{"id":2439,"date":"2013-03-04T09:38:35","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T09:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/?p=2439"},"modified":"2014-03-25T13:37:07","modified_gmt":"2014-03-25T13:37:07","slug":"backlink-analysis-google-penalties-case-studies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/2439\/backlink-analysis-google-penalties-case-studies\/","title":{"rendered":"Backlink Analysis &#8211; Google Penalties Case Studies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We had a <strong>&#8220;full-house&#8221;<\/strong> Webinar on Friday (all 100 seats were occupied). As promised to everyone in the webinar here is the recording for to digest.<\/p>\n<p><iframe name=\"wistia_embed\" src=\"http:\/\/fast.wistia.net\/embed\/iframe\/ciuruc01of?controlsVisibleOnLoad=true&amp;version=v1&amp;videoHeight=400&amp;videoWidth=640&amp;volumeControl=true\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"640\" height=\"400\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3>Main Topics<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>What are Unnatural Links?<\/li>\n<li>How do I spot them?<\/li>\n<li>How do I recover from an Unnatural Links Penalty?<\/li>\n<li>Quick Overview of the recent Interflora Penalty.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Unnatural Link&#8221; Sites Analyzed &#8211; Case Studies<\/li>\n<li><strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/strong>SmartLipo &#8211; Medical Surgery Niche<\/li>\n<li><strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/strong>Allesovergokken &#8211; Online Gambling Niche Netherlands<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0 \u00a0 Webhostingmadness &#8211; Webhosting Review Niche<\/li>\n<li><strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/strong>Learnenglishindublin &#8211; Learning Foreign Languages Niche<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>What are Unnatural Links?<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Links that are created with the sole purpose of influencing a search engines rankings.<\/li>\n<li>Mostly DOFollow links, these links can be spotted by Google using trained algorithms that search for specific patterns in specific niches.<\/li>\n<li>These algorithms are also &#8220;helped&#8221; by humans that verify specific sites and possibly flag them. You can read more about this if you search the cognitiveSEO blog for <a href=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/1307\/google-rating-webspam-guidelines\/\">Google Rating &amp; Webspam Guidelines<\/a>. There was a leaked document last year that explains the process.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A few examples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>blog comments built at mass scale<\/li>\n<li>link networks that interlink and link to a specific site to help it increase its rankings<\/li>\n<li>paid dofollow links (advertorials, sponsored links etc )<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>More on the subject <a href=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/604\/identify-low-quality-links-easily\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>The BIG 3 Rules of Ranking with Natural Links<\/h3>\n<p><strong>1. Google is a machine that is trying to &#8220;emulate&#8221; the real world.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What it seems unnatural in the real world should be unnatural to Google. (if it is not now, it will be in the future)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>2. Become Trust Worthy!<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Prepare for this. It Takes Time. (like in real life).<\/li>\n<li>Basic Idea &#8211; Show Google that you are Trust Worthy and Google will give you Ranking Juice.<\/li>\n<li>Gain Trust without Commercial Anchor Text.<\/li>\n<li>Be Strategic &amp; Patient.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>3. After Google Trusts you Don&#8217;t Abuse it!<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Start using Commercial Anchor Text to guide Google to rank you better.<\/li>\n<li>Continue to build trust!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>The BIG 5 Rules of Unnatural Link Analysis<\/h3>\n<p><strong>1. Each niche is different, and this can be seen by the different link profiles.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This is from a naturalness point of view.<\/li>\n<li>Everything has a Context. Put is out of the Context and it has no value.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>2. The same rules to identify unnatural links in different niches will not apply.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There are generic ones that will apply though, such as &#8211; high number of low metric links.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>3. Look for Backlink Profile Extremes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Analyze from different angles. Profile by Site Type, Link Type, Metrics etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>4. Big Density of Commercial Anchor Text compared to Brand Anchor Text<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>5. Look for Links with Similar Footprints. (Advertorials, Link Networks, Footer Links etc)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>How should I recover from Unnatural Links Penalties<\/h3>\n<ol>\n<li>Identify &amp; Mark the Unnatural Links.<\/li>\n<li>Ask the site&#8217;s webmasters to remove those links.<\/li>\n<li>Most of them won&#8217;t, so your only chance is Google Disavow.<\/li>\n<li>Do it carefully! Don&#8217;t sent the whole list of links to Google. It won&#8217;t work.<\/li>\n<li>Explain what happened and give details for as much unnatural links as possible.<\/li>\n<li>Remove all unnatural links from an affected domain.<\/li>\n<li>Wait &#8230; while &#8220;waiting&#8221; start\u00a0building natural links. Increase your Trust and Dilute you Bad Link Profile.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Quick Overview on the recent Interflora Penalty<\/h3>\n<ol>\n<li>Interflora is a site that sells flowers in the UK and other countries.\u00a0It is one of the biggest flower sites in the UK.<\/li>\n<li>Approximately a week ago it was penalised by Google and the entire SEO community started to analyze this.<\/li>\n<li>My opinion is that this is an enforcement of another guideline from Google regarding &#8220;advertorials&#8221;. This is because Matt Cutts himself posted the same day on twitter a short note about the specific guideline.<\/li>\n<li>There were other cases in the past with sites like JC Penney and others that were penalized by Google.(&#8220;brands&#8221;).\u00a0For Google this is the easiest way to spread the word about an enforcement of their guidelines.<\/li>\n<li>A way of educating the SEO community.<\/li>\n<li>Was this purely about other unnatural links? I do not think so. Other competitors of Interflora have a big amount of unnatural links and still they are not penalized. This was about <strong>&#8220;Advertorials&#8221;<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>If we check these against their competitors we will see that this makes the difference.<\/li>\n<li>A &#8220;new old&#8221; unnatural link = the advertorial link.<\/li>\n<li>What it works today &#8230; might not work tomorrow!<\/li>\n<li>But a lot of spammy tactics still work.<\/li>\n<li>Work for a day or a week. But if you plan for longer than that you have to comply.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<div>Read more on the <a href=\"http:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/2366\/interflora-penalty-advertorials-gone-wrong\/\">interflora penalty here<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We had a &#8220;full-house&#8221; Webinar on Friday (all 100 seats were occupied). As promised to everyone in the webinar here is the recording for to digest. Main Topics What are Unnatural Links? How do I spot them? How do I recover from an Unnatural Links Penalty? Quick Overview of the recent Interflora Penalty. &#8220;Unnatural Link&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,24,18,16,127],"tags":[56,59],"class_list":["post-2439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-backlink-analysis","category-case-studies","category-google-penguin","category-technical-seo","category-webinars","tag-interflora-case-study","tag-seo-case-study"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}