Penguin 5, With The Penguin 2.1 Spam-Filtering Algorithm, Is Now Live

The fifth confirmed release of Google’s “Penguin” spam fighting algorithm is live. That makes it Penguin 5 by our count. But since this Penguin update is using a slightly improved version of Google’s “Penguin 2″ second-generation technology, Google itself is calling it “Penguin 2.1.” Don’t worry. We’ll explain the numbering nonsense below, as well as what this all means for publishers.

New Version Of Penguin Live Today

The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, shared the news on Twitter, saying the latest release would impact about 1 percent of all searches:

The link that Cutts points at, by the way, explains what Penguin was when it was first launched. It doesn’t cover anything new or changed with the latest release.

Previous Updates

Here are all the confirmed releases of Penguin to date:

• Penguin 1 on April 24, 2012 (impacting around 3.1% of queries)
• Penguin 2 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)
• Penguin 3 on October 5, 2012 (impacting around 0.3% of queries)
• Penguin 4 (AKA Penguin 2.0) on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
• Penguin 5 (AKA Penguin 2.1) on Oct. 4, 2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)

Why Penguin 2.1 AND Penguin 5?

If us talking about Penguin 5 in reference to something Google is calling Penguin 2.1 hurts your head, believe us, it hurts ours, too. But you can pin that blame back on Google. Here’s why.

When Google started releasing its “Panda” algorithm designed to fight low-quality content, it called the first one simply “Panda.” So when the second came out, people referred to that as “Panda 2.” When the third came out, people called that Panda 3 — causing Google to say that the third release, because it was relatively minor, really only should be called Panda 2.1 — the “point” being used to indicate how much a minor change it was.

Google eventually — and belatedly — indicated that a Panda 3 release happened, causing the numbering to move into Panda 3.0, Panda 3.1 and so on until there had been so many “minor” updates that we having to resort to going further out in decimal places to things like Panda 3.92.

That caused us here at Search Engine Land to decide it would be easier all around if we just numbered any confirmed update sequentially, in order of when they came. No matter how “big” or “small” an update might be, we’d just give it the next number on the list: Penguin 1, Penguin 2, Penguin 3 and so on.

Thanks For The Headache, Google

That worked out fine until Penguin 4, because Google typically didn’t give these updates numbers itself. It just said there was an update, and left it to us or others to attach a number to it.

But when Penguin 4 arrived, Google really wanted to stress that it was using what it deemed to be a major, next-generation change in how Penguin works. So, Google called it Penguin 2, despite all the references to a Penguin 2 already being out there, despite the fact it hadn’t really numbered many of these various updates before.

Today’s update, as can be seen above, has been dubbed Penguin 2.1 — so supposedly, it’s a relatively minor change to the previous Penguin filter that was being used. However, if it’s impacting around 1 percent of queries as Google says, that means it is more significant than what Google might have considered to be similar “minor” updates of Penguin 1.1 and Penguin 1.2.

What Is Penguin Again? And How Do I Deal With It?

For those new to the whole “Penguin” concept, Penguin is a part of Google’s overall search algorithm that periodically looks for sites that are deemed to be spamming Google’s search results but somehow still ranking well. In particular, it goes after sites that may have purchased paid links.

If you were hit by Penguin, you’ll likely know if you see a marked drop in traffic that begins today or tomorrow. To recover, you’ll need to do things like disavow bad links or manually have those removed. Filing a reconsideration request doesn’t help, because Penguin is an automated process. Until it sees that what it considers to be bad has been removed, you don’t recover.

If you were previously hit by Penguin and have taken actions hopefully meant to fix that, today and tomorrow are the days to watch. If you see an improvement in traffic, that’s a sign that you’ve escaped Penguin.

Your Small Web Site Not Ranking Well In Google? Matt Cutts Wants To Know About It

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, asked last night viaTwitter for webmasters and SEOs to fill out a survey on the topic of small sites and Google rankings.

Matt Cutts asked “if there’s a small website that you think should be doing better in Google, tell us more here. The form makes it clear that filling out this form will not impact the ranking of the site submitted. The form reads:

Google would like to hear feedback about small but high-quality websites that could do better in our search results. To be clear, we’re just collecting feedback at this point; for example, don’t expect this survey to affect any site’s ranking.

The form collects two pieces of information:

(1) The name and URL of the small site you think should rank well.

(2) Why do you think that small site should rank better?

So if you have a small site and think it should rank better, make sure to tell Google about it overhere.

Better Understanding Link-based Spam Analysis Techniques

One frustrating aspect of link building is not knowing the value of a link. Although experience, and some data, can make you better at link valuation, it is impossible to know to what degree a link may be helping you. It’s hard to know if a link is even helping at all. Search engines do not count all links, they reduce the value of many that they do count, and use factors related to your links to further suppress the value that’s left over. This is all done to improve relevancy and spam detection.

Understanding the basics of link-based spam detection can improve your understanding of link valuation and help you understand how search engines approach the problem of spam detection, which can lead to better link building practices.

I’d like to talk about a few interesting link spam analysis concepts that search engines may use to evaluate your backlink profile.

#1 Truncated PageRank

 

The basics of Truncated PageRank are covered in the paper Linked-based Characterization and Detection of Web Spam. Truncated PageRank is a calculation that removes the direct “link juice” contribution provided by the first level(s) of links. So a page boosted by naïve methods (such as article marketing) are receiving a large portion of the PageRank value directly from the first layer. However, a link from a well linked to page will receive “link juice” contribution from additional levels. Spam pages will likely show a Truncated PageRank that is significantly less than the PageRank. The ratio of Truncated PageRank to PageRank can be a signal to indicate the spamminess of a link profile.

#2 Owned / Accessible Contributions

Links can be bucketed into three general buckets.

1. Links from owned content – Links from pages that search engines have determined some level of ownership (well-connected co-citation, IP, whois, etc.)
2. Links from accessible content – Links from non-owned content that is easily accessible to add links (blogs, forums, article directories, guest books, etc.)
3. Links from inaccessible content – Links from independent sources.

A link from any one of these source is neither good nor bad. Links from owned content, via networks and relationships, are perfectly natural. However, a link from inaccessible content could be a paid link, so that bucket doesn’t mean it’s inherently good. However, knowing the bucket a link falls into can change the valuation.

This type of analysis on two sites can show a distinct difference in a link profile, all other factors being equal. The first site is primarily supported on links from content it directly controls or can gain access to. However, the second site has earned links from a substantially larger percentage of unique, independent sources. All things being equal, the second site is less likely to be spam.

#3 Relative Mass

Relative Mass accounts for the percent distribution of a profile for certain types of links. The example of the pie charts above demonstrates the concept of relative massive.

Relative Mass is discussed more broadly in the paper Link Spam Detection Based on Mass Estimation. Relative Mass analysis can define a threshold at which a page is determined “spam”. In the image above, the red circles have been identified as spam. The target page now has a portion of value attributed to it via “spam” sites. If this value of contribution exceeds a potential threshold, this page could have its rankings suppressed or the value passed through these links minimized. The example above is fairly binary, but there is often a large gradient between not spam and spam.

This type of analysis can be applied to tactics as well, such as distribution of links from comments, directories, articles, hijacked sources, owned pages, paid links, etc. The algorithm may provide a certain degree of “forgiveness” before its relative mass contribution exceeds an acceptable level.

#4 Counting Supporters / Speeds to Nodes

Another method of valuing links is by counting supporters and the speed of discovery of those nodes (and the point at which this discovery peaks).

A histogram distribution of supporting nodes by hops can demonstrate the differences between spam and high quality sites.