Many site owners engage in link building practices to help rank their sites stronger organically while some make money online by selling links that pass pagerank to other sites. Some content marketers even get paid to 'build links'. Well, it seems people have gotten too loose with these practices thereby forcing Google to publish a reminder that spammy links violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Google’s post reminds those who publish articles referred to as guest posts, sponsored content, press releases etc, that if done aggressively, with intention to build links that can manipulate pagerank, etc they could expose their sites to being penalized in Google.
The penalty of course, will affect the ranking of the site that published the content that contains the spammy links and also the sites that are linked to. There is nothing really new about the reminder though because Google published same warning in 2014. However, this reminder is more specific in terms of large-scale article campaigns.
According to Google, below are factors that, when taken to an extreme, can indicate when an article is in violation Google's guidelines on link schemes:
How To Stay Safe
Whether you are distributing content or you are the one publishing those content on your blog, you might escape manual actions or penalties by simply placing rel="nofollow" on those links.
Kindly note that Google is not against article distribution in the cases when they inform users, educate another site’s audience or used to increase brand awareness. But if such distribution is done primarily to pass pagerank, then there’s a problem.
If you've got spammy links on your site, you can disavow them.
Google’s post reminds those who publish articles referred to as guest posts, sponsored content, press releases etc, that if done aggressively, with intention to build links that can manipulate pagerank, etc they could expose their sites to being penalized in Google.
The penalty of course, will affect the ranking of the site that published the content that contains the spammy links and also the sites that are linked to. There is nothing really new about the reminder though because Google published same warning in 2014. However, this reminder is more specific in terms of large-scale article campaigns.
According to Google, below are factors that, when taken to an extreme, can indicate when an article is in violation Google's guidelines on link schemes:
- Stuffing keyword-rich links to your site in your articles
- Having the articles published across many different sites; alternatively, having a large number of articles on a few large, different sites
- Using or hiring article writers that aren’t knowledgeable about the topics they’re writing on
- Using the same or similar content across these articles; alternatively, duplicating the full content of articles found on your own site (in which case use of rel=”canonical”, in addition to rel=”nofollow”, is advised)
How To Stay Safe
Whether you are distributing content or you are the one publishing those content on your blog, you might escape manual actions or penalties by simply placing rel="nofollow" on those links.
Kindly note that Google is not against article distribution in the cases when they inform users, educate another site’s audience or used to increase brand awareness. But if such distribution is done primarily to pass pagerank, then there’s a problem.
If you've got spammy links on your site, you can disavow them.
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Alright. Noted mr and mrs google.
ReplyDeletethat one doesn't mean i would say am Commenting from Safaxnet.com.ng
ReplyDeleteYou talked about rel canonical. How do I go about that. Thanks. God bless.
ReplyDeleteYes there's a point here and we have websites like ahref, semrush and others to detect spammy links and get rid of them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the update bro
ReplyDeleteBoss Jide, This Disavowing, I dont really understand it, How will I know a link that is spammy??
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information
ReplyDeleteCommenting
From
Entpaded.com
spammy links has thought me a lot in the past and how to be careful when it comes to building links because some sites looks good but their links are spammy too
ReplyDeleteReally informative
ReplyDeleteBoss jide is there anyway I can know if the links to my blog www.stanleysblog.com is spammy?
ReplyDeleteHi ogbonge, thanks for this post. I will try and disavow all the spammy links on my link profile.
ReplyDeleteOga Jide, I will continue this practice for my event blogs, reason being that they are on sub domains and I can change at anytime.
ReplyDeleteInteresting tips thanks for sharing.
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