How to Get Your Website Banned – The Issue with Paid Links
Although backlinks are one of Google’s best friends, they can still be a risky business if you go about getting them in the wrong way.
If you like it, link it
Backlinks are extremely important when it comes to your website’s rankings as they are a sure sign of how useful the content on your site is. I.e. the more quality links you have – the better quality Google will perceive your site to be.
Many businesses buy links to artificially improve the rankings of their site. This is frowned upon by Google as it is considered it to be a misleading way to try and improve the position of websites on search engine results pages.
They have therefore developed various ways to detect paid links, after which the penalties could include severe and long term damage to your rankings.
The Big ‘G’ is watching
Google have always encouraged webmasters to report sites using paid links to help them further improve the way their algorithm detects the buying and selling of such links. Their Webspam Team, which consists of professional “link detectors”, do nothing all day other than judge the quality of Google’s search results, looking out for any unwanted spam and paid links.
Despite the fact that Google’s algorithm is already designed to detect paid links based on reports, it does sound like improvements are on the cards. Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s Webspam Team recently commented that the information issued from these reports could be used to further develop their algorithms.
This will hopefully soon enable them to automatically detect the paid links even before they’ve been reported in their manual spam reports.
No pain, no gain
As we’ve admitted in some of our previous blog posts, getting good quality backlinks to your website is no easy feat. It can be time-consuming and even difficult at times, however the end results – or shall we say the top page results – make it all worthwhile.
The key is to avoid automated link building systems and instead focus on using the necessary SEO tools to help get good backlinks in the most efficient and effective way possible.
Zelst can help you with the link building process by analysing the backlinks of your website as well as those of your competitors. We can also develop a quality link building campaign to ensure long lasting results using our tried and tested approach.
