I have received a copy of an email that details some of the services provided by American Express Market 3D. In it, they explain the inbound link building, social bookmarking, and general directory submissions:

– Inbound Link Building: Targeted Blog Post Creation and Distribution (22)
– Our SEO content writers create an original blog post related to your industry and post on a proprietary network. One of the most important aspects of the written blog post is our control over the anchor text and the relevancy of the blog. This allows us to use your targeted keyword as the link back to your website which enhances your website’s credibility for the keyword in question. Please keep in mind that the blog post will be written in third-party form (your company not the subject) with the main purpose being a link back to your website.

– Inbound Link Building: Locate and Submit 10 Social Bookmark Links
– Links created from social bookmarking websites (such as delicious.com) allow users to access their favorite websites from any computer with an Internet connection. We add your website (create a link) to our highly used social bookmarking websites so that search engines can index a link to your website and members of these bookmarking websites can access your website.

– Inbound Link Building: Locate 15 General Directories and Submission
– General directories, such as dmoz.org, include various categories that make it easier for Internet users to find niches, products, or services (i.e, business, computers, health, etc.). In order for your website to be included in the directory, we will find the most relevant category for your business and submit your website (following the directory’s guidelines). Submitting to directories allows us to include your targeted keyword within the titles and descriptions, and when accepted, create a high-quality link back to your website.

While I do not have a problem with blog posts, social bookmarks, and directory submissions, there is a “right way” and “wrong way” to do it. Certainly working with prominent, well-known industry bloggers to receive mentions (or review your product or service) is a viable and recommended solution. And encouraging social bookmarks to your site’s “shareable content” and quality content is reasonable. Sure, when I have a new blog post, I tend to tweet about, add it to Google+, and to my Facebook page. I fully expect good websites to be listed in DMOZ.org, the Yahoo! Directory, and Best of the Web. But that, unfortunately, is not what we’re talking about here. After all, this is American Express putting their name on a service that they should be proud to offer their customers, right?

Not exactly. The problem lies with the entire execution of this process and service, which is so bad that even Google is getting involved here–telling these website owners that they have detected “unnatural links” to their website. Google also details, in their message, that after everything is cleaned up, the website owner must offer an explanation and request reconsideration. This is hardly the value-added service that I think American Express had in mind. The following is a copy of the message received from Google by a website owner as a direct result of participation in the American Express Market 3D program (I have purposely removed the name of the website):

Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.com/

Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.com/,

We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.

We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results.

If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.

If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.

Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team

I personally took the time to review all of the backlinks to the website in question, as well as all of the anchor text of the links to this website. I have seen direct evidence of the link building efforts by American Express Market 3D, and after analyzing the backlinks in detail, it is clear which anchor text that American Express Market 3D is using–and it has been very easy to identify the websites of where these backlinks have been created. Furthermore, other emails that I have received detail the exact anchor text that’s being targeted by American Express Market 3D–which is not even anchor text that appears in the title tag of the website in question. My understanding is that it is just not a keyword phrase that this website is targeting at this time.

I have also received a copy of an email report sent to the website in question from American Express Market 3D, which I’ve copied below:

Dear XXXXXXXXX,

SEO Update – Link Building

Completed Task: 1 professionally written & posted blog post

Client Website: XXXXXXXXXXXXX.com

Blog Post Title: Tips in Planning Your…..

SEO Service Category: Link Building

Benefits: By having a professional SEO writer blog about your website, we are able to control the anchor text. This allows us to use your keywords when we make links back to your site. These links help build your search engine credibility and are very beneficial to your SEO campaign.

Keep in mind that the most important part of this blog post is that it is relevant and the right keywords are used in conjunction with linksto your site.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a blog post?
A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. Therefore, a blog post is an entry on a blog.

What is anchor text?
Anchor text is the text that you click on to activate and follow a hyperlink to another webpage or another web site. Search engines use this text to determine the subject of your page and the targeted page. By using your keywords in the anchor text, we’re able to help the search engines rank you for the appropriate search phrase.

Have Additional Questions?

