One thing many link builders look at is article marketing. Whether that be spinning the same article a number of times to ensure some degree of uniqueness or submitting articles on mass to article directories. Why?

Why would Google like this? Well before it was content, which Google loves, and some people saw some results from it. Of course, everyone get on it and this means that these websites are flooded with low quality content, and in turn become content farms linking out to many websites.

It obviously became a low quality link building technique but recently, with the panda update targeting low quality websites, does this mean this type of link building is now obsolete?

Today Google’s Matt Cutts answered a very apt question:

Do you recommend article marketing as an SEO strategy?

So Matt Cutts says the trend he is hearing is that the type of content from article marketing seems to not be a great addition of quality.

Will they still play a part in link building? It already will have been written off for those who focus on quality niche link building but it will probably still be used by some, however, it does appear like a tactic that is dying out.

Should You Build Links From Article Directories After The Panda Update is a post from: SEO Link Love

BeatThatQuote Penalised for Paid Links

Questionable SEO Tactics

Without going into detail and offering my own analysis of just what they did I will give a brief summary of what Aaron kindly pointed out:

• Doorway Pages / gateway pages
• Buying PageRank Links
• Comment Spam
• Link Exchanges
• Sponsored Links
• Sponsored Blog Reviews

So remember, even Google will feel the wrath of its own search quality team.

Then again they had no choice. Will they be penalising some of the other websites for selling links? Will they look at other websites in the same competitive market? Or is this solely a PR move? If it is then with the recent public outings and resulting action by Google, it may become the new trend.

BeatThatQuote.com Penalised Due To Paid Links is a post from: SEO Link Love

J.C. Penney, SearchDex, TNX, and The NY Times

The company J. C. Penney are a massive brand in America who over the festive season (a popular time for online shopping) had some good ranking results. However, with great rankings comes more notice from competitors or anybody monitoring the results.

This time it was surprisingly The New York Times who asked Doug Pierce to analyse just what was going on. An analysis is exactly what he did, uncovering a number of ‘spammy black-hat paid link techniques’ and detailed his findings to the NY Times for it to be reported.

With it suddenly being in public view, Google immediately stepped in to take manual action (on top of algorithm action reported by Matt Cutts) against the website, which soon saw its rankings drop.

A much more detailed analysis can be found on Search Engine Land.

Paid Link Building Strategy and Techniques Used

A number of link building factors have clearly been identified during this saga which aren’t new so I will briefly detail them below:

Paid Links Do Work

This is obvious. They clearly do work, the issue is more about risk management. In this scenario we see the SEO campaign go from good rankings to bad rankings very quickly.

The Focus on Anchor Text Links

A major benefit in buying links is controlling the anchor text. Here we saw links built with targeted focused anchor text to specific pages.

Links Matter First, Relevance Second

From the above picture, it is clear that the links were spread across a network of websites which weren’t relevant – “car modification” – luxury bedding?

A Rush of New Links Can Help Boost Rankings In The Short Term

It is a well utilised strategy – boost your rankings for seasonal trends (or contract renewals ) through concentrated link building. How hard you go in (quantity) and whether you reduce them after the seasonal trend period finishes is part of the risk management.

The Link Spikes Debate

As a number of links were built across a range of domains it created link spikes in the link profile of the website. Did Google pick up on this and realise these were paid links? It seems not, or at least they didn’t at first.

Link Spikes are obvious when paid link building instead of doing it naturally, unless of course something goes viral – why link spikes alone can’t be used to identify paid links.

What About The Google Search Algorithm

Basically, it hasn’t figured out how to identify and punish websites automatically as of yet. I’m not surprised as many webmasters with link networks will always be looking to make their websites appear natural. It is a hard fight but something that Google say they are actively tackling with a paid links algorithm being created (reported by Matt Cutts a few months ago).

Google Still Need To Apply Penalties Manually

Their web spam team are able to change Google’s listings and apply manual restrictions across keyword rankings to combat paid links. It appears they are reliant on people to tell them of such cases instead of being able to use only algorithms. They don’t always tell you either but most people notice when checking their latest rankings and traffic.

