Blog networks get hammered
In the last few weeks several well known Blog networks have been de-indexed. Google have been aggressively removing blog networks from the search results causing a lot of public paid blog post services to be shut down. This is the notice BMR posted on their blog. Note we stopped using BMR in our link maps well before it became an issue for them publicly. We pay attention to the Google webmaster guidelines and also we test each link source. Google have made it clear that they are seeking to de-index all similar paid blog networks. (see this tweet from Matt Cutts). (Our current web promotion maps do not link public blog networks to customer sites).
Issues / Unnatural links Messages
Further to that, there were 700,000 Google Webmaster messages sent out to website owners. reference. Included in them were many messages relating to unnatural links or quality issues.
With this unnatural links message the sites are generally all still indexed ranking as per usual. There is a difference between a warning rather than a de-indexing. This looks like the roll out of the SEO over-optimization campaign. If you got these warnings it could be for a number of reasons. You should check your links in webmaster tools and see if there is anything odd about them. In some cases you might have had links from a de-indexed network. You may also have been the target of a competitor getting bad links. Perhaps you hired a cheap link builder on Fiverr or similar who ran software such as xrumer or scrapebox to generate several low quality links.
The best thing to do to avoid receiving a warning is to make sure you have natural links from places other than blog networks without excessive keyword anchor text links coming to your site. For our SEOpartner customers we are very careful where we submit content. Just as we do for our own websites, we create quality content and distribute it to well regarded sites such as Youtube, WordPress, Blogger, Squidoo, and private sites that are not part of public blog networks. We also specialize in issuing genuine press releases with varied anchor text.
Google know what they want
Google are clear about what they want, quality content and quality content distribution (social, viral, useful). That is what SEO Partner does. We create quality content and distribute it to quality sites by hand. It is worth having a read of Google webmaster guidelines here.
Why the aggressive actions from Google?
Possibly the threat of BING search engine market share increasing and Facebook being the dominant web destination etc…. forces the Google index to have to be better. They have more ability to tune their data points than ever before and a general sweep is designed to spread fear and to cause link sellers to stop selling links. I would say it is working well since we have seen a surge in customers lately. There is a lot of really crappy content on the internet and we agree mostly that this is a good thing for the internet in general. Sometimes the algorithm can unfairly trip a website but as you are about to find out this can be reversed…
Here is what we have been up to this week
The whole team (more than 30 people) and I met face to face and trained on our updated standard operating procedures. The important highlights we have commenced are:
1) We accessed our considerable data set to track what assets / maps and link profiles are performing best and what was not. Our research and development is extremely active.
2) All traffic maps have been refined and double checked to ensure that no public blog networks link to a customer site. (We feel they will all be de-indexed before long).
3) We added more content creation depth to the deliverables. Note we publish the minimum on our site but we often do more behind the scenes.(We like to over deliver).
4) We organised our social media channels into categories for announcing new content. These are hand created profiles with full RSS syndication. We think social signals are important now.
5) On one of our many test domains we were able to successfully reverse one of the very few webmaster warnings we received through the Google webmaster tools. They revoked the original review and restored the site to normal.
6) We extended the amount of time we quote for delivering each package as it does take longer now. Without blog networks submission is a lengthy process but worth it.
7) The price of the Pro was updated to where it should have been last year – 199 one time or 189 for recurring to account for some of the extra costs. (We absorb the rest). As always old recurring plans remain price locked on the lower rate until cancelled.
8) We decided to add more social no follow links (like from Facebook) and varied anchor text link sources to naturalize the link profiles for customers. Too much of the same anchor text is a bad thing now.
9) Recent ranking reports were collated and rankings improvements are still on track as we have grown to expect.
Our commitment
To date we are not aware of a single SEOpartner customer having a site become de-indexed. We are working extremely hard to look after your site as much as we do ours. In these constantly changing times for SEO companies we remind you that we are not a paid blog network. We are a quality content creation and distribution service. We hand create all content and we hand distribute all content. Please focus heavily on making sure your website meets all Google webmaster guidelines for incredible content and we should all do just fine.
With our considerable team size and research base we are committed to being the quality web marketing team of choice.
