Thursday 17 February 2011

How backlinks can harm your site in Google

One of the most frequest quesitons I hear from business owners is "How can I increase the amount of people who link to my site, I understand that backlinks improve my website's visibility in Google, and might even get me to page 1"

This is true, but to what lengths do you go to get these precious backlinks? Search the web for relevent blogs, directories and websites, politely ask the webmaster if they would link to you? Or in your enthusiasm and with cost not an issue, use an SEO agency who owns thousands of static web pages and websites that they gobble up when domains expire then exploit to the max, placing links on all of these sites back to yours.

Oh yes, your site will probably shoot up the organic (free) results in Google, but at what cost?

One case study from February 2011 is highlighted by Matt Cutts, the head of the Webspam team at Google, and a man whose every speech, blog post and Twitter update is parsed like papal encyclicals by players in the search engine world.

On Google.com in the last several months, one name turned up, with uncanny regularity, in the No. 1 spot for each and every term: J C Penney.

The company bested millions of sites — and not just in searches for dresses, bedding and area rugs. For months, it was consistently at or near the top in searches for “skinny jeans,” “home decor,” “comforter sets,” “furniture” and dozens of other words and phrases, from the blandly generic (“tablecloths”) to the strangely specific (“grommet top curtains”).


This striking performance lasted for months, most crucially through the holiday season, when there is a huge spike in online shopping. J. C. Penney even beat out the sites of manufacturers in searches for the products of those manufacturers. Type in “Samsonite carry on luggage,” for instance, and Penney for months was first on the list, ahead of Samsonite.com.

Some of the 2,015 pages linking back to this company are on sites related, at least nominally, to clothing. But most are not. The phrase “black dresses” and a Penney link were tacked to the bottom of a site called nuclear.engineeringaddict.com. “Evening dresses” appeared on a site called casino-focus.com. “Cocktail dresses” showed up on bulgariapropertyportal.com. ”Casual dresses” was on a site called elistofbanks.com. “Semi-formal dresses” was pasted, rather incongruously, on usclettermen.org.

There are links to JCPenney.com’s dresses page on sites about diseases, cameras, cars, dogs, aluminum sheets, travel, snoring, diamond drills, bathroom tiles, hotel furniture, online games, commodities, fishing, Adobe Flash, glass shower doors, jokes and dentists — and the list goes on.

“I can confirm that this violates our guidelines,” said Mr. Cutts during an hourlong interview on Wednesday, after looking at a list of paid links to JCPenney.com.

On that Wednesday evening, Google began what it calls a “manual action” against Penney, essentially demotions specifically aimed at the company.

At 7 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, J. C. Penney was still the No. 1 result for “Samsonite carry on luggage.”

Two hours later, it was at No. 71.

At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Penney was No. 1 in searches for “living room furniture.”

By 9 p.m., it had sunk to No. 68.

In other words, one moment Penney was the most visible online destination for living room furniture in the country.

J C Penney reacted to this instant reversal of fortune by, among other things, firing its search engine consulting firm.

Read the full article here.

So, beware of companies offering backlinking services, as Google will see your links in volume over a matter of days, instead of months, and will smell something fishy. Linkng should always be carried out in a natural, white hat way, growing steadily over time, rather than creating a 'cyber motorway' of traffic to your site within a short space of time.

For ethical, white hat SEO, contact www.1weekseo.co.uk for more information.