Forbes Penalised For Selling Links That Pass PageRank

In another high profile case, it came to attention that Forbes have been penalised for selling links on their website. Denis Pinsky, the Digital Marketing Manager at Forbes.com, posted at Google Webmaster Help with the details of the notification warning that is sent by Google.

A number of people responded, including the likes of John Mu and Matt Cutts themselves highlighting a few examples of where they were selling links.

Paid Links = Risk Management

The Fallout of Recent Paid Links

J. C. Penney responded by saying they had no idea about these links. Further details and statements can be found on Search Marketing Wisdom.

Search Dex were sacked as the SEO company after around 4 years of being with them. There reputation also taking a huge hit for buying these links for clients – which they have strongly refused they had any participation with.

Google simply chose to manually change their rankings – people point to a competitor building these links but it appears that wasn’t the case.

The SEO community simply blogged about it, offering their own views, and discussing it on Twitter. It is amazing how one event can trigger so many blog posts! It is often a tactic used to obtain links as well by being the authority covering the story in detail (Search Engine Land) or using it as link bait like Tech Crunch tried with a title of “Search Still Sucks”.

So Who is to blame?

• Black Hat Competitor?
• Google for its easy to game algorithm?
• Search Dex?
• J. C. Penney?
• Newspaper providing news by stirring in an industry?

An SEO company should be making the risks involved very clear and communicating this with their client. After four years with J. C. Penny it is hard to see why this would suddenly come up, or has this been their strategy all along?

So what do I think………

Firstly, what was the motive of writing the article? This was an SEO from a competitor firm of Search Dex and The New York Times targeting one particular big brand company.

Where is the line drawn in terms of paid links? Many SEO’s will tell a client to sponsor a company or event, inevitably getting a link via initial payment. Bloggers write reviews in exchange for products or money. These techniques seem to be accepted but in essence are the same thing as using paid link networks, which aren’t accepted.

It is a high risk strategy especially for well known brands with eager competitors, as some have recently found. Should you do it if you can get away with it? Maybe but search engine optimisation is a long game and there are plenty of things to explore before getting lazy and buying paid links.

Benefits, Risk, And Thoughts On Paid Links by J C Penny & Forbes is a post from: SEO Link Love

During that time they will be approached to promote material and publish a link, using specific keyword focused anchor text.

When this occurs the blog suddenly is a means to payment in kind, whether that be a product or actual money. Due to its popular rise an investigation into such practises is being held in the UK.

Fair Trading Laws

The Office of Fair Trading has enforced Handpicked Media, an operator of a commercial blogging network, to clearly identify  when promotional comments have been paid for. It was concluded that Handpicked Media was in breach of Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

Heather Clayton, Senior Director of OFT’s Consumer Group, said:

The internet plays a key role in how people purchase products and services and the importance of online advertising continues to grow. The OFT has bolstered its expertise in this area and is taking targeted action to ensure that the law is clear, increase business compliance and empower consumers.

The integrity of information published online is crucial so that people can make informed decisions on how to spend their money. We expect online advertising and marketing campaigns to be transparent so consumers can clearly tell when blogs, posts and microblogs have been published in return for payment or payment in kind. We expect this to include promotions for products and services as well as editorial content.

Handpicked director Krista Madden said:

Our blogs and sites are instructed to show full disclosure on their blogs if it is paid for content. Twitter has been a recent addition to social media and no rules were in place at that time.

There were no clear rules on commercial activity for blogging in this country and we were very happy to work with the OFT to make sure that there is total transparency moving forward with set rules so that consumers can make informed decisions. We do hope this means that all those taking part in all types of social media activity will follow our example now in the UK.

Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)

Next we have the ASA reportedly investigating similar practices.

In a run through scenario of an SEO agency acquiring a link from a blogger, with the intent of pushing the SEO rankings, Malcolm Philips, Code Policy Manager at the Committee of Advertising Practise, agreed that the ASA would likely investigate such techniques.

The ASA wants to ensure that paid for links, and other promotions, are disclosed in such a way that the average consumer can see the relationship between blogger and advertiser.

