*mind map of Penguin 2.0 announcement

After months of no updates, Matt Cutts lets the cat out of the bag on the newest webspam change… Penguin 2.0 is coming and it will have serious implications for link buying and therefore porn SEO. Since 80% of the top porn tubes spend tens of thousands buying links, expect to see big shuffles in the SERPs. Other sectors that might be affected are the ones that participate in link schemes like payday loans and other lead generating niches.

1. Link Buying

Don’t buy half the crap that is out there. If you see a webmaster whoring their site out for paid links then the chances are its not going to help you and may even hurt you. Penguin 2.0 will be targeting porn SEO as specified by Matt Cutts in his announcement but also in other niches that are notorious for having large tangles of link schemes.

2. Advertisements

Think about page layout, Google’s advertisement guidelines, affiliate links, nofollow tags and more.

3. Link Analysis

Check your backlink profile and get to know it well. Anchor text diversity, deep linking, progressive link scheduling.

4. Content is King

This is not ever going to go away. Clean code, site architecture and crawlability are part of this. , Quality or quantity and Google uses the visitors activity as well to know the CTR, bounce, time on page, pageviews/visits etc.

5. Host Crowding

Google will start to block and limit how many results can appear not only on the first page but throughout the index and upon the send and third search. Minimize redundant content, noindex taxonomies, focus on landing pages.

6. Stay Away From Black-hat Forums

Don’t follow the heard. The chances are that if the heard are already doing it and either bragging about it or offering it on the forums then you should not follow.

7. Geo-targeting in the International Googles

Extra steps will need to be taken to assure good ranking in Google’s search engines around the world like .co.uk, .com.au, .ca etc… Cutts mentions there will be two changes but he doesn’t say what they are. My guess would be CDN feeding content from local servers and IPs and languages.

8. Leveling the Playing Field

Cutts also mentioned briefly that these new changes are geared toward helping the little guy, “small-medium businesses and just regular webmasters as well”.  For the longest time only the top sites that could throw tons of money at buying links made it in the search engines but the Penguin 2.0 update will leave great opportunity in the algorithms to get ranked and still spend a fraction of what the top sites are paying!

From the Horse’s Mouth

Section 1. How to Manage an SEO Team for On-Page SEO Optimization

Section  2. How to Manage an SEO Team for Off-Page SEO Optimization

General Rules

1. Don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing- You don’t necessarily have to hide details from your team but don’t waste time training them on tasks they are not performing.  Keep everyone focused on their own task instead of worrying about what their co-worker is doing in the desk next to them. Splitting the team up by assigning individual SEO tasks is the best way to delegate and get the most productivity out of your workforce. Trying to teach everyone ALL aspects of SEO could take years and would be a waste of time and resources.

2. Blind leading the blind- If you are not a seasoned SEO expert, hire one or it will be the blind leading the blind. You cannot just try to hire experienced SEO agents and hope it will all come together neatly. Instead, one person must have their hands on the steering wheel to keep the campaign from be pulled in different directions. SEO is also counter-intuitive so you can’t just assign specific tasks and expect your employees to do it correctly without guidance and supervision.

3. Management Skills- Being an SEO manager of 10 or more requires management skills. Its one thing to be able to do the SEO tasks yourself but its another thing to teach someone else how to do it and oversee their progress.  “Its like splitting yourself up into little pieces and delegating the performance of each part of you to another person in your team.” 

4. Communication Skills-  Show the up-most respect for each member of your team but still be clear, concise and confident when instructing them. Always know the difference between assertiveness and aggressiveness.

5. Manage Expectations- In the unpredictable world of Google algorithms, being able to predict how and when the search engines will react, is a vital skill. The sole foundation of a company’s finances must rely on your predictions. Never over-promise and you will always end up over-delivering.