If you need additional help, please contact your Campaign Management Team with the information provided below.
Market 3D Search Marketing
1-877-492-9520
www.search.market3d.com
Market 3D Search Marketing Service executed by OrangeSoda Inc.
Contact Customer Service | View our Privacy Statement | Add Us to Your Address Book

This e-mail is a customer service message that has been sent to notify you of important information regarding your account. To learn more about e-mail security or report a suspicious e-mail, visit us at americanexpress.com/phishing.
© 2012 American Express Company. All rights reserved.

I generally do not have a problem with adding a blog post and including the link. I am, though, not a big fan of using the same exact anchor text, over and over again, on numerous low-quality blog posts. I personally don’t have a problem with what American Express Market 3D is doing–it’s just the execution and the fact that these links are such low quality they were flagged by Google–and the website’s search engine rankings are suffering as a result.

As a result of my detailed backlink research of the website in question, I was able to identify at least 50+ links to the site in question. Some of the blogs that were “professionally written blog posts” are currently banned in the Google search engine, which is not a sign of “quality”. Let’s take a look at two of the blog posts that were written. Again, this apparently a “value-added” service for American Express customers. Keep in mind that this is a random screen capture from the actual blog, not a blog post that is pointing to the website in question. The blog post in question is very similar to the one shown below, and was located on the same blog.

This is a prime example of the type of blog post that Google does NOT like, and the kind of blog posts that should NOT be pointing to your website. This is a prime example of the type of link building that you should NOT do. These links will get your website banned in the Google search engine (and most likely in Bing.com as well).

I believe that you, as a website owner you have a responsibility to monitor the links to your website–especially if you know if anyone is doing any sort of link building on your behalf. At the same time, if someone is building links to your website, you have a right to know exactly where those links are appearing (with the exact URLs) and where “submissions” or any other online marketing is being done, on your behalf. After carefully reviewing the links and URLs that were built by American Express, I am not surprised that the website in question recieved the message they received from Google–and why their website is suffering in the organic search results.

Let’s take a look at another example of a blog post that posted by American Express on as a “value added” and courtesy service for their customers:

This blog, called “Aloha Travel Vacation”, that not only contains blog posts about travel topics, but even blog posts about plumbing. What does plumbing have to do with Travel? Take a look at the plumbing blog posts. Here is one of the sentences: “These are places that need to be joined to as soon as one is aware of them to avoid a larger harm from developing.”. Huh? C’mon American Express, this the quality that you giving your customers? Does this really deserve to link over to your customers’ websites? By the way, the website in question, the one who received the message from Google about unnatural links, has a blog post on this particular blog. It appears that the blog is owned by Orange Soda, Inc., the SEO firm who apparently is executing these SEO campaign(s) on behalf of American Express Market 3D. This particular blog is one of many of the unnatural links built to the website in question. Here is the whois data for this domain:

In my extensive review of all of these links to the website in question, it is clear to me that this is not just an isolated incident. There are literally tons of other websites who have had these low-quality, unnatural links built to their websites by American Express. And they continue to be built, hurting not only the website in question, but hurting the search engine reputations of literally every customer who has allowed American Express to engage them in this program. This absolutely has to stop. Immediately. Before any websites are banned in the search engines as a result.

So, what’s the bottom line here? If you have a website, you owe it to yourself to immediately download and review all of the backlinks to your website. You can use the MajesticSEO.com Site Explorer to review your backlinks. I also recommend monitoring of your backlinks on a regular basis. And if you have received one of these site-devaluing messages from Google, don’t ignore it–take action.

You may have a link in the footer or the sidebar of someone else’s web site. Yet you need to find out what the surrounding text is around those locations. You don’t want to appear to be nothing more than on a list of paid links located on another site. Instead, you want those links to be promoting you as a trustworthy site that has something of value to offer them. You want the links to your web site surrounded by text, as if the other site is “talking about” and thus pointing to your web site.

