Google periodically makes changes to their rankings algorithm and sometimes these changes can have a major impact on a site’s rankings, as well as the SEO industry as a whole. One of those changes is happening now.
If you’ve not heard, Google is aggressively taking action to adjust their index and remove rankings that have been caused by SEO firms creating “Unnatural Links” to rank their clients. Since the beginning of February, Google has sent out “Unnatural Links” warnings through Google Webmaster Tools notifying webmasters of problems with their link profile. It has been confirmed that over 700,000 of these notices have been sent, although some estimates put that number well over 1 million.
Webmasters are receiving a notice in their Google Webmaster Tools account stating that their site is using link-building techniques that are outside the Google Webmaster Guidelines. While Google doesn’t detail what links are considered “Unnatural”, it’s easy to speculate that shady links include directory submissions, article submissions, blog and forum comment spam, links with excessive use of keyword based anchor text, and/or links from low quality, unrelated sites.
The balance of low-quality links versus high-quality links alerts the bot that you may be spamming. However, Google has not commented on what algorithm it uses to determine the penalty threshold.
The message that webmasters have been receiving in their Google Webmaster Tools accounts looks like this:
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://website.com/
DateDear site owner or webmaster of http://website.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
Many webmasters believe this is an aggressive scare tactic that Google is using to try and root out blog networks selling paid links or SEO companies that are employing spammy link-building methods, or they may just be trying to make SEO an ineffective or cost prohibitive method of internet marketing in order to drive more business to Adwords.
Remember that Google’s public messages about SEO are going to serve their purposes. Whatever the basis of their message is, Google is not going to tell anyone the tried and true methods for achieving top rankings in their alogorithm, nor are they going to specifically define the harmful tactics. They keep their notices vague because if they disclose the factors of their ranking system, the marketing industry will quickly exploit them.
What Should You Do if You’ve Received the Unnatural Links Notice in Google Webmaster Tools:
In most cases you should do nothing. It’s not advised that you start removing links to your site, or even to submit a request for a review. Removing links is an extremely time consuming process and in that process you may end up “Throwing out the baby with the bathwater” by inadvertently removing quality links with the bad ones. When someone receives a notice of this kind, you shouldn’t ignore it, but you should really just move on and re-focus your efforts on building higher quality backlinks.
Since most medical practices receive the majority of their business from people in their city and/or state, it’s important that you strengthen your local seo efforts and really work to enhance your MAPS listings. Creating an extremely strong presence in the local directories / search engines will help to solidify your rankings in your city and make you less vulnerable to shifts in the organic ranking algorithms.
Don’t bother with submitting a request for review. If Google has found your link-building profile to be “Unnatural” they will not re-establish any rankings that you achieved artificially, and if you’ve lost rankings because you have a poor link profile, you’re not going to regain your prior position via manual review. The majority of people that have taken the time to clean up their links and then submitted for review have received a response stating that the site still has “Unnatural Links”. It’s just not worth your time and effort.
2 Ways to Respond:
Webmasters and business owners who have received this notice should understand that Google is not going to continue giving value to these link-building methods and that your low quality links aren’t going to have the same positive impact that they once did; in fact they may have a detrimental effect in the future.
It’s probably safe to assume that these notices are not the result of a manual review by a Google engineer, as the volume of notices being sent is so large, thus this is likely an algorithmic “Penalty”. You don’t need to waste countless hours of time pruning your links for little or no return, but you do need to take action…
1. If you received the notice but you haven’t seen a noticeable difference in your rankings, you’ve likely got a very strong link profile and only a small portion of your links were considered “Unnatural”. Many webmasters have never done ANY link-building and have still received the notice. If you’re not affected don’t worry about it, but you should monitor your links and whom is linking to you, in the case that this spawns a negative SEO attack in the future.
2. If you’ve received the notice and you see a corresponding drop in your rankings, then you need to focus on building new links to your site from quality websites. Go back to the old school methods of link-building and find relevant, authoritative sites from which to get your links. If you’re going to build links from ad spots, make sure to use rel=”nofollow” so that they are not considered to be paid links.
Understanding and Correcting Your Unnatural Links:
Many well respected professionals in the SEO field have commented that the sites receiving the penalty have a higher ratio of low-quality links compared to high-quality links, and are generally heavily weighted with “followed” links vs. “no-follow” links. Google considers any link that is “followed” to potentially be a paid link, and for quite some time they have publicly stated that they are against paid links designed to manipulate PageRank.
To find your links for examination you can use third party tools such as Open Site Explorer, or just use your Google Webmaster Tools account. Download a table of the links and review them one-by-one to find any patterns that might indicate link spam. Look for any links that are from lower quality sites, links with excessive keyword based anchor text and links from “bad neighborhoods”. These are the links that likely earned you the Google love letter and should be considered off limits for your link-building going forward.
If you’ve been knowingly purchasing links from blog networks such as Build My Rank (which was publicly outed by Google last month) it’s time to stop. You should take the time to remove these links or at the very least, try to get a rel=”nofollow” tag added to the links.
Examples of poor quality link profiles that we’ve seen triggering the notice:
- Large quantities of links using keyword based anchor text for the most competitive head term.
- Few deep links to the site and/or a lower ratio of deep links
- Low quality sites with re-purposed content and links from unrelated sites
- Excessive directory links using keyword based anchor text
- Links coming from multiple outside websites which show clear signs of being networked (same IP or C-Block class, cross linking, same Google AdSense ID,same/similar coding or CMS technology)
Learn From Your Mistakes and Don’t Repeat Them
The takeaway here is that quality should trump quantity in link-building. You should focus your efforts on building links from quality, relevant websites. Use a mix of followed and “no-followed” links, and link to your site using multiple variations of your keywords and your practice name / doctor name.
The key to a natural link profile is diversity. Naturally occurring links come from a broad range of websites, using diversified anchor text and commonly using the business name. Make your link profile look the same.
A final note: If you are going to be buying links from sites (for advertising or traffic purposes), request that the webmaster creates the links using the rel=”nofollow” tag. This will ensure that the link you are getting is not considered a paid link and is not being used to manipulate PageRank.
We’ve had many calls from doctors around the country that have just found out about this problem, and in many cases their webmasters didn’t inform them of the notice from Google. Check with your webmaster and find out if your site has been notified, and if you’ve seen your rankings drop, you should be asking some pointed questions with your SEO team.
If you are seeing problems with your website’s rankings and need to figure out what is going on, we can help. Contact us today for a website / link analysis and an action plan to correct your Unnatural Link problems.
Call 800-549-0170
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