How to Manage an SEO Campaign for On-Page SEO Optimization

On-page optimization is all about coding and design therefore, you will most likely not be a very popular person amongst your fellow developers at least until they get used to you nitpicking through their work. On-page SEO goes against the grain of how a programmer would normally code a site and since the programmers are usually highly paid and highly ranked employees, you must be careful not to step on the wrong toes or offend anyone.

1. Use a Project Management Software- Don’t allow any changes to be made to the live site unless they were entered into a ticket and the following procedures are followed…

A. Prioritization- All tasks should have an assigned priority. Certain tasks must be done in order so you don’t have to go back and recode lines that you’ve already worked on.

B. Collaboration- All tasks must be assigned to the appropriate person(s). Some tasks require collaboration from more than one team member so assigning a task to the correct member(s) will help keep everyone on the same page.

C. *Approval- All tasks must be approved. To make sure changes won’t be made that could negatively effect your rankings. Its a tedious job trying to determine the reaction of SERPS but if nothing was logged, it will be almost impossible to troubleshoot cause and effect. Furthermore, if changes are first approved,  “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. In conclusion, using a PMS and using it correctly, will always result in projects being finished much quicker, smoother and with a lot less surprises along the way.

2. Be a good listener- Most development teams are made up of unique counterparts that each bring their own talents and skills to the table. Examples are front and back-end developers, server managers, graphic artist and conversion specialist. As the old saying goes, there’s no “I” in teamwork and encouraging feedback and suggestions from your whole team will always render better results. Nobody knows everything and everyone knows something. Maximize creativity!

How To Manage an Off-Page SEO Team of Link Builders

If there is something you haven’t mastered yet then take the time to do it yourself that way you can show your agents the right way to get it done.  I have split my teams and tasks up into 16 individual link building tasks ranging from writing SEO-friendly articles and answering questions on Q&A sites to social media and running black-hat software. Here’s some important tips for implementation.

1. Set Quotas- No matter what their task is you can set quotas and benchmarks. Set reachable goals for the number of posts, tweets, comments, answers, emails, citations or links that should be added daily, weekly and monthly. Offer incentives for exceeding these goals.

2. Delegate Individual Link Building Tasks- Assigning dedicated tasks to individual agents allows them to focus their efforts on just one aspect of the equation and become an expert in their niche. Examples are Q&A, Bookmarking, Blogging or Facebook.

3. Reporting- Use web-based reports like Google Docs or if you are more paranoid about Google spying on your data, then use a local network to share reports instead. Having a centralized reporting system is mission critical.

4. Time Management- There’s always too much to do and never enough time in the day. Keep a set schedule that will draft out your SEO agent’s activities for the entire month.

5. Use Desktop Monitoring Software- DMS products like Spector Pro allow you to track every move your agents make. You’d be surprised just how much time is wasted when your agents spend 20mins here and there on Facebook, YouTube or chatting with their friends. Nobody wants to be an “office Nazi” but when your agents know that their every move is being watched and recorded you won’t have to.

Welcome to the big leagues, some of the most challenging and most rewarding SEO is what I refer to as the 3 Ps… Pills, Porn and Poker. If you can get results in one of these sectors, then you can dominate any industry online.

Here you can…

• Get your porn site listed in Wikipedia.com
• Buy Penguin-Friendly Porn Links
• Buy Social Signals for porn sites
• Check out my recent porn SEO tips for 2013
• See why I’m against buying a .xxx domain
• Contact me for questions about your porn site
• Or just continue reading my full 13 step process to optimize a porn site below

First, allow me to introduce myself, I am the former SEO director for Freeporn.com back in 2010 and have also consulted colleagues from Pornhub.com, Redtube.com, Porn.com, Bangyoulater.com and more. With over 10 years of SEO experience, I have repeatedly taken adult sites to the first page of Google for top keywords like free porn, mobile porn, escort and many more. Below are the important essentials to porn SEO. If your site is already on the 1st page for the keyword free porn,  go ahead and bounce. Otherwise, you should probably read this article in full.