Let’s take a look at an example list of links:

- Search Engine Watch
- Search Engine Land
- Search Engine Roundtable

That above is a list of links. Although it is a list of some of my favorite search engine related web sites, those links are not really the “ideal” type of links. Sure, they all include keywords related to “search engines”. Let’s take a look at the next paragraph of text:

The search engine news web site that has been around the longest is Search Engine Watch. SEW was run by Danny Sullivan, who now operates Search Engine Land. Barry is in charge of Search Engine Roundtable, which updates their site several times each day–and tends to have information that you won’t find on those other search engine sites.

The text that is around the links in the paragraph above provide context and are relevant to the paragraph. So, the search engines (mainly Google) tend to “like” those links better than if the links might appear as a list (as shown above). While there are other factors involved, such as whether or not those links appear on a sidebar, in a footer, or somewhere lower on the site (perhaps you have to scroll down a bit to see them), it is always preferred to have your link surrounded by text.

If you already have links to your web site, or are analyzing your current links, you may want to see the the text that surrounds your links. If you aren’t happy with it, or if the text that surrounds your link is not on-topic, take the time to talk to the web site owner that’s linking to you–you may be able to get it changed.

Read more of my search engine optimization tips for more info about link building and overall SEO.

That’s why I continue to post these search engine optimization tips, so we can get back to the basics here of SEO. So, let’s take a look at heading tags and remember that your heading tags should include your keywords.

The heading tags you create fore ach of your web pages should have keywords in them for effective SEO. These are the headings for the body of your web page. You should have at least three heading tags for each page. This is how you inform the search engines and visitors about what you have to offer on your various web pages.

You definitely want to put the 1st heading tag, called, H1 around the name of your product. This is so that it targets what you are selling on that particular page of your website. You want to use the keywords that are the most important so that you will be able to have those important words at the top of the web page.

You want to do this for every single web page, even those that you don’t end up being pages where you sell items. This includes your blog pages too because they will often get a great deal of traffic. You can use the H2 and H3 headings for any subsections where you can use keywords effectively as well.

If you have many web pages, you want to adequately have headings for all of them. This includes your about us page, your frequently asked questions, and your testimonials pages. By effectively using these heading tags, you will be able to give your site plenty of structure which is professional. You will also be able to get higher search engine rankings and far more traffic than before.

According to BrightEdge, “Share of voice is an innovation from BrightEdge that helps companies understand how their search rankings stack up against the competition. This unique and now patented capability allows companies to discover the entire competitive landscape for a group of keywords, what percentage of the keywords in the group they rank for, and the number of keywords for which they rank. This patented capability helps companies discover new competitors and create winning competitive SEO strategies.

The number and types of digital channels that a marketer can leverage to out-rank their competition has exploded. Beyond their web site, they can also leverage blogs, social media, video sharing, mobile content, and many other channels. Until now, business owners and designers of web pages had to guess their share of voice and relevance manually, without a proven system. The new patent bridges the knowledge gap between guessing and knowing who has the greatest share of voice in organic search, which is incredibly useful information for any SEO practitioner.”

Here is more info on the patent:

Abstract
A method for managing reference to an entity on a network includes determining shares of voice for an entity and other entities across a plurality of channels with respect to a plurality of search terms. The method also includes correlating shares of voice for the entity and the other entities with respect the search terms to determine a relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities. Thereafter, shares of voice for the entity across the plurality of channels may be correlated to determine relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels. The relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities and the relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels may then be displayed.

Inventors: Yu; Jimmy (Foster City, CA), Yu; Sammy (San Mateo, CA), Park; Lemuel S. (Cerritos, CA), Yip; Rolland (Foster City, CA)
Assignee: Brightedge Technologies, Inc. (San Mateo, CA)
Appl. No.: 12/855,668
Filed: August 12, 2010

What is claimed is:

