Improving your Backlinking Strategy: Identifying Bad Links

Have you noticed your website’s rank take a slow dive into the depth of Google search results in the past year? This may be due to one of Google’s algorithm updates, called Penguin. This update emphasizes good backlinks and punishes sites that have bad links coming to them. So what does Google deem as “bad” backlinks? This is essential if you are to create and effective backlinking strategy!

Paid Links

Paying services to add links to directories and websites used to be one of the standard approaches to building backlinks. Marketing teams would pay services like Fivver to submit directory listings and spread articles for backlinks. It did not matter where the link was coming from or if the link was relevant to your site. The newest Google update punished links that they suspected where created by a backlinking service because they are oftentimes unnatural and hurt the integrity of the internet as a whole.

Automated Links

Do not use a robot form to create backlinks!!! Not only do they leave irrelevant comments and do not fully optimize directory listings, but they are also relatively easy to identify. These are huge red flags for Google.

Bad Comment Links

Its good to comment on other blogs that are related to the subject of your website. It is not good to leave spammy comments that are overloaded with keywords and anchor text links. Keep your comments relevant and change up the anchor text for your links in each comment.

Random Spammy Links

These are the worst. Random websites will link to you, especially if you are on the first page of search results. Adult and pharmaceutical sites are notorious for this. To check and see if you have any spammy backlinks, you need to run an audit on your site. If you have Webmaster Tools running, you can quickly check and see all the backlinks you have. Once you have identified the bad ones, you will need to either contact those sites and ask them to remove the link or ask Google to disavow those links.

Developing a Backlinking Strategy

If you are looking to recover your rankings after the Penguin update, it is imperative that you have a good backlinking strategy. Directory One — a search engine marketing firm in Houston — can help you identify and remove bad backlinks and develop new, positive links to your site. Call 713.269.3094 to learn about a new backlinking strategy today!