Yes. Google just laid down the hammer on bad link practices yet again. A Google web search SPAM clean-up update just came out , which you may have heard of – another penguin update. Google names its updates oddly. You can ignore the name, really. All that means is there is a change to the algorithm, to the system of ranking sites. And I couldn’t be happier to hear it.
About time. Every so often, this has to happen. Every time the system works to clear SPAM out, the spammers go wild looking for the next loophole, the next way to game the system, and then they take advantage of it. The system the has to get tighter, so that your REAL content can rise above the spammy crud and show as the jewel of the web it is.
But, if you’ve ever built links up without a care in the world for whether those were good or bad places to link from, then it’s time to clean that up. (Side note: If your content isn’t great, you can expect worse and worse rankings and no amount of SEO or link-building will help you until you sit down and make your content fantastic first.)
So, here are some ways you can quickly and thoroughly find the bad links you’ve created. Get rid of the ones you feel are truly “paid” or “spammy” – you’ll recognize them because 1. They never bring you viable customers or prospects, and 2. The website it’s on is all about selling links. Everything there is an ad or a paid link and it’s obvious. Just can that crap. You don’t need those links.
If you’re still paying in present time for crappy spammy links, just STOP it already and build links the right way – by generating content that rocks, and getting people to go check it out on social or other distribution tools, RSS feeds or press releases for instance.
Google just keeps getting tougher on SPAM, and Bing isn’t much different.
Here are some toold you can use to start the process of reviewing your link situation:
Open Site Explorer:
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
In the Google Webmaster Zone:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
Go to Traffic > Links To Your Site, and click on each page, looking for any you’re rather weren’t there.
Also, you can do a search at Google for your website, a very specific kind of search that finds all the links to you that aren’t from your own website. Here’s the search query when it’s MY website:
www.desimatlock.com -site:desimatlock.com
SEO Administrator has a pretty good inbound link checking tool that grabs from many many places.
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The idea here is to please just start treating your actions ONLINE with the same care you do OFF LINE. Where would you want your ads displayed in real life? That’s about where you should advertise online. Who would you want introducing you to a crowd of people? That’s where you want your links.
Stop trying to game the system, and you’ll eventually come out on top. Nothing beats authenticity and true pavement pounding social interaction for link building anyway. Nothing works faster or better than spreading naturally in social circles.
If you need more of an idea how to correct bad links, check this post – Chris may sound a bit melodramatic, but when you’ve been shoved from high placement to the bottom for accidentally employing bad linking tactics, you can get pretty emotional about it. But, he’s got sound advice on cleaning up bad situations.