1. A method for managing references to an entity on a network, comprising: determining shares of voice for an entity and other entities across a plurality of channels with respect to a plurality of search terms, wherein determining shares of voice includes determining rank positions for the search terms with respect to the entity and the other entities and multiplying the rank positions by products of estimated click rates and volumes of traffic on the network for the entity and the other entities; correlating shares of voice for the entity and the other entities with respect the search terms to determine a relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities; correlating shares of voice for the entity across the plurality of channels to determine relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels; and displaying the relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities and the relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein determining shares of voice includes retrieving search results associated with different geographic locations.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein calculating shares of voice includes determining volatility of search results for the search terms.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising correlating shares of voice with historical changes in search signals.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the channels include at least one of display advertisements, organic searches, page searches, linked advertisement networks, banner advertisements, contextual advertisements, e-mail, blogs, social networks, social news, affiliate marketing, mobile advertisements, media advertisements, video advertisements, discussion forums, news sites, rich media, social bookmarks, paid searches and in-game advertisements.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the search terms are determined by a process including: determining a grouping for actions related to the entity, the grouping including a plurality of terms; searching the network for the terms associated with the grouping; and analyzing results of the searches to determine the rank positions for the entity within the results.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein analyzing the results of the searches includes crawling the results of the search.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising performing a keyword frequency analysis on the pages crawled during the crawling step.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising grouping keywords identified during the crawling step with the terms of the grouping.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein crawling the results of the search includes identifying page types of references within the search results.

11. A system for optimizing online references to an entity, the system comprising: a processor configured to execute computer instructions to cause the system to perform operations, the operations comprising: searching at least one channel on a network for references to the entity and other entities using a plurality of search terms to generate search results; scoring the references associated with each of the plurality of search terms to generate scores for the references within the search results with respect to the entity and the other entities; correlating conversions by one or more visits to the entity with the search terms that directed the visits to the entity to determine a conversion rate; determining shares of voice for the entity and the other entities across a plurality of channels with respect to the plurality of search terms, wherein determining shares of voice includes determining rank positions for the search terms with respect to the entity and the other entities and multiplying the rank positions by products of estimated click rates and volumes of traffic on the network for the entity and the other entities; correlating shares of voice for the entity and the other entities with respect the search terms to determine a relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities based on the scores for the references; and correlating shares of voice for the entity across the plurality of channels to determine relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels based on the scores for the references.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein searching at least one channel includes searching at least one of: display advertisements, organic searches, page searches, linked advertisement networks, banner advertisements, contextual advertisements, e-mail, blogs, social networks, social news, affiliate marketing, mobile advertisements, media advertisements, video advertisements, discussion forums, news sites, rich media, social bookmarks, paid searches and in-game advertisements.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein using a plurality of search terms to generate search results includes using a plurality of keywords.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein using a plurality of keywords further includes crawling previously returned search results and conducting a keyword frequency analysis to identify at least some of the plurality of keywords.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein scoring the references associated with each of the plurality of search terms includes determining a keyword rank.

16. The system of claim 11, further comprising scoring the references associated with each of the plurality of search terms to generate scores for the references within the search results with respect to competitive listings; comparing the scores of the references within the search results with respect to the identify with the scores for the references within the search results with respect to competitive listings; and displaying the search terms, the competitive listings, and the scores for the references within the search results with respect to the competitive listings.

17. The system of claim 11, further comprising determining costs for improving the scores of the references within the search results with respect to the entity.

18. The system of claim 17, further comprising determining values for improving the scores of the references within the search results associated with the search terms and selecting references to be improved based on determining the costs and values for improving the scoring of the references associated with the search terms.

19. The system of claim 17, further comprising optimizing scores based on the steps of determining the costs and values for improving the scores of the references associated with the search terms.

20. The system of claim 11, further comprising performing a compliance analysis for the entity.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the compliance analysis includes defining rules for the entity, defining constructs for the entity, determining owners for the constructs, and applying the rules to the constructs to determine compliance of the constructs with the rules, wherein applying the rules is performed in a distributed network in the cloud.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein applying the rules includes applying the rules by way of a virtual private network.

Home Depot, the home improvement “big box” retailer, has been caught promoting what I call “questionable” link tactics and providing false information to their vendors. In an email to their vendors (specifically those who provide installation services), a representative from Home Depot encourages their vendors to link to specific pages on Home Depot’s website using specific anchor text–and then encourages those links to be “hidden”. Furthermore, Home Depot’s email tells the vendor that linking to Home Depot will essentially increase their website rankings in the search engines.

