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An iCrossing POV
06/02/2014
iCrossing 2014
Contents
1.
Introduction ............................................................................................ 3
1.1. 1.2. Background ................................................................................................................... 3 The end justifies the means ........................................................................................... 3
2.
3.
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1. Introduction
Companies now need to commit to removing inorganic backlinks as vigorously as they once focused on building them. Why? Because if a great part of the sites link strength relies on unnatural and manipulative links the sites rankings and overall traffic would be at very high risk. Companies need to become aware of these links now, BEFORE they experience traffic drops which will almost certainly occur when Google re-evaluates their sites backlinks either through an algorithm update or a manual review. Once penalised it can take months, if not years , to claw back the position they once held on Googles search results pages.
1.1. Background
For a very long time link-building was the core activity in pretty much any SEO campaign. In many cases, links with keyword-rich anchor text would result in higher rankings, especially if they were placed on authoritative and trusted domains. Google attempted to address this manipulative approach with the release of the first Penguin update back in April 2012. This completely changed the way most SEO savvy people think about link building strategies .
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Googles recent actions in fact verify that links are still a massive ranking factor, whether passing positive or negative value. According to Mozs 2013 ranking factors survey links are still the most important part of the algorithm.
So on one hand links are still the main influencer of rankings but on the other the line between success and failure is thinner than ever before. Risks associated with links have lately
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exponentially increased and pretty much any kind of strategy that aims to gain links in order to improve (or according to Goo gle manipulate) rankings may be violating Googles quality guidelines:
However these are both reactive and proactively removing inorganic links to avoid being hit by the next update is recommended.
First and foremost you need to make sure that there is a good reason to spend time and effort on link removals and that this activity justifies the investment. Manually identifying the unnatural links and removing them is challenging, yet necessary, in order to recover from a manual penalty. This is because: Unlike disavow, a removed link 100% guarantees that the risk the link was posing no longer exists. There is a lot of evidence to share with Google about all the hard work that has taken place before requesting a manual review.
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All these reasons clearly show that just disavowing may not be enough and link removals may be worth the effort.
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Source: Portent
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If most of the remaining links are still unnatural you should try to remove more, otherwise the sites rankings and traffic levels will not have the chance to recover.
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London, UK 22 Chapter Street, 2nd Floor London, SW1P 4NP United Kingdom Main: +44 2078 212 300 Fax: +44 2084 337 005
Brighton, UK 13 Black Lion Street Brighton, East Sussex BN1 1ND United Kingdom Main: +44 1273 827 700 Fax: +44 1273 827 701
www.icrossing.co.uk results@icrossing.co.uk
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