Deception to Readers and Consumers

We also saw the Guardian fall short on a similar issue. The Guardian published an article about the on-going Qatar World Cup bid as Louise Taylor, the paper’s football correspondent, had travelled there. There wasn’t much love from readers with one of the comments being:

Can I ask who paid your airfare to Doha?? Surely you should declare if the Qatar bid has contributed anything?

Yes, the Guardian had failed to disclose that the Qatari government had paid for the trip. This later led to Chris Elliott, the Guardian readers’ editor, discussing this and highlighting the wider issue:

As part of the coverage the sports desk commissioned the journalist to write about her impressions of Qatar; the piece strongly supported the Qatari bid. The journalist, who is not unfamiliar with the Middle East, stands by every word she wrote, and I have no doubt that the opinions she expressed were honestly held. But our failure to footnote the fact that the trip was funded by the Qatari 2022 World Cup bid committee, or write it into the story, gave readers cause for doubt. There were at least 30 strongly negative comments to that effect posted below the article, and it took too long for us to go into the thread to make matters clear.

The article titled “open door” ended with the key highlight that editors should enforce disclosure and appending footnotes as it undermines the journalism – which it does as without it, it lends itself into looking like promotional material even if it wasn’t meant to be.

SEO and Paid Links

It could be argued this has gone out of hand. There are many blogs on the web now linking out with commercial anchor text, with plenty of SEO or link building companies actually building a network of blogs for this very purpose. Even some newspaper groups are well known for actively selling links.

The big question is how is this going to be enforced when Google have trouble trying to limit the effects of paid links? Are we going to see spam reports to both Google and these authorities?

It will be interesting to see further case studies as they come along as this could jeopardise some of the SEO strategies currently in use.

Authorities to Seek Blogging Disclosures for Paid Links is a post from: SEO Link Love

One of the big things to come out of the whole event was the following:

This is important to stand the test of time and make sure Google doesn’t discount the strength of your backlinks.

A Natural Link Profile

The perfect back-link profile is actually a natural looking one and Jane Copland from Amiya said the following elements are what make up a natural link profile:

You need a lot of different type of links for a good back-link profile

• Volume – links are still a big thing you still need a good amount
• Topic Quality – think about relevance between the linked pages
• Authoritative Quality – links from strong websites
• Natural Noise – a mixture of external noise e.g. branding, PR, social media
• Editorial Quality – the whole content is king story

Should I get a link from this page?

One of the hardest decisions when link building is whether you should get a link from a particular page. There are many factors to take into account with one of the more prominent reasons being discussed was how useful PageRank is (not very she said) yet how it can still help to judge penalisation – especially in comparison to other metrics.

She also talked about keyword anchor text links vs brand links which should be quite clear in a natural link profile. There has been a lot of talk about whether brand links should be sought and whether they should appear the most weighted towards rather than your keywords.

Homepage & deep page differences

One of the interesting points brought up from the Q&A was the differences between a homepage and a deep page. A good example of this is the SEOmoz ranking factors page (showing links to be a 70% ranking factor) which is heavily linked towards with keyword anchor text containing “ranking factors” and not just “SEOmoz” branded anchor text.

Creating Good Content

There were a few ideas put across such as syndicating your content and writing a top 100 post about industry people, for which they may link back along with others as it is a great resource. This is your usual stuff along with link-baiting but one presentation made by Russell Smith, head of editorial development for the BBC News website, blew many people away. It is often said researching and being the data source will help to create good content and get good links. The BBC team have done this with examples of minors and what not, they don’t just create an infographic, they create a masterpiece of visual art which is interactive and lets you drill down on the data.

Other Link Building Discussions

Different links in different industries

There were a few other tips on how to attract links, with Weip Knol giving away a few pearls and a case study on how to gather good authoritative links using the power of content. There was also an in depth analysis of paid links by Patrick Altoft which showed how to display metrics of a link profile in a visual manner, such as the branding vs anchor text.

This is the stuff I hope to blog and explain about in much more detail so make sure you subscribe and take a look around!

I’d just like to say thanks to all those involved, the speakers, and the team running the event – especially Lynsey Little (event manager) – and the Digital Marketing Agency I work at allowing and even paying me to go – brilliant!

Thoughts on Link Building from the Distilled Pro Seminar is a post from: SEO Link Love