Climate of fear in the world of SEO
-
There certainly appears to be a certain climate of fear about backlinks at the mo, and not without reason.
I was wondering why Google moved from simply discounting links to punishing site owners for their backlink profiles, many of which were built up when the risks of punishment weren't there?
I mean, I could send them the names of at least 1,000 sites in linkfarms / blog rings - you name it. I'm sure most of us on here could do the same.
Responding to the whims of Google is such a waste of time and resources. Why doesn't Google simply choose a direction and stick with it? What is their strategy exactly?
-
Some great feedback here - firstly, thanks EGOL - I'm focusing 100% on content on a new site. Should be interesting - and that's a good point re: vandalism. I am concerned with the consequences of negative SEO / scrapers, clones, etc., though. Would be so good to be able to cut nasty incoming links in some way (I can but dream...) Love that saying too Donnie!
Good points there Marie - yes I get plagued by that stuff too - I'm beginning to wonder whether many of these comments are more about hoping some lunatic will click on the link than about manipulating SEO though.
To be totally honest, I wouldn't mind if Google laid down specific rules for linkbuilding. We advise that site owners should only proactively build no more than 10 links/page from relevant sites. The rest should be generated naturally. Something far more specific than we have at the moment.
And thanks Arpeggio. A very good point indeed. I agree.
-
The more advanced technology and logistics etc. becomes the further away human accountabilty becomes. I think thats a major challenge in the modern day in general.
-
I think the latest changes made by Google are accomplishing exactly what Google wants. They want website owners to stop "building links" and instead make the best possible site that gives the user the best possible information.
If they simply discounted links then many people would still go on building them "just in case" they helped. I mean, everyone knows that nofollowed comment spam is very unlikely to be helpful, but I get thousands of crap automated comments on my blog each month that are killed by Askimet, so people are still doing it.
But by building a culture of fear around links they've managed to get a lot of people in the SEO world saying, "Man! If I keep building links I could get a big penalty and my site could tank." The result? People stop building links.
Now, there are some links that are not a bad thing to build and this is the scary thing. People will be afraid to get ANY links to their site and that's not right. I know of someone who got the Better Business Bureau to remove all links to their site because they thought it could look unnatural. That is a good link
-
Thanks
-
"Give the people what they want and Google will give you to the people"
Thanks... that's a great saying!
-
I was wondering why Google moved from simply discounting links to punishing site owners for their backlink profiles, many of which were built up when the risks of punishment weren't there?
Google finally realized that merely "discounting" the links was resulting in a continued vandalism of blogs and forums as linkbuilders deposit their rubbish.
Why doesn't Google simply choose a direction and stick with it? What is their strategy exactly?
I think that they have "stuck" with their use of links for way too long.
Responding to the whims of Google is such a waste of time and resources.
A method to try would be to place 100% of your effort into building content and allow the links to slowly build on their own. This will start very slowly but will build to a rate that reflects the value of your content.
-
They want to give users the best results possible, by ensuring that their SERPs are not easily manipulated they can ensure a better overall user experience.
My saying has always been:
"Give the people what they want and Google will give you to the people"
Its quite simple.. they want sites that have a natural link profile and a great user experience (bookmarked, linked to, or shared)
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
-
Anyone suspect that a site's total page count affects SEO?
I've been trying to find out the underlying reason why so many websites are ranked higher than mine despite seemingly having far worse links. I've spent a lot of time researching and have read through all the general advice about what could possibly be hurting my site's SEO, from page speed to h1 tags to broken links, and all the various on-page SEO optimization stuff....so the issue here isn't very obvious. From viewing all of my competitors, they seem to have a much higher number of web pages on their sites than mine does. My site currently has 20 pages or so and most of my competitors are well in the hundreds, so I'm wondering if this could potentially be part of the issue here. I know Google has never officially said that page number matters, but does anyone suspect that perhaps page count matters towards SEO and that competing sites with more total pages than you might have an advantage SEOwise?
Algorithm Updates | | ButtaC1 -
Are SEO Friendly URLS Less Important Now That Google Is Indexing Breadcrumb Markup?
Hi Moz Community and staffers, Would appreciate your thoughts on the following question: **Are SEO friendly URLS less important now that Google is indexing breadcrumb markup in both desktop and mobile search? ** Background that inspired the question: Our ecommerce platform's out of the box functionality has very limited "friendly url" settings and would need some development work to setup an alias for more friendly URLS. Meanwhile, the breadcrumb markup is implemented correctly and indexed so it seems there's no longer an argument for improved CTR with SEO friendly URLS . With that said I'm having a hard time justifying the URL investment, as well as the 301 redirect mapping we would need to setup, and am wondering if more friendly URLs would lead to a significant increase in rankings for level of effort? Sidenote: We already rank well for non-brand and branded searches since we are brand manufacturer with an ecommerce presence. Our breadcrumbs are much cleaner & concise than our URL structure. Here are a couple examples. Category URL: http://www.mysite.com/browse/category1/subcat2/subcat3/_/N-7th
Algorithm Updates | | jessekanman
Breadcrumb: www.mysite.com > category1 > subcat2 > subcat3 Product URL: http://www.mysite.com/product/product-name/_/R-133456E112
Breadcrumb: www.mysite.com > category1 > subcat2 > subcat3 > product name The "categories" contain actual keywords just hiding them here in the example. According to my devs they can't get rid of the "_" but could possible replace it with a letter. Also they said it's an easier fix to make the URLs always lower case. Lastly some of our product URLS contain non-standard characters in the product name like "." and "," which is also a simpler fix according to my developers. Looking forward to your thoughts on the topic! Jesse0 -
Will Parked Domain hurt My SEO as Duplicate Content?
Hello, I have one website (Migration Lawyers) and I have an extra 8 domains Parked so they are basically cloning the content of the site. so if the main site is: migrationlawyers.co.za and I have an addon domain migration-lawyers.com is that good or bad? is there a proper way to redirect the sites, will redirecting (301) subdomains be more effective? Thanks for your Input 🙂 0i8VXqr.png
Algorithm Updates | | thealika0 -
Increasing Brands/Products thus increasing pages - improve SEO?
We curently have 5 brands on our website and roughly 200 pages. Does increasing the number of products you stock and thus increasing the number of pages improve your SEO?
Algorithm Updates | | babski0 -
Local SEO-How to handle multiple business at same address
I have a client who shares the same address and suite number with multiple business. What should be done to optimize their website and citations for local SEO? Is this a huge issue? What should we do so our rankings aren't affected. Will changes take a long time to take place? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | caeevans0 -
Confused About Addon Domains and SEO
I find addon domains really confusing. Everyone I've asked so far says that they don't affect SEO but I find that really hard to believe considering the same content is on both a subdomain and a subfolder and also has it's own unique domain. PLUS (in my case) completely different niche sites are sharing the same hosting. I really don't want to pay for hosting for all of my different sites but at the same time, if it's better/safer to do so for Panda/Penguin reasons I'm happy to do that. Thank you for your time. I look forward to your opinions/suggestions!
Algorithm Updates | | annasusmiles0 -
Taking advantage of "Search Plus Your World"
How can I, the owner of a 5 thousand page website, take advantage of Search Plus Your World to increase website traffic?
Algorithm Updates | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Is it hurting my seo ranking if robots.txt is forbidden?
robots.txt is forbidden - I have read up on what the robots.txt file does and how to configure it but what about if it is not able to be accessed at all?
Algorithm Updates | | Assembla0