a good backlink profile, your website won't be affected by algorithm changes.


What is a good backlink profile?
Link building is more than getting a few nofollow backlinks from good websites. It's about networking. A good backlink profile shows search engines that your website is liked by many different people. That means that your website should also have links from many different website types.

How to check the backlink profile of your website
You can check the backlink profile of any website with the backlink intelligence tools in SEOprofiler. For example, you can quickly see which website types link to a site:

You will quickly see if the majority of the links comes from blogs, forums, press release sites, directories, etc. You will also see which anchor texts are used to link to the site:

Geo variation and different top level domains also contribute to the diversity of a backlink profile. This information is also available in the reports:

In addition, you will get further information about the backlinks: are the links nofollowed, are they image or text links, what is the ratio of same site/external links on the linking sites, which keywords are used on the linking sites etc.

Having a diversified backlink profile is very important if you want to make sure that your Google rankings will last. Do not put all of your eggs in one basket. Analyze your backlinks now and check the backlink profile of your website.


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How to Overcome Google's Over Optimization Filter

Few weeks ago, Matt Cutts, The head of Google's anti-spam team, announced that Google is working on a penalty for over optimized or best termed overly SEO'ed websites. Hmmmmm, So now what does this announcement actually mean and how it will affect your website and how should you overcome this Google ranking filter?

Well Here's what Matt Cutts said in detail:

"We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit.
All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over-optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now."

WOW! - Now that's a new challenge for all spammers out there

Does this mean that you shouldn't optimize your website anymore? - No! not at all.

This announcement is meant for people who are trying to go beyond the limits. Of course, it is perfectly okay to add your keywords on your webpage and it is also perfectly okay to exchange links with other websites. Actually, all of these methods can have a very positive influence on the Google rankings of your website. 

But But But! The problem starts when these elements are overused. Yeah that's right. This usually happens when you use fully automated tools and services to promote your website. Now when I say fully automated tools, you know what tools I am talking about! 

For example, it is likely that the following SEO methods (Grey Hat/Black Hat) will get your website in trouble:

• automated link exchange networks that add your link to hundreds on other websites. Means - Affiliate networks who post your links to their affiliate networks using tools may be considered spam!
• tools that automatically create fake forum accounts and comments with a link to your site. Means - You know what it says. Forum links, profiles links, blog comment links created using semi or full automated tools.
• tools that automatically create keyword rich web pages for you on your website. Means - No installation of tools or plugins which extract content based on provide keywords and put it on your webpage.
• participating in paid link schemes. Means - No links from page or a portion of a page which says "Paid links" "Sponsored Links" etc.... Remember Google hates paid links.

Fully or Semi automated solutions always mean spam when it comes to SEO

Google loves to show high quality web pages with unique content in the search results. Web pages created automatically DO NOT have the quality as a web page created by a human. 

Believe me fully or semi automated solutions or whatever you call leads to low quality links and content that is not at all useful to the most of the web surfers. Firms that "optimized" their websites with such methods are the ones who will getting filtered by the new Google ranking filter. 

If you come across the words "fully automated" or "hundreds" or "thousands" back Links or content in one page then you can be sure that the advertised product or service is spamming and your website will get in trouble if you promote it with these methods.

Don't panic and create a symbiotic relationship with search engines

If you haven't used the spam methods described above to promote your website, then your website and your Google rankings won't be in trouble.

Optimizing your web pages is always very important because you have to show Google and other search engines that your website is relevant to a particular targeted keyword and that your website has a high quality content.The key is to focus on the user and not search engines.

Secure your Google rankings by following white hat SEO methods or hire an SEO Outsourcing Company which follows search engine guidelines.

All ways try to optimizing your web pages in a better way but don't forget to play by the rules. If you optimize it correctly, then your Search Engine rankings will last long resulting in more customer and more sales.

If you're pushing the limits too far and trying to play tricks, your website will get in trouble sooner or later. If you want to get long lasting search engine results then only use white hat SEO methods.

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How to judge the quality of a backlink?

You want lasting results when you build links to your website. It does not make sense to invest your time in search engine optimization methods that are just a flash-in-the-pan.

How do you judge the quality of a website? What is a good website and from which web pages should you get links?

1. The PageRank of a website is not that important Many webmasters only want to get backlinks from pages with a particular PageRank. While you can use this method, it is usually a waste of time and it makes link building more difficult than it really is.

If a website has an overall high quality then it does not matter if the page with the link to your website has a low Google PageRank:

• If a high quality website adds a new page, the new page will have an initial PageRank of zero. Nevertheless, the page can still be very good. 
•  A page that has a PageRank of zero today can have a high PageRank tomorrow.

If only pages with a high PageRank had a chance, it wouldn’t be possible to get new pages in Google’s result page. Experience shows that new pages appear in Google’s results every day.

In addition, the PageRank that Google publicly displays is not the actual PageRank that Google uses in its algorithm and the PageRank value can be manipulated.

2. Common sense leads to lasting results You do not need special metrics to judge the quality of a web page. When you find a web page that could link to your site, ask yourself the following questions:

•  Does the linking page look good to the average web surfer?
• Does the page have interesting content? Is the content somewhat related to my website?
• Does it make sense if the web page links to your site?

If you can answer all questions with “yes” then you should try to get a backlink from that page. It doesn’t matter if that page has a low PageRank.