Several “big box” retailers have been outed recently, including JC Penney, as well as even Google, for using questionable linking tactics in an effort to increase their search engine rankings. While those cases have been questionable because the companies either bought anchor text links from other websites or paid for links to their website on blogs, the Home Depot, in this case, is encouraging their vendors to link with specific anchor text and [b]encouraging those links to be hidden[/b].

The following is the email that I have obtained from one of Home Depot’s vendors. I have only edited a few parts of it (specifically the email address of the user it was sent to).

From: The Home Depot - Home Services
Sent: Monday, April 9, 2012 PM
To: [email address removed] xxxxxx
Subject: Online advertising for Installation Services

SERVICE PROVIDER COMMUNICATION
Date:             April 9, 2012
To:                All US Service Providers
From:            Home Services Operations
Re:                Online advertising for Installation Services

SUMMARY

The Home Depot is in the process improving our online
advertising efforts for our installation services.
We are using our brand authority and marketing power
to increase traffic to our site and convert customers.
We would like to extend this benefit to all of our
business partners and are requesting that you add
a link on your site to relative key words that will
aid our related installation page authority.
Please note that the hyperlink does not have
to be visually indicated.

Linking to The Home Depot website will benefit
our business partners by increasing the page
authority of your website.  Page Authority
predicts the likelihood of a single page
to rank well in search results.  Ranking high
in search results will assist with driving
more relevant traffic to your website.

We look forward to working with you on this
mutually beneficial marketing endeavor.
Please refer to "Action Required" for next
steps and instructions on implementation.

ACTION REQUIRED

* Create the link using the following format:
  [Link Text]

URL:http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/
servlet/ContentView?pn=SV_HS_Home_Insulation

 

Link Text: "Carpet Installation" or your
preferred text.  Please request the
Keyword List spreadsheet for a larger
sample of keywords to use for your
preferred text. Below is a sample of
preferred text to use for flooring: 

Carpet flooring
Carpet install
Carpet installation

Below is an example of the HTML Code
necessary in order for the link to
appear properly on your web page:

carpet installation 

* Ensure that the link is displayed in the
correct format and located on the appropriate
page related to The Home Depot's corresponding
installation category. Provide us with the
URL of the page where the link
will be once it is live on your site. 

* Please send a confirmation email to Joy Tyler at
Joy_M_Tyler@homedepot.com once you haveimplemented
the link on the appropriate page that includes the URL. 

CONTACT

Please email Joy Tyler team at joy_m_tyler@homedepot.com
if there are additional questions or if assistance
is needed choosing the appropriate
page for the link to be displayed.

2455 Paces Ferry Rd., Atlanta, GA 30339

While I do not have a really big issue with Home Depot using their own internal network of vendors to increase Home Depot’s search engine rankings, it appears to me that just doing so–and encouraging specific internal anchor text–is a violation of Google’s Acceptable Webmaster Guidelines. Furthermore, the fact that the Home Depot is encouraging (or even mentioning) the fact that the links do not have to be “visually indicated” is again a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. You should NOT hide links from users, under any circumstances.

Another issue I have is the fact that Home Depot is almost “demanding” and REQUIRING that the vendor place the links to Home Depot’s site. What if they do not comply?

Finally, Home Depot is spreading false information to their vendors: in the email, they say that “Linking to The Home Depot website will benefit our business partners by increasing the page authority of your website.”. Well, in fact, that statement is completely false. I do not believe that linking out to someone will increase YOUR page authority of YOUR website, it will in fact potentially increase the page authority of the site that you’re linking out to. Granted, I do believe that it is a good practice to link out to trusted sites, especially when you mention them by company name or want to provide an example to your readers (such as I have done so in this post).

However, with so many rumors and false information being spread nowadays by so-called “SEO Experts” and “Internet Marketing Gurus” out there, we don’t need a big box retailer spreading false information like this–and it’s just flat out WRONG to encourage hidden anchor text links to your website.

Hat tip goes out to John W at Rank Solid for help with this post.

We recently redesigned our website and pushed it live. However, we forgot to catalogue all of the old URLs on the old website, and therefore we have no way of knowing what the old URLs were on the site, so we can redirect them to the new URLs. Help!

