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SEO Strategies SEO tips

Matt Cutts: three things you should know about link removal threats

1. Most sites get a Google warning after creating spam links

Matt Cutts says that there are two different situations when someone wants a link removed:

“Situation #1 is by far the most common. If a site gets dinged for linkspam and works to clean up their links, a lot of them send out a bunch of link removal requests on their own prerogative.

Situation #2 is when Google actually sends a notice to a site for spamming links and gives a concrete link that we believe is part of the problem. For example, we might say ‘we believe site-a.com has a problem with spam or inorganic links. An example link is site-b.com/spammy-link.html.’

The vast majority of the link removal requests that a typical site gets are for the first type, where a site got tagged for spamming links and now it’s trying hard to clean up any links that could be considered spammy.

2. If you get many link removal requests, you should check your website

Some people get link removal requests although they did not add artificial links to their websites. If you get many link removal requests although you did not participate in link schemes, you should check your website:

“It’s not a huge surprise that some sites which went way too far spamming for links will sometimes go overboard when it’s necessary to clean the spammy links up.

The main thing I’d recommend for a site owner who gets a fairly large number of link removal requests is to ask ‘Do these requests indicate a larger issue with my site?’

For example, if you run a forum and it’s trivially easy for blackhat SEOs to register for your forum and drop a link on the user profile page, then that’s a loophole that you probably want to close.

3. If your website hasn’t been exploited, you can ignore link removal requests

If you haven’t been spamming and if you’re sure that your website hasn’t been exploited, you can safely ignore link removal requests:

If the links actually look organic to you or you’re confident that your site is high-quality or doesn’t have those sorts of loopholes, you can safely ignore these requests unless you’re feeling helpful. […]

This is a great example of a well-maintained forum, and as such I agree that you’re doing the right thing by ignoring link removal requests.

 

By SEO Costa Rica Profiler

Categories
SEO Costa Rica SEO Strategies

SEO Negativo. ¿Qué es y cómo recuperarse?

La competencia nos ataca con SEO perjudicial para nuestro sitio web, perdiendo posiciones y con ello, tráfico orgánico.

 El SEO Negativo no es otra cosa que SEO realizado por la competencia no con la finalidad de escalar posiciones, sino de todo lo contrario. La competencia nos ataca con SEO perjudicial para nuestro sitio web, perdiendo posiciones y con ello, tráfico orgánico.

¿Qué tipo de SEO Negativo puede hacerme la competencia?
Pueden hackear tu sitio web y modificar el archivo robots.txt, plugins malware, incluir contenido spam, iframes ocultos o links perjudiciales. Las posibilidades son variadas.
Construyendo enlaces nocivos para mi web. Si construyen decenas o cientos de enlaces en sitios de mala calidad y/o de contenido adulto apuntando hacia mi web, será penalizada.
Reportes Spam. Si a unos cuantos “colegas de trabajo” les da por mandar unos cuantos reportes de spam a Google, te van a investigar para averiguar si estás haciendo algún tipo de técnica no-natural de construcción de enlaces. Si estás haciendo algo que no le gusta, serás penalizado.
Cómo averiguar si me están haciendo SEO Negativo
Si has recibido alguna notificación de malware o linkbuilding antinatural en Google Webmaster Tools, es un claro indicio de que estás siendo atacado (si no lo estás haciendo tú, claro).
Si has sufrido un claro decaimiento en tu tráfico orgánico, pérdida de posiciones y tu estrategia SEO sigue las directrices de Google, es bastante probable que estés sufriendo un ataque de SEO negativo.
Si de repente te llegan un montón de backlinks con anchor text sin sentido desde múltiples sitios que aparentemente no tienen nada que ver con tu temática.
Hay contenido duplicado de mi web en Internet. Puedo comprobarlo con Copyscape.
Cómo arreglar el ataque
Chequea tu cuenta de Webmaste Tools y averigua si tienes algún mensaje de advertencia de Google. Si has recibido un ataque tendrás un aviso de Google. No obstante, aquí tienes un post de Matt Cutts respondiendo a un usuario al que le habían hackeado la web y explicando que si te diriges a la ayuda para webmasters de sitios comprometidos (hackeados) ellos te guían como hacerlo. Lo curioso es que el usuario en sí decía le habían bloqueado después de escribir un comentario negativo sobre Google. Neil Patel, que también sufrió un ataque, lo primero que te recomienda es que protejas tu servidor. Compañías como Sitelock se encargan de ello. Te recomienda no utilizar hostings baratos como GoDaddy, ya que no tienen buenos sistemas de seguridad. Además, actualiza tu software, utilizando versiones antiguas de WordPress tienes más probabilidad de ser atacado.
Revisa tu archivo robots.txt para cercionarte de que no estás bloqueando a Google, chequea tu código para revisar que no estás apuntando a sitios SPAM y supervisa tu contenido asegurándote de que no estás empleando términos y links spam como adultos, de apuestas o ciertos productos de la industria farmacéutica.
Cómo eliminar los backlinks nocivos
Puedes averiguar con herramientas como Href y Open Site Explorer qué sitios están apuntando hacia tu site, además de saber el anchor con el que lo están haciendo. Si tienes acceso a herramientas como Sistrix, podrás comprobar en caso de duda qué sitios están penalizados y cuales no. Si observas una caída prominente de tráfico, exagerada y de golpe, lo más probable es que ese sitio esté penalizado. No obstante, si dudas, puedes saber más o menos si son sitios de buena o mala calidad porque:

No recuerdas haber realizado esos enlaces.
Los sitios no tienen que ver con tu temática, sino que es un popurrí de enlaces salientes de diversas temáticas.
Envía un mail sugiriéndo que eliminen esos links y si no te contestan, tendrás que utilizar el disavow links de Google, a sabiendas de lo que pude tardar Google en eliminar esos backlinks. Pueden ser semanas.. o más bien meses. Según comenta Neil Patel en su post sobre SEO Negativo, ¡no te saltes la parte de emailing! Google quiere ver que primero lo intentas. También recomienda que si tu equipo de abogados te deja utilizar el logotipo a la hora de enviar el email de eliminación de backlinks, tienes más posibilidades de éxito.

Hay una herramienta realmente buena (de pago) que nos avisa de los enlaces buenos, los enlaces semibuenos y los enlaces peligrosos que deberíamos eliminar a toda costa. Esta herramienta de llama Link Detox Tool de Link Reseacrh Tools.

En cuanto a los reportes de spam…
Si no has violado las directrices para Webmaster de Google, no debes estar muy preocupado por este tipo de reportes. Si estás creando una estrategia natural de linkbuilding y no está utilizando técnicas blackhateras, puedes estar tranquilo. Si tu estrategia SEO se basa en la generación de contenido de calidad desde un sitio web bien optmizado y con buena usabilidad y arquitectura, pensado para el usuario, puedes estar tranquilo.

Conclusion
El SEO negativo existe, lo mejor que puedes hacer es crear contenido de calidad, compartible por los “social mediers” y crear una marca potente en Internet en torno a tu temática. Si tienes una buena cantidad de links de autoridad, incluso te puedes “permitir el lujo” de tener algunos links de baja calidad apuntando a tu site. No puedes controlar a la gente que te envía links nocivos, pero sí la autoridad de tu site.

 

Por Javier Ruiz

Categories
SEO Costa Rica SEO Strategies

55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.

8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.

10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.

11. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.

12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.

Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.

15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.

16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.

18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.

19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.

20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.

21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.

22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.

23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.

25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.

26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.

27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.

28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.

29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.

30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.

31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.

32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.

33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.

34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.

35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.

36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!

37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.

38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.

39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.

40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.

41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:

(1) Log out of Google

(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar

42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.

43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.

44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.

45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.

46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.

47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.

48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.

49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.

50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.

51. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.

52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.

53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.

54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.

55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.

Richard V. Burckhardt

Categories
Search Marketing SEO Costa Rica SEO Strategies SEO tips Social Media

3 Clever Ways to Leverage PR for SEO Success

When looking for fresh link building ideas, seek inspiration from PR pros. They have long used several tried and tested methods to enhance the brand image and sales of their clients.

Forget the measly press release – that is one PR tactic that has been used and abused by many companies as a shortcut method to scale their link building efforts. And, as we all know, shortcut methods rarely work long-term in SEO.

Instead, let’s explore a few of the most effective public relations strategies that can be slightly tweaked to positively impact SEO on a longer-term basis. As an additional benefit, these tactics will also help to grow your online brand and your sales.

The ideas fall under two main categories, which are essentially clever ways to toot your own horn and a means to leverage the good deeds your company does to earn links and goodwill.

Leveraging Your Company’s Authoritative Figure

Every company has at least one person on its leadership team whose accomplishments are worth shouting from the rooftops. Usually it is your CEO or it could even be your COO or CFO. If they are successful thought leaders and have useful information to share, then leverage them as the authority figures for your company.

Here are the best outlets for this.

1. As Guest Contributors

If they are good writers, apply to have your authority figures guest write a periodic column for an online publication. Even if they aren’t good writers, you could enlist the help of professional writers to edit and perfect their columns, so they can still share their valuable advice and expertise.

Important: these columns shouldn’t contain any sales pitches. They should instead aim to help the reader learn new things, provide significant value, and generate interest.

Then, pitch to local media outlets, industry-specific websites or media; or aim higher and apply to sites such as Huffington Post or Forbes. It is easier to get on media outlet websites than on TV, print or radio. This will have the added advantage of securing you a link from a high quality website, as well as helping you effectively reach a wider audience.

In order to do this most effectively, write two to three articles to showcase the breadth of writing talent and pitch them to the websites, either directly or with the help of a PR agency that has the contacts to get them in front of the right people. You can also add in a short list of proposed future topics, so they have an idea of what to expect in future months.

It’s important to provide unique articles to each source; having the same article published by two different sources will sink the relationships faster than you can say battleship. Keep in mind the audience of each website and look at other articles they have published to get a feel for what will work best for that source.

When placing the link don’t try to have a link in every article as it will look overtly sales-y and discourage the relationship with the website. Instead, one link from the bio section is enough, since with each new article published you will secure additional links to the bio page, strengthening that link back to your site.

2. As Guest Talent

Is there a business-related TV or radio show on your local or industry-specific media? Reach out to them and have your authority figure go on air to share advice or perhaps take questions from the audience. In giving their time to help others, it will not only build their reputation (and your company’s), but will also get you a great link back to your site from the web page of the show.

You can even look at Internet radio stations or popular podcasts, which would provide a higher likelihood of getting a recurring guest spot to build longer-lasting value. As you build up the repertoire of guest spots for your authority figure, you can then reach out to bigger and better media outlets to increase your chances of success for getting accepted for a guest spot there.

Once again, it’s important here to not try to slip in any sales pitches at all. In providing value to others, you will gain back enough of a benefit to make it worth the time and effort. Here too, the bio section on the site is sufficient for the link to your site.

3. Conferences/Corporate Events

Are there marketing or industry-specific conferences your company attends? If so, consider asking your authority figures to pitch to speak, if they are comfortable doing so.

Hosting or sponsoring these conferences or other networking events is another good way to gain links and exposure, without the need to actually be a speaker if they shy away from public speaking.

Alternatively, consider entering the top executives or the company itself into awards competitions. Examples of awards to consider competing for include:

  • Top executive awards, wherein C-suite management can enter to win a top CEO or Smart CXO award
  • Growth awards such as Inc. 5000 or local area fast growth company awards
  • Best workplace type awards
  • Awards for going green or for innovation

Do Good Deeds and Garner Press Coverage

Look for genuine opportunities to help others in order to secure press coverage for your company. If any acts of kindness or activities of the company are interesting enough to warrant attention from the press, then take advantage of the link value they could provide.

Here are some of the easier ways to secure press coverage.