3. Give Google what they want and your website will succeed Google tries to imitate common sense with its algorithm. If you use common sense to build your links and follow the tips above, you make sure that the backlinks to your website will count in all future updates of Google’s algorithm.


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Google Advice for all Free host - Keep it spam free

Free web hosting services can be great! Many of these services have helped to lower costs and technical barriers for webmasters and they continue to enable beginner webmasters to start their adventure on the web. Unfortunately, sometimes these lower barriers (meant to encourage less techy audiences) can attract some dodgy characters like spammers who look for cheap and easy ways to set up dozens or hundreds of sites that add little or no value to the web. When it comes to automatically generated sites, our stance remains the same: if the sites do not add sufficient value, we generally consider them as spam and take appropriate steps to protect our users from exposure to such sites in our natural search results.


We consider automatically generated sites like this one to be spammy.

If a free hosting service begins to show patterns of spam, we make a strong effort to be granular and tackle only spammy pages or sites. However, in some cases, when the spammers have pretty much taken over the free web hosting service or a large fraction of the service, we may be forced to take more decisive steps to protect our users and remove the entire free web hosting service from our search results. To prevent this from happening, we would like to help owners of free web hosting services by sharing what we think may help you save valuable resources like bandwidth and processing power, and also protect your hosting service from these spammers:

Publish a clear abuse policy and communicate it to your users, for example during the sign-up process. This step will contribute to transparency on what you consider to be spammy activity.

In your sign-up form, consider using CAPTCHAs or similar verification tools to only allow human submissions and prevent automated scripts from generating a bunch of sites on your hosting service. While these methods may not be 100% foolproof, they can help to keep a lot of the bad actors out.

Try to monitor your free hosting service for other spam signals like redirections, large numbers of ad blocks, certain spammy keywords, large sections of escaped JavaScript code, etc. Using the site: operator query or Google Alerts may come in handy if you’re looking for a simple, cost efficient solution.

Keep a record of signups and try to identify typical spam patterns like form completion time, number of requests sent from the same IP address range, user-agents used during signup, user names or other form-submitted values chosen during signup, etc. Again, these may not always be conclusive.

Keep an eye on your webserver log files for sudden traffic spikes, especially when a newly-created site is receiving this traffic, and try to identify why you are spending more bandwidth and processing power.

Try to monitor your free web hosting service for phishing and malware-infected pages. For example, you can use the Google Safe Browsing API to regularly test URLs from your service, or sign up to receive alerts for your AS.

Come up with a few sanity checks. For example, if you’re running a local Polish free web hosting service, what are the odds of thousands of new and legitimate sites in Japanese being created overnight on your service? There’s a number of tools you may find useful for language detection of newly created sites, for example language detection libraries or the Google Translate API v2.

Last but not least, if you run a free web hosting service be sure to monitor your services for sudden activity spikes that may indicate a spam attack in progress.

For more tips on running a quality hosting service, have a look at our previous post. Lastly, be sure to sign up and verify your site in Google Webmaster Tools so we may be able to notify you when needed or if we see issues.

Later today, Google's Matt Cutts posted a video on this topic:

http://youtu.be/oNKxl_VHRFg

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7 characteristics of how Google evaluates backlinks

What exactly did Google announce?

Google announced several changes of the ranking algorithm. The most important change was the change of the backlink analysis:

"Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable."

What does this mean for your web page rankings?

Unfortunately, Google doesn't go into detail. As mentioned in Google's statement, Google uses "characteristics of links" to figure out the topic of a linked page.

We'll take a look at the characteristics below. Then we'll try to find out which element could have been changed.

Characteristic 1: the text of the link

The anchor text of a link has been the most important factor for a long time. If many sites link to a page with the anchor text "green apple" then the page will get high rankings for the term "green apple".

Characteristic 2: the link power of the linking page

Links from pages with many inbound links have a higher influence than links from pages with few backlinks.

Characteristic 3: content and page proximity

If you sell shoes on your website then the link to your website will have a bigger impact if the text that surrounds the link to your page is about shoes. If the link to your website is surrounded by totally unrelated text then the link won't count as much.

Characteristic 4: link attributes such as nofollow and title

Links that use the rel=nofollow attribute don't affect the position of your web pages on Google. Some webmasters think that using title attributes can have a positive effect if these contain the targeted keywords. Others think that this could trigger a spam filters.

Characteristic 5: redirects and shortened URLs

Redirects and shortened URLs such as http://bit.ly/a4X4th are URLs that redirect to another URL. Should these URLs carry full weight when it comes to calculate the position of a website?

Characteristic 6: the age of a website

The older a link is, the more Google tends to trust that link. Links that remain for a long time seem to have a bigger impact than links that come and go.

Characteristic 7: the affiliation of the linking sites

Links from websites that have the same owner and links from affiliates may have a different influence on the rankings of a web page than links from websites that are not affiliated with the page.

Of course, we can only speculate what Google has changed. It is likely that Google now only considers the anchor text of a link if that link is placed in the right context (page and content proximity). Another possibility is that affiliate links (redirected or with page variables) will have less influence on the rankings of a page.

Just continue to get good backlinks and optimize the content of your pages. We provide Professional SEO Services for all kind off large, medium and Small Business SEO requirements.

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