Whenever you redesign your website, it’s important to set up 301 Permanent Redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs so that website visitors and the search engine bots know that the page has moved its location to a new URL. If you use a 301 Permanent Redirect (and not a meta refresh and not a 302 redirect), all of the Google PageRank, or “link juice” is “supposed to be” passed on to the new URL.

But what if you redesign your website and don’t make a list of all of your old pages? Well, there are two ways to deal with this. I actually prefer doing both, so that you make sure that you catch all of the old pages on your site.

Review Log Files for 404 Errors
First, review your website’s log files and get a list of all of the 404 errors on your site. Since the search engines crawl websites a lot, there is a good chance that most of your old web pages will result in a 404 error, and that will be on the list. You’ll also be able to see which pages have the most 404 errors, and you can pay attention to those first.

You may be able to see the 404 errors using web analytics. Depending on which web analytics tools you use, you will be able to see the site’s 404 errors. Make sure you use a web analytics tool that analyzes your site’s log files, NOT something like Google Analytics, which does NOT rely on your site’s log files. If you are using cPanel or another web host that has a control panel, you may have a program called AWStates, or Webalizer, that will do the trick. You may want to download and use Analog, which I’ve been using for over 10 years to analyze a site’s log files.

Review Webmaster Tools
After a few days of the with the site’s new design, you should start to accumulate 404 errors on your site. You can review those errors in Google Webmaster Tools. Since you’re relying on Google’s crawl to identify 404 errors, that may not be as reliable as looking at your log files. But, if you do not have access to the site’s log files, that’s the next best thing. You can also get the data in Bing’s Webmaster Tools, as well.

Other Considerations
Whenever you redesign your website, keep in mind that it’s always preferable to keep the same exact URLs that you have had in the past. Ideally, your site’s URL structure should use directories rather than actual file names for the URLs. For example:

http://www.billhartzer.com/about/

is preferred over using this:

http://www.billhartzer.com/about.html

Using directories such as /about/ is preferred because is is platform-agnostic. It is not tied to any particular type of web server (Windows versus Unix with page.html versus page.asp), and your site structure can remain in place no matter what type of Content Management System you use. You’re essentially “future proofing” your website, as we always will have directories. Even if you decide to use PHP or even ASP.Net as your back-end content management system and code, you can still keep the same exact URLs.

If you have a question for me that you would like me to answer, feel free to contact me and I’ll either answer it personally or post it here on my blog. And you can even remain anonymous, if you like.

It is pretty common knowledge nowadays that buying text links is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and can get your website penalized in the organic search results. Google says specifically that “Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.” We have seen that even a large well-known website’s search engine rankings can plummet when their paid link strategy is exposed.

There are several reasons why you would want to get rid of paid links to your website:

- The Cost of Paid Links. It is, over the long run, cheaper to get rid of the paid links than to have to pay for links every month. Links are usually paid for on a monthly basis.
- Search Engine Ranking Problems. Your website has been penalized in the search engines because of paid links. You were enjoying great search engine rankings for the major keywords that you’re wanting to rank for–and now your website’s rankings have dried up. You’re losing out on a lot of visitors and sales.
- The Fear of Getting Banned or Penalized. I have not seen a lot of websites lately that have been fully banned from the search engine results because of paid links. However, I have talked to a lot of website owners who have been severely penalized because of paid links. It ruins their online business. So, if you are paying for text links to your website, there is a real potential for getting penalized. Your website may not recover that quickly from it. Now is the time to start getting rid of the paid links to your site.

How do you remove paid links without hurting your search engine rankings?

The strategy for getting rid of the paid links will depend on your current situation. If your website has been penalized for paid links, then you need one particular strategy for recovery. If you have not been penalized yet for paid links, but are fearful that you could be penalized, then I recommend a different strategy for dealing with the paid links.

