GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 22 - October 2012

You’ve burned your domain with old-school tactics – now what? Having seen this time and time again recently, particularly through dodgy link building, it becomes rapidly apparent that this is a huge problem for a lot of webmasters at the moment. After all, cleaning up harmful links is a lot harder than placing them. While there are a few theories on “blocking bad backlinks” a lot of these are just that – “theories.” One or two bad links aren’t going to hurt you too much, but if you have picked up a noticeable penalty or the dreaded WMT warning, then what? Well, there are a couple of tricks to try to get around this, but in many cases you are better off moving to a new domain and starting again. You can move your content and entire site, and even 301 redirect the site, as this doesn’t seem to move the penalties with it, at least not in all cases. This has of course been a topic of a great deal of contention recently, but to quote Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, “I’ve seen a bunch of these and weirdly, the 301s do seem to (often) remove the penalty in cases where it’s a true penalty.” This applies only for domains burned through unnatural linking penalties and the like. If you’ve stolen content or have been implementing some iffy on-site SEO then you will need to fix this as well. There is also the other worry that your site has just been re-evaluated following an update, and if this is the case then the 301 will not work. There have been some changes to using this as a catch all for getting out of penalties now as eventually the penalty will follow the redirect through although there will be some latency which can buy you valuable cleanup time (yes, I mean link removal) while keeping your cash flow up. If link removal is not an option, due to automated spam or the like, then the smart move is simply to move all your content to a new domain and not redirect. You will take a hit for starting from scratch with the new domain, but most decent links you’ve created will be easy enough to point to the new domain, as opposed to the bad ones, which are a lot harder to get rid of. Negative SEO – be prepared Negative SEO is on the rise and we are seeing more and more cases of it. Many SEOs will say that this is not an issue, but I have seen far too many examples where it has been effective and have tested it myself (on my own sites). It can be done, and done very cheaply! There is no way to stop somebody from doing this to you, but you can plan for the event. Not making yourself an easy target by using spammy tactics is of course the obvious way. Investing in link updating software so you can see what is being built can give you an advantage. Negative SEOs will frequently leave a paper trail and if you catch up to them quite often they will stop. You also have more chance of Google considering your story if you have the attack well documented from the start. Following that, you can look to implement some of the strategies from the previous section of this article. Affiliates who rank for “trophy” or “Hollywood” terms need to be extra vigilant. The quick win is over The time when we could make a fast buck is coming to a close, and what’s coming is the time of genuine social interaction. Don’t be surprised if the next major Google update (some animal beginning with P, no doubt) is related to social media spam. So make sure you’re careful with this as well. That means use flat “retweet this” competitions and the like in moderation; try to get people to vary the tweet for you. Asking for reasons is a good way to do this. Social integration is something that we are going to see more and more of going forward and it is only going to become more important. Those who do not prepare for this will struggle in the changing landscape. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mike Litson has been in SEO for several years and specializes in competitive markets, predominantly gambling and financial trading. Having worked with many major players in the online sector he has a solid understanding of what goes into making a successful campaign both on and off site a success. Mike currently heads up the Blueclaw iGaming and affiliate department. Future Proofing SEO 12