Step 1 Content is Still King

First thing’s first, CONTENT! Most adult tube sites rip videos from other sites and either manually post them on their site or they have automated software to do this for them. The problem isn’t necessarily that the videos are duplicated from other sites but that the titles, tags and descriptions are duplicated as well. Google hates duplicate content! Since Googlebot doesn’t actually watch the videos, they only use the titles, tags and descriptions to tell if a video is unique or if its been lifted off of another website. My tips for adding new videos are to manually edit these attributes with keyword rich textual content. Next, you will want to make sure to categorize them appropriately based on the titles and descriptions. Lets not forget that you also need to have good videos from a wide variety of porn niches because even if I get your site ranked in the top of Google, having a high bounce rate will eventually cause your site to drop again. Lastly, the more categories, the better because it helps to expand your long tail keywords.

Step 2 Setup Porn Buffers

One of the biggest challenges of porn SEO is the censorship. It can be very difficult to get links, likes and bookmarks back to your adult content and for obvious reasons. This is why is it important to setup, what I call “porn buffers”. Porn buffers are sites that do not contain adult content but may have somewhat relevant subject matter that could possibly lead to a porn theme. A few topics can be relationships, sex education or scandals. After setting these pages up you can link to them and then they link to the money site. This creates a buffer between the adult site and the censored site giving you an indirect but powerful link. Twitter, Blogger and other Web2.0 sites can also provide high quality buffers for adult link building.

Step 3 Directory Submissions

There’s tons of paid and free directories out there. Don’t just focus on the Adult directories either, hit em all! Spend the time to manually submit to as many as you can. While submitting maximize by always filling out as much information as they allow. If it says 250 word description then use all 250 words. Be sure to categorize each submission articulately. Use only unique content each and every time to make sure the work looks and is natural. Google, Yahoo and Bing crawl even the smallest directories in effort to increase their index. Set a monthly budget of $200 and use discrimination while choosing if this directory is worth the price. You should spend on average $10 to $30 for a good listing.

Step 4 Like is the New Link

Social media optimization aka, SMO is a must. Until recently, off page SEO boiled down to just one thing.. LINKS but nowadays likes, +1s, diggs and etc. can be even more powerful than links if done right. The trick with social media and web2.0 (Porn SEO 2.0) is that the accounts shouldn’t just appear to be real, they must actually be real. This means instead of using SEnuke or other automated software, you need to manually setup profiles. Another important attribute to good social media optimization is to show regular activity on all your accounts. These SMO activities include making friends and followers, updating your profile with pics, posts, links and comments. Then you need to engage the community by commenting on other relevant posts and profiles, take polls, like relevant material posted on others profiles. I always tell my social media agents to picture themselves at a party, “do you want to be a wallflower or do you want to socialize and make friends?”. Many social media sites do not allow links to adult content so in these cases you will link to one of your porn buffers.

Step 5 Porn SEO Forum Link Building

Just like with social media there are tons of black-hat programs out there like Xrumer and ScrapeBoard that will automatically create accounts and post links to hundreds of thousands of forums but Google and the other search engines
know the difference and so do the webmasters who own these forums. The best and most effective way to get links from forums is manually. The process is simple but time consuming. Sign up to a forum and start engaging the community. Many forums do not allow outbound links so be sure you don’t waste your time with these ones. In addition many of the forums that do allow links only do so after you have proven yourself to be worthy or only after a certain amount of posts. This means you must first become a valued member of the forum, provide good feedback, informative posts and contribute to the community. You must show regular activity on these forums (twice a week or more) and in some cases you will also have to employ the use of your porn buffers in the case where links to adult content is banned.

Step 6 Porn Link Buying & Exchanges

In the past Google implemented algorithm changes that have voided reciprocal links and the debate of whether or not they are good still remains so the safest and most effective way to exchange links is via 3way link exchanges.  You link to one of their sites and in exchange they link back to you from a different domain. You can initiate these link exchanges by searching the web for other porn sites and we simply shoot them an email offering a 3way link exchange. Make sure to keep reports in spreadsheets so you can track the links and check them from time to time. Negotiations can be tricky so try to keep the exchanges fair and you will have greater success.