Removing Paid Links if Your Website is Penalized

There are a few ways to determine if your website is penalized in the organic search results because of paid links. Obviously, you should know whether or not you are paying for links or not. One indication of a problem due to paid links is a sudden drop in traffic and non-branded keyword referrals to your website. Check you search engine rankings. If you were found for certain keywords and not you’re not, then that is one indication. A check of your website’s analytics will also be a clue: a sudden drop in traffic at one particular date and time, along with the keyword referrals being mostly branded–whereas the keywords referrals were mostly non-branded keywords. Here is how you should deal with your paid links in this situation:

First and foremost, you absolutely must get a good handle on all of the links to your website. You should be monitoring this on a regular basis already, but in this case you need to use a few tools (using more than one tool will make sure you get all the links) to download all of your links. I prefer to make a master list of links using Microsft Excel and keeping track of them there.

Download all of the links to your website using these tools:
- Google Webaster Tools http://www.google.com/webmasters
- Open Site Explorer http://www.opensiteexplorer.org
- Majestic SEO http://www.majesticseo.com

For Google Webmaster Tools, you must verify your site first. Then, download all of the links to your site and pull them into your spreadsheet.

For Open Site Explorer, I recommend using the paid version which requires an SEOmoz monthly membership. There are a lot of other SEO-related tools, so you may find this useful for other SEO tasks. Download all of the links, including the anchor text, to your site. Add them to your spreadsheet.

For Majestic SEO, I recommend verifying your site ownership that allows you to get access to all of your site’s links. The site’s linking data is available for free if you verify your site–I recommend a monthly membership plan, that allows you to get links to your competitors and access to their other SEO tools. Also, you’ll want to get both the list of historic links to your site and the “fresh” links to your site.

Once you have a list of the links, you’ll want to sort the list and remove the duplicates. I recommend using several different sources here because not all of them are going to have all of the links. This just makes sure you get most of them.

You’ll want to make sure that you start sorting your spreadsheet and keeping track of the following data:
- URL
- Mozrank and/or ACRank
- Anchor Text
- Date found
- PageRank (optional)

The MozRank and/or the ACRank is not as important here, but it does give some sort of indication quality, so you can deal with the links that are higher quality links first. You may need to use another tool to pull the PageRank of each URL if you want to do that. There are tools that will pull the PageRank, including OptiLink, IBP, Advanced Link Manager, and even some free bulk PageRank checkers. Having more data like this just helps you set priorities when dealing with links. In any case, the URL, Anchor Text, and Date found are all important.

Obviously, if your website has been penalized and you’re certain that it’s because of paid links, then you’ll want to stop paying for those links, and get them removed. Keep in mind that just because you stop paying for a links doesn’t actually mean that the link has been removed. You’ll need to verify that the link has actually been removed. Some webmasters are just lazy and won’t take your link down, and there are other cases where it’s more difficult to remove links, especially if they are site-wide links.

So what’s the next step? Remove all of the links, notify Google that they’ve been removed (using Google Webmaster Tools), and start replacing the links. Once the links are removed, you’ll need to keep track of them so that you can replace each one of those links with a non-paid link that is of equal quality. For example, if you had a text link from a PageRank 4 or ACRank 4 page, then you’ll want to get a non-paid link from a PageRank 4 or ACRank 4 page. To make sure that it’s replace properly, you’ll want the link to be on a page that has the same topic. And, this is where the ‘date found’ factor comes into play.

Keeping track of the “date found” parameter here is important. I truly believe that the length of time that a link has been in place could be a search engine ranking factor. So, if you’ve only had a link for a month, then that would be different than if you have had a link for 3 years. If you’re replacing links, you have to realize that even if you replace the paid link you’ve had for 3 years with a non-paid link right now, it may take 3 years until you see the same exact type of search engine ranking impact that the 3 year old paid link had.

The process for replacing your paid links is fairly simple (but can be difficult and time consuming). Work off of a spreadsheet to get yourself organized. Get a good handle on all of the links to your website, and mark them as paid or non-paid. Use other factors (PageRank, MozRank, ACRank) and the original date to determine the quality of the links. Use your budgeted money for the paid text links to create content (or hire a writer) to create content that can be placed on other sites that include the text links to your site.

