I got to thinking about things that I’ve said in the past about linkbuilding, especially where I’ve been dead wrong.<\/p>\n
Then I wondered if I’d ever written what I (and a lot of SEOs) had believed for a long time \u00a0– “I don’t think Google can ever penalize you for inbound links”, and after a quick search, found that I had, back in 2007.<\/p>\n
In fact, I’d said a lot of things in the article with such an innocent “pre-penguin naivite” that I thought I’d better update it. \u00a0What you see in quotes below, is from the original post here<\/a>\u00a0and I’ve inserted some Post Penguigeddon thoughts…<\/p>\n Good links are hard to come by, but if you throw enough against the wall, something always sticks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is still true, but unfortunately, it can also stick you in the a**!<\/p>\n By regularly submitting to web directories, making sure your blog is pinging news services, submitting your RSS feeds, submitting content to article directories, and even by linking to your own internal pages with good anchor text, you’re going to continue to grow those inbound links.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The whole web directory fad sort of crashed and burned, but it came back from their ashes with a vengeance. There are thousands upon thousands of relevant sites in various niche and verticals, with more of them every month, and there are some big name players in the industry.<\/p>\n Many are very good quality, heavily localized, they develop communities, they get traffic, they add value to the web, and they are worth getting in with consistent listings. \u00a0They share traffic, they share listings, and they cross promote each other in deal after deal, and the whole local search ecosystem<\/a>\u00a0look like a plate of spaghetti.<\/p>\n Some of these listings will have backlinks, and some won’t, but even with no link, they still have value as a consistent “citation” and in my experience, citations are *not* only important for local SEO<\/a>\u00a0but they are vital for all legitimate websites. \u00a0 I’d recommend that you never use anchor text when you’re building citations, and never call them directory links or you’ll be laughed at.<\/p>\n There’s are some great tools for finding relevant and quality citations \u00a0like this one from Whitespark<\/a>\u00a0or the a full featured Link Prospector from Citation Labs<\/a> to really dig in and find good specific niche sites and directories that have value.<\/p>\n Aside from having an RSS feed, the pinging and submitting stuff likely isn’t necessary, but I still see no harm in it. You should be autogenerating an XML sitemap though, and pinging the engines when you do.<\/p>\n Anchor text though, is dead. \u00a0Do not do it, even on your own site. \u00a0You KNEW it was coming to an end and it has. \u00a0I’m not saying it doesn’t WORK, but I am saying that if someone can just look at and plainly see you’re trying to manipulate rankings, that’s bad.<\/p>\n Don’t crap up your site with internal anchor text. Instead, place your important phrase relevant internal links only in sidebar areas and navigation, and REMOVE THOSE PLUGINS that autogenerate internal text links.<\/p>\n “Rented” links are another story, and Google’s position is that paid links are definitely bad. They are aggressively fighting to identify and devalue any inbound links that are determined to be paid, and they are penalizing sites that are selling the links.There’s no denying that it still works, because they can’t catch everything, but as time goes on, they’ll catch more and more. For now, there are still too many ways to “fly under the radar” and they can’t possibly catch them all, but if you’ve been buying your links, it’s time to consider a more long term strategy. –<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Google has aggressively sought to stop this “paying to rank” process over the years, and has tried everything, but until they remove backlinks from the algorithm altogether, the practice is going to continue.<\/p>\n Even after years of \u00a0making the SEO community look like fools<\/a>, even after big companies were shown to be doing it, from\u00a0JC Penney<\/a>\u00a0to \u00a0Dun & Bradstreet<\/a>, paid links still help rankings.\u00a0They’ve called for websites to turn each other in<\/a>\u00a0for linkspam, and they’ve banned SEO firms for buying links for clients<\/a>\u00a0, but people keep buying links. \u00a0Hell, early this year even Google was caught buying\u00a0links<\/a>!<\/p>\n It’s not worth it. Don’t buy links or do anything that a competitor can turn you in for, \u00a0unless you’re willing to risk your domain permanently. If you’re a gambler, then have at it, but you have a target on your back.<\/p>\n You could stay lucky for a long time, especially in the lower competition levels, where a couple hundred a month at TLA<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0 \u00a0can do you better than Adwords, but mark my words, your days are numbered.<\/p>\n What Google can do, and what they ARE doing, is “penalizing” websites that are selling links without the nofollow tag, and they are penalizing them by lowering their green toolbar PageRank.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n They’re still penalizing sites by lowering the TBPR but it’s applied selectively, and on an individual basis. \u00a0Besides, who cares? Most sites hit with the penalty in my experience (six times) suffered or traffic no loss \u00a0after that penalty – only the green bar got smaller.<\/p>\n At this point, Google has not yet lowered these sites rankings, but in my opinion, this was sort of a warning shot across the bow to warn those selling links that they should stop, or that’s next.<\/p>\n I’ve personally paid for links for my own sites before, and some even on a monthly basis, because I believe they have value in the traffic they might bring. It’s a safe bet that if Google “catches” those sites selling links, then any value they have for my ranking will be removed, if it hasn’t been already.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Not much of a warning shot was it? \u00a0Just like Search Engine Roundtable’s<\/a> Barry Schwartz<\/a>, who still sells “followed” Sponsored Links (in the lower right sidebar) many people basically said, “I’ll take the TBPR penalty, ’cause I’d rather have the money” and to this day, their rankings and traffic are fine.<\/p>\n In my opinion, Google can never penalize someone for buying links. Otherwise, an entire cottage industry would pop up buying links for your competition. Instead, what Google does is devalue an inbound link that they determine to be paid and put in place only for ranking purposes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Wow – There it is… \u00a0The catalyst for this entire rewrite. \u00a0Not only CAN Google penalize you for buying links, they will and they have.<\/p>\n It might come from someone turning you in, or it might come from your own stupid placement, but you’er gonna get it. \u00a0Unfortunately, those that are willing to gamble are still seeing results, which is why all these paid link networks still exist.<\/p>\n As far as the cottage industry for “negative SEO”? \u00a0Yep, it’s out there<\/a>, and nobody has been brazen enough to start an actual service, but\u00a0we all know someone who could (or own software that can) launch an attempted \u00a0“negative SEO” campaign if we wanted to.<\/p>\n Of course, that would not only make you a despicable human being, \u00a0according to Matt, it could hackfire and help them. See, that’s what makes this whole game so precious – links still work!\u00a0Here’s a video where Matt Cutts of Google explains a little more.<\/p>\n