Google’s war on spam
May 19th, 2008 by Catherine DoyleRecently I’ve been reading quite a lot about some highly regarded websites being penalised by Google. I can see why they want to keep the spammy sites out of their search results, but in many cases it seems like innocent businesses are being hit by this as well as the unscrupulous operators.
In fact my husband noticed a couple of weeks ago that one of his websites had been penalised and his visitor numbers from Google had dropped right off as a consequence. When we checked his site, we found that some of the sites he’d been linking to for years were now horrid spammy sites (rather than the reputable sites they were when he’d first linked to them). He’s now removed these and asked Google to reconsider, but you can see why you’d want to avoid getting on Google’s bad side in the first place!
If you’re doing any promotion of your web site yourself, it’s well worth reading and complying wit h Google’s quality guidelines on linking to other websites. If you’re linking to other sites, make sure the other sites are:
- relevant - e.g. they are on a similar subject
- provide quality content that you’re happy to recommend
A good rule of thumb is to link to a site only if you feel it’s genuinely useful to your visitors. Don’t be persuaded to exchange links just for the sake of a link back, and don’t buy links to enhance your rankings. Lastly, check your links occasionally - good sites can go bad, so make sure the sites that you’re linking to are still relevant and high quality sites.
Happy Marketing,
Catherine
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Founder, Soothed - web design & online marketing for natural therapists
Editor, natural bloom - sharing the inside story on holistic health
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