Whatever you do, don’t stop buying links. Instead, just change the way you buy links! Buying porn links is an old school, strategy that Google has recently addressed in the Panda and Penguin updates. Even Matt Cutts, chief engineer of the Google webspam team, has openly warned against this practice many times including in this video…

I have tested this on top porn sites and have come to the conclusion that buying links from certain sites and networks can hurt you so you must really pick and choose. For example, watch out for networks of sites that can easily be detected. Prior to Panda and the Penguin, these links worked fine but nowadays you’ll be throwing your money away at best and worse yet, they can now actually affect your rankings negatively if you participate in what Google calls link schemes. I could teach a small child could look at some of these sites and tell you if they’re are connected in a network so of course a multibillion dollar company like Google can can figure it out. For starters, do they share the exact same CSS, IP addresses, images/content or are the using the same script to help automate the network.

Step 7 Article Marketing for Porn Sites

Just as you would do in traditional SEO, you can promote your porn site with article marketing. Many article websites do not allow links to adult content so you will use your porn buffers for this. You can still target your articles toward specific niches and keywords. For example you can write an article about the health risks of having anal sex and then point that link to a buffer page that in turn links to the anal sex category of your site. For the best results, write articles that follow what Google calls “high quality content” just because it’s porn SEO doesn’t mean you can take shortcuts or just jot down a bunch of gibberish.

Step 8 On-page Porn SEO 2.0

All the same on-page SEO attributes apply to a porn site as they would on any site but that being said, there are specific characters of a porn site that just seem to work better for the porn niche. Here are a few… Tube sites rank higher because they have a lower bounce rate. Users can come in and can easily find what they are looking for. Adult picture galleries are always good for browsing and provide extra content. Ratings and comments allow user interaction and lastly, having a branded site with high quality design and graphics is invaluable. It would take a full text book to fully cover on-page SEO so I will just mention and provide links to some of the more critical attributes and practices…

• Implement the canonical link tag in the header of your site.
• The markup should be W3C validated and free of any major errors and conflicts.
• The CSS should be checked in the W3C CSS validator and free of any major errors and conflicts.
• All titles, and descriptions must be well written and unique.
• Your robots.txt file should block bots from the back end of the site as well as from any part of the site that is not optimized such as search pages and user profiles.
• Your site should not contain duplicate pages and if it does, they should be removed or corrected with the canonical link tag.
• Image optimization by including the keyword in the file name, title and alt text of all images.
• Videos, pictures and posts should only be assigned to one category.
• Social media integration using OpenGraph meta content and social media plugins.
• Each page needs a minimum of 250 unique words with the suggested use of h1, h2 and h3 tags that also include the keyword or a variation of the keyword.
• make sure your DNS settings are resolving correctly by using this tool DNS Checker.
• Generate an XML and GZIP sitemap that will be automatically updated each time the site updates.
• Fix all broken links, 404s and not found errors.

Step 9 Blog Comment Posting for Porn SEO

Just as with social media and forums, there are several programs that will automatically post comments with links on various sites but this leaves behind a huge footprint that can easily be tracked by Google and other search engines. Not only that, but the approval rates for this type of spamming has gone down tremendously due to people abusing the software. If you want good quality links from blog comments, the best way to do it is manually. Using URL harvesting software, you can gather millions of URLs and then filter them based on PR, CMS type, keyword relevancy and more. I then distribute these lists and have my SEO agents actually read the posts and say something constructive or engage the conversation in the comments section of the site. Mostly anyone who owns a blog can spot comment spam from a mile away and report it. This not only wastes your time and effort but it can also get your site put on may blacklists.

