In the SEO world, Google has been all the talk recently. Changes to Panda and the recent announcement about link farms have webmasters scrambling. This past week Google turned up the heat again by issuing letters through webmasters tools regarding link violations. Google announced that this is not a new policy but rather a switch from the old policy of “silently distrusted” “artificial” or “unnatural” links. In short, Google will now let you know about “Black Hat SEO links”.
Example:
Dear site owner or webmaster of ….
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
Google reaffirms that these messages are not a direct response to the closing of link farm networks and that they are just being more vocal about “black hat” violations. They stress to stick to Google approved guidelines to avoid these messages.
So how does your site create “black hat” or unnatural listings? Many of these violations come from hired SEO companies who practice “black hat” or frowned upon SEO techniques. Link farms are a network of websites designed to create links back to our site. A company will place your URL on all the websites on their network, thus increasing the total number of links that go back to your website. In the past this was a quick easy way to help improve your rankings. However, these recent actions from Google should put all “Black Hat” SEO companies and their clients on alert.
At Boston Web Marketing, we stress “White Hat” SEO and follow Google’s Best SEO practices to ensure you avoid these warnings and penalties from Google. BWM builds quality links back to your site to help increase your page rank and link quantity. If you are not using BWM services double check your links in webmasters tools. First see if you have reported violations and then check the reported links back to your site in the “links to your site section”. If there are “suspicious” looking links here, check them out to be sure they are not coming from a link farm. Eliminate all “black hat” SEO links before receiving a letter from Google!
– Matt Wilkos
If you are interested in more SEO techniques or would like to hire us to manage your reputation online contact us at: sales@getfoundquick.com or call 857.526.0096.
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