hauksson penguin semcamp-2013

Link BuildingPost Penguin

So, what has changed?

In reality, NOTHING except that….

The responsibilityis 100% yours

Further Pressure Penguin

Unnatural Link Warnings

Disavow Penalties all over the place

&

What hasHAPPENED?

Throw as many links as you dared

Some counted some did not

If you threw enough of the right stuff you won

Pre 1ST quarter of 2012

MORE FORMAL SET OF LINK PENALTIES

&

IS A PENALTY / FILTER PENGUIN

AIMED AT SEO

TO DULL THE EFFECT OFDESIGNED

People Chasing the Algorithm

Google have sent a number

of waves of unnatural link

warnings

There is now a much more

formal procedure to

get the penalty removed

They are still sending them

Link Penalties

% of anchor

% of sitewides

% of suspect cctld

more links that 40x or 50x

Signals to look for

Risk is obvious in the anchor text distribution

www.linkrisk.com

WE ALL NOW FACE

THE PROBLEM

Links are STILL

the signal… but..

Google have hidden what they consider

a bad link well

To rank you have to build, but you have to manage the risk far

more

1. 2. 3.

Have someone audit your links

with experience

Audit what you have

Determine what is risky and what to

remove

Manage the risk of link building

Removing is almost as bad as not removing

If you determine what the problem links are, out of every 100 links you identify as bad Google probably only thinks 20 are bad

Removing all 100 is as bad for your rankings as getting penalised in some cases

FOR EVERY LINK YOU REMOVE

You have to consider whatyou might have to add & how

THE MYTHOF NATURAL LINKS

What makes a link

problematic?

Purpose of the site

Commercial Anchors again

and again

Poor link metrics (Majestic / Moz /

PR)

No Social Activity on a site (Twitter / Facebook)

Banned Words

Links to bad places

No interaction on the site

Wrong CCtld

Validate every link opportunity

Only buy link building services if the company can demonstrate that they know what risk is and how they handle it

Be realistic in your link risk exposure

Don’t follow what everyone else does or you’ll be in the next filter

Guest Posts Infographics

WHAT TO DO IF YOU GET CAUGHT?

3 Main Risks:

Penguin Link Devaluation Link Warnings

AND WAIT FOR GOOGLEREBALANCE

WITH CAUTIONREBUILD

Manual Penalty:

Link audit and clean-up

Link removal attempts (keep records)

Disavow the links that you cannot remove

WAIT!

REINCLUSION REQUEST IF YOU AREN’T SUCCESSFUL TRY AGAIN

REDIRECTIONSAND NEW DOMAINS

BEWARE WHAT PASSES…

TAKEAWAYS

Audit your link profile

Make sure whoever does the audit knows what they are doing

Don’t stop building but do build with care and attention

Watch your link profile all the time

BIG THANKS

MASSIVE THANKS TO @PAULMADDEN AND THE LINKRISK TEAM

Kristjan Mar Hauksson@optimizeyourweb