Link Building Techniques Under Scrutiny – Google Webmaster

My recent search rank reports indicate that the BuildMyRank.com take-down is not an isolated event. Google seems to have added some formula to the algo that especially targets baclink techniques.

The effects are not obvious to the average small business but in my regular SEO competitive analysis reports for clients I’m seeing some websites getting hit pretty hard. And those seem to be the ones employing the most aggressive off-site SEO techniques (link-building). Further observation tend to confirm one culprit – link-building techniques. Thats because many of these sites I’ve been competing with have little-to-no onsite SEO. What’s left? Backlinks.

It is not my position that link-building is bad. In fact its very necessary for producing superior search results. But in combination 1) buying backlinks while 2) offering little-to-no on-site SEO is what this is about. The Search Engines have been pretty clear about that too.

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. – directly from Google Webmaster Guidelines

Businesses should be aware how their SEO vendor plans to improve their search rank and whether there is any risk involved. Risky SEO is called Blackhat SEO, and I’ve also noticed that some of those SEO vendors who do provide the type of combination of services I’ve just described tend to be those claiming to employ only Whitehat SEO techniques. Caveat Emptor!