Step 10 Setup a Network of Porn Sites

For each one of your categories you will need to register at least 25 domain names and put them in groups based on relevancy to each category (25 anal porn, 25 blowjobs, 25 ebony etc.) You will want to make sure these domains are setup on multiple IP address across multiple C classes. Next, install WordPress on each site. Using a software called LinkFarmEvolution you can easily manage and post new content to these sites daily. Each post should include highly spun text, high quality, spun pictures and embedded videos (embed from your own site only). Before you get all crazy posting links in this network, you should first try to build up good content and get the pages indexed. I actually spend a lot of time making manual customizations, adding plugins and building links to the sites in the network. Once this is done, you will want to slowly add links from the network to the relevant pages within your site. Adding the links all at once or too quickly could leave a big SEO footprint behind and get the network discovered.

Step 11 Competitor’s Links

Monkey see monkey do, if your competitors can acquire those links then there’s a good chance you can too. Use your favorite site explorer like Ahrefs, to harvest all the URLs that are pointing to your competition. You can install a SEO toolbar with this built in. This task is time consuming but can be very rewarding because these are going to be the best links you can get. Obviously enough, if they were good enough to get your competitor’s website ranked on the first page then they will be good for your site as well.

Step 12 Black-Hat Techniques for Porn SEO

“If you can’t beat em join em.” After spending several hours reverse engineering almost every porn site on the first two pages of Google, I have found that ALL of them are practicing black-hat techniques, myself included There’s an old SEO saying that has become the golden rule for Black-Hat techniques; “Anything you could do to get your competitor’s site banned won’t get you banned.” This really means that Google has made sure that you cannot attack your competition by hammering their site with black hat SEO. If it was possible we could easily take out the first ten results real quick. If you think about the algorithms that make this possible it seems very complicated but in actuality, its quite simple. This means that any off-page, black-hat SEO that you do cannot harm your site unless it can be traced with a server-side interaction. The most extreme case I witnessed was when Google traced back forum spam campaigns to files that were being pulled off the same server as their main site. They completely removed the site from their index and lost millions of clicks of traffic.

I have found that dedicated servers, located off-shore are well worth the investment (mine is in Russia). From this server I remotely run programs like Xrumer, ScrapeBox, ScrapeBoard, LFE, Xgen and anything else I can get my hands on. It is highly suggested that you use these proxy IP addresses to help cover up your tracks. These are all very powerful programs but they often fall into the wrong hands and end up getting abused by less than qualified individuals. This ruins the effectiveness. That being said, the people that actually learn to use them correctly can get good results. I mostly use them for link juicing and rarely toward the money site.

As for black-hat software for social media, they don’t really serve a good purpose when optimizing for porn SEO. The reason is because with social media it’s quality, not quantity that matters. You can use programs like Tweetfollowing and Facebook auto posters to assist with your manual SMO task but take it slow because most social media giants can easily detect these programs and will erase your account. This will cause you to loose valuable pages and profiles and all the time spent setting them up. There’s always new tools and programs coming out and developers are constantly striving to keep one step ahead of Google’s next update. The trick is to not get into a hurry, do not take any short cuts and quadruple check every thing before hitting the submit button. Finally, remember the golden rule, make sure that nothing can be traced back to an on-site or server-side connection.

Step 13 Porn LinkWheel

Most of the methods of link building that I have already mentioned can be implemented into your linkwheel and I elaborate even more in this article entitled Porn Link Wheel Building. That being said, here’s a list of some high PR sites that do allow links directly to adult content and adult websites. Again, I suggest you fill these sites up with high quality content not spun crap. That will make this porn linkwheel more of a content linkwheel”.

• Youtube.com
• Flickr.com
• Blogger.com
• Tumblr.com
• Identica.ca
• Delicious.com
• Binklist.com
• Fotopages.com
• Twitter.com
• Sensualwriter.com
• Blogtur.com
• Pornlivenews.com
• Pornblogspace.com
• Livesexbook.com
• Kinky-blogging.com
• Thumblogger.com
• AdultsBlogging.com
• Blog.bitcomet.com

Extra XXX SEO Tips

• Keep your keyword density around 1% per page
• Keep a set schedule of tasks for better time management
• Hire good writers

Always try to go the extra mile because in the world of Porn SEO, the difference between the 1st page of Google and the 2nd page is millions of dollars. Now go fourth and concur! There’s 10 spots on the 1st page so good luck and I hope to see some of you Porn SEOs joining me there real soon!