Removing Paid Links Before Your Website is Penalized

The process for removing the paid links to your website if your site isn’t penalized yet is pretty much the same as if your website has been penalized. However, the key here is to make sure that you do not remove all of the paid links all at once–which could have a big impact on your search engine rankings. So, what you’ll want to do is get a good handle on all of the links to your website: and then start removing and replacing them slowly, over time. Replace the paid links with links that are equal in topic, PageRank (or MozRank or ACRank), anchor text, and age.

Having a few paid links to your website is not going to be a problem, most of the time. As long as your entire link profile (all of the links pointing to your website) are not made up of one type of link, you’re not going to see search engine ranking problems. But, to be on the safe side, I don’t recommend paid links–especially when you can use other methods of getting links to your website.

In the case above, note that “search engine” is near the actual link to Google.com

Links will be given more weight by the search engines, especially Google, when they are surrounded by optimized text. This is compared to the same links that are merely flowing but not with any strategical element in place with them. It is well worth it to visit all of your links out there to your sit and to change the text surrounding them if you don’t already have them optimized.

This is one of the simple, effective, but often overlooked parts of search engine optimization that you can use to improve your rankings. You should have links with the content of your site too such as in the paragraphs. Don’t save them all for the footers or the sidebars. You will find plenty of chances to put in internal links within that content. If you are talking about a corporate website or a press release, then those are perfect opportunities.

There are many opportunities with e-commerce too. For example, you can add a short paragraph after each product description. In it, you can talk about other products that are similar and that would compliment that particular product. This is going to be far more effective for you than just a list of other similar products you offer that would compliment a particular item someone is looking at.

When you take the time to surround text with links to your web pages, you will find that you are getting more traffic to all your pages. You will find that your links liven things up and you may just find your conversion rates exploding. This type of effort can pay off for your ranking in the search engines very well.

It is important to understand how to use heading tags as well a when to use them. Use the H1 tag around the name of your product or service. This should be the keyword that you plan to target with that particular web page. This is important to do because that is what tells the search engines that these particular words found on that page are the most important from all of them that are displayed on that page.

You can start out with the keyword or phrase the same font, size, and even bold as the rest of it. Then you can use a style sheet to change the various elements of the H1 tag. Even if you aren’t selling goods or services, your website can still benefit from the use of heading tags. Any page that has content on it should have its own heading. If you have a blog, then the post title should be considered the H1 tag.

When you have sub sections of an article, that is when you would use H2 and H3 tags. You also need to make sure you use appropriate header tags for the various types of pages found on the typical website. This can include the about us page – where you would use about us as the keywords of the H1 tag.

With the use of heading tags on your web pages, you offer some type of structure that is the foundation of it for the search engines. They rely on you telling them that the H1 tag is the most important part of that particular web page that is being indexed. It is important to use these heading tags on every single web page. It will certainly help you to get higher rankings in the search engines. As a great tip, your H1 tag should be the same as or very similar to what you have as your title tag.

Therefore, one of the goals in the world of e-commerce has to be creating and securing a very good reputation. To find out what is going on with it right now, go to Google because it is the #1 search engine that people use today. Type in your company name and see what comes up.

Go through the first few pages and see what is listed. However, I encourage you to go at least five pages deep to get a great deal of information. This type of digging helps you to see what people have to say about you. Chances are you can also find out if there are some solid links to your website or not being identified in that search engine for potential visitors.

During this type of search, you are very likely going to come across some profiles. Some of them may be social media profiles due to the explosive use of it online today. However, they won’t have links in them, just your company name most of the time. To help you with improving reputation and ranking, get in touch with the various site owners and see if you can get a link put in there as link text to your business name.

Back to the concern of your reputation, type in your business name and the reviews behind it. There you will see what consumers have to say about you. If there are negative comments, then try to get in touch with those consumers and address their issues. Learn from what is being said too. For example, if you have complaints about customer service not getting back to them vamp up that area of your business to make it stronger.

Many of the sites with reviews will also allow you to make comments. That is your opportunity to make amends. Take responsibility, thank the individual for sharing information, and then state how you plan to correct the problem. This type of improvement on your part will hold plenty of clout with those considering buying something from you. It is a great way to improve your reputation.