Spammers beware! This summer, Google is going after black-hat and link spammers. In a video on YouTube, Google's Matt Cutts announced 9 things that will do within the next months. How do these changes affect the position of your web pages in Google's search results and what can you do to protect your rankings? 1. There will be more Penguin updates Google is going to launch the next generation of the Penguin algorithm within the next few weeks. The Penguin 2.0 update will go deeper Read the full article...

Many people are not aware that links to other websites can have a positive influence on the rankings of their web pages on Google. The reason for that is that Google uses 'long clicks' to determine the quality of a search result. Understanding this ranking factor will help you to improve the position of your pages on Google's search result pages. What are long clicks? If a user clicks on a result and remains on the found website for a longer time, it's a long click. A short click occurs Read the full article...

Co-citation and co-occurrence are important factors that influence the position of your web pages inGoogle's search results. The environment in which the links to your website can be found have a big impact on the value of the links. 1. Co-occurrence: the words on the linking pages influence your rankings Even if the link to your website does not include your targeted keyword, your web page can get a ranking boost for that keyword. The link just has to come from a page that is related Read the full article...

In a video on YouTube, Google's Matt Cutts explains what will happen if a website that gets penalized for selling links contains a link to your site: Matt Cutts says that the Google toolbar PageRank of website that sell links will be downgraded by up to 50%. In addition, the penalized website won't be able to pass PageRank to other sites. That means that websites that are linked by the penalized website will no longer benefit from those links. This does not mean that buying links is safe. Read the full article...

Has your website been penalized by Google? No need to panic. Take control of your website success and get your rankings back by following the tips below. Most people go through the following five phases when their website has been penalized by Google: Denial: "Google hasn't penalized my website. This is just a temporary error in Google's algorithm. My website rankings will be back next week." Anger: "It's not fair. Google has no right to downrank my website. They are a monopolist. If I Read the full article...

A new study shows that Google's tolerance of spammy backlinks is decreasing: "The Portent analysis found strong evidence that Google is steadily lowering the bar for what it considers spam link profiles. [...] We found that the majority of websites — 36 out of 50 — have “clean” profiles with less than 10 percent of their links coming from questionable sources. [...] We discovered Google has been applying a stricter standard over time. In the initial Penguin update, the only sites Read the full article...

Your website might have received an unnatural link warning message from Google. Does this mean that your website has been penalized? What do you have to do if you receive such a message? Some days ago, the BBC has received an unnatural link warning message. Google's response to that message shows how to deal with these notifications. What exactly has happened? Last week, a representative of the BBC posted a question in Google's help forum: "I am a representative of the BBC site [www.bbc.co.uk] Read the full article...

For many webmasters, link building has been a numbers game. The more links a website has, the better. Whole industries were built around this idea. You can buy links in bulk and there are several tools that automatically created hundreds of backlinks through low quality links from forums or blog comments. Since Google's recent updates, even the most ignorant webmaster should have understood that this is not the way link building works. Google hates these artificial backlinks and you can even get Read the full article...

Last month, Google's Matt Cutts announced that he was "taking a look at a naughty Russian link selling software": Discussions on black-hat forums indicate that the Russian link network SAPE links has been penalized by Google. Webmaster who used this network indicate that their website rankings have been downgraded. This wouldn't be the first time that Google penalized a link network. The risk of using link networks Black hat websites are full of services and tools that sell link packages. Read the full article...

Since the dramatic Google Penguin update a few weeks ago webmasters and companies have been going crazy trying to clean up their backlink profiles. Instead of doing things to improve their web pages, some webmasters concentrate on removing backlinks that point to their site. If you're a regular reader of our blog, you know that we don't recommend deleting backlinks. It won't help your website and chances are that you will waste a lot of time and money: Is Google’s disavow links tool just a trick? Google Read the full article...

One new thing you can do in HTML 5 is wrap links round block-level elements. That means that you can link a complete block on your web page with a single a href link: <article> <a href="example-link.html"> <h3>This heading will be linked</h3> <p><img src="example.jpg" alt="this image will be linked">This text will be linked.</p> <p>This 'Read more' link will also be linked.</p> </a> </article> The single link surrounds the whole Read the full article...

Managing your backlinks is important if you want to be in control of your rankings. For example, you need answers to the following questions: Who links to your website? How do these websites link to your site? Do other websites still link to your site? Which websites use the nofollow attribute to link to your site? If you actively build backlinks, you also need answers to these questions: Which websites are related to my website? What is the quality of these websites? How can I contact these Read the full article...