Website Inoculation 101

One of the most important aspects of your post Panda SEO campaign is the inoculation of your site against what could be considered spammy links and even negative SEO. Today, the SERPs are full of sites ranking in the top positions of Google with less links than their competition and this is a direct result of failing to inoculate their site with the proper authority links and social media signals.

What is Website Inoculation and Why do you Need it?

Website inoculation is performed by getting authority citations and links as well as getting mentioned on social media platforms. All of which, solidifies the legitimacy of your online presence. This is needed because Googlebot is getting better and better at detecting link schemes and unnatural link building techniques by looking at your backlink profile and measure the authority of the sites mentioning and linking to you.

In other words; “If a site is popular enough to attract thousands of of links then why is it not mentioned in Wikipedia or other high authority websites and furthermore, why is no one talking about it on the social media platforms?”

How to Inoculate Your Site

One of the best ways is to get a company page created in Wikipedia. While this may be one of the strongest signals to send Google its requires work to gain or create the notability. You can also protect your site by getting mentioned in and linked to from educational journals, news aggregates like CNN, BBC and AP or by getting links from any of the top authority sites of your industry including .gov sites. This will all vary depending on the niche of your website.

Inoculation Via Social Media

As I mentioned before, if your site is such hot stuff then why is no one talking about you?!? We know that Google takes social media very seriously and is increasingly starting to use social media signals in their ranking logarithms therefore, it is imperative that you get mentioned on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and more. A site that has thousands of links but is not mentioned in social media is definitely going to raise some red flags.

Where do I Get the Links?

Start by identifying the top authority sites that are the most relevant to your niche. For example if your site is about muscle supplements, you might want to get listed on Men.webmd.com or in an educational journal from Duke Medical University or any other .edu website. Other techniques can be by doing press releases and getting mentioned in the sports section of a large news aggregate. In addition, if your site is a brand (which it should be because Google loves brands) then you should be listed in several business directories, Google Places and of course Wikipedia.

Getting Social Media Signals

Manually create and manage your social media accounts. You should have a Facebook page, a Google Plus page, at least 1 Twitter account. Even Linkedin and Myspace are social networking sites that will add creditability to your online reputation. You will want to create updates and network with like minded individuals on these platforms. Offer updates, information, promotions and even humor to get your following to stay engaged. I suggest daily activity on these accounts at least until your presence is established. In addition, bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit not only give you great SM signals but they can also bring lots of clickthroughs.

Build Citations

Building citations to your website is a rather new SEO technique that involves just mentioning your company, brand or website along with keywords to describe it. Googlebot has gotten smarter and can now read the proximity of keywords and attribute them to the mention or “citation” of a company without having to follow a link. When done correctly citation building can be just as effective as link building. For more read this post I did on Building Citations for SEO.

The Rewards

The good news is once you have successfully secured high authority links, branded your company and got people talking about you online, you will not only see an immediate boost in the search engines but this also opens the door to allow you to conduct less-than-scrupulous link building campaigns and get away with it. Yes, you read right… once your site is properly inoculated, you can actually get away with having a spammy backlink profile to an extent. Here’s Matt Cutts talking about it in this video.

High Quality Links can Protect Your Site

Google still needs text to be able to rank your site but web fonts can be great alternative images.  Sites with heavy animation or graphics provide very little content that can be read by Google. This is why Matt Cutts suggests using Google Fonts for appealing word art that can be crawled and indexed.

Google Web Fonts is nothing more than CSS or JavaScript that are being served from Google’s server using an API.

First put the code from your choose font in the <head> tag.

<link href=’http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Averia+Gruesa+Libre’ rel=’stylesheet’ type=’text/css’>

Then add the CSS to your style sheet.

font-family: ‘Averia Gruesa Libre’, cursive;

Go to Google Web Fonts now to start messing around.

Having a Wikipedia page about you or your company will add real notability to your brand but more importantly, it will add serious SEO authority and some of the highest quality links and citations you could possibly obtain! This is also a great way Inoculate Your Website and protect you from future updates like the Panda.

How its Done

First we build the required Notability that will make your site eligible for its own Wikipedia page.  This is done with a series of high profile publications and citations about you or your company in major media outlets. If your site already has enough Notability as described by Wikipedia.com, then we can go straight into the creation of your page. Otherwise, we will have to build genuine notability by getting you links and citations from major publications and source-worthy organizations relevant to your niche.

Get your Porn Site Listed in Wikipedia

Yes, you read it right, I can even get your porn or adult related website listed in Wikipedia. We already have proven case studies of getting other porn sites their own Wikipedia page. Contact me now for a list of these case studies or read more about porn SEO.

Guaranteed Placement

So far we have a 100% success rate so if we are unsuccessful then you will not be charged!

Campaigns can take from 4 to 6 weeks to complete and the price can range depending on how much notability you or your site already has. Contact me now to get a quote.

The new service is a knockoff of Facebook Connect but I must say, it was knocked off quite nicely and since Google owns the search engine too they attribute signups as social signals just the same as if someone liked your site or shared a post on it. Not to mention the intended purpose of making it easier to signup for a new site helps to increase conversions and make the site more user friendly.

I predict that we will see metrics for Google+ Sign-ins in Google Analytics reports and maybe even goal conversions.

To get started just visit the Google Developers area for “Google+ Sign-in” and grab the code. You can integrate your site in about 20mins manually or if you have WordPress then just use a plugin!

Here’s a short video of some case studies…

Either way, this is a pretty big deal and will turn the page on a new chapter of SEO. New backlink analysis Features in Google Webmaster Tools under Traffic> Links to Your Site>.

Identify Unnatural Links

Above is a snapshot of the “Links to Your Site” page in Google Webmaster Tools and below is a post Google made on the Webmaster help Forum a few days ago.

Known issue: links to your site data issues

Thursday, February 7, 2013 | 2:23 PM

Labels: links

The first thing to do in a dicey SEO situation is, Don’t Hit The Panic Button! One of the biggest mistakes people make is they start doing drastic updates to their site or their SEO campaign(s) and this is exactly the wrong thing to do because it could set into action, a chain of events, that can make the recovery process much more difficult. Furthermore, when Google punishes a site for a certain thing like lets say, Link Scheming and then you all-the-sudden stop building links to your site, it will trigger another algorithm that confirms you were link scheming in the first place. Yes, don’t be surprised that Google with their top Phd analysts and billions of dollars already thought of that.

Really, the best thing to do is absolutely nothing for at least a week, sometimes two, while you have time to fully analyze all the data from every angle and troubleshoot. Sometimes, websites recover on their own while the updates shuffle around.

Picture algorithms being stacked like a Jenga game and when you get smacked down by Google updates like the Panda or the Penguin, the last thing you want to do is make drastic moves that could cause the whole thing to collapse. This is why you MUST carry on as you were and identify the SEO problems before taking action.

Where to Troubleshoot?

Out of my most recent 50 algorithmic penalty analysis that I conducted on websites for the Google Support Forum, I found most penalties were either because the website’s content was in violation or the backlinks profile was unnatural or spammy.

Content

Start by checking the website itself. Look at your content for keyword stuffing, duplicate or scraped content and coding issues.

Backlinks

Check Backlink Profile to make sure it doesn’t contain unnatural linking activity or what Google considers webspam.

These are two very broad places to start looking but if you have specific questions or want me to look at your site, just hit me up in the comments below and hopefully you read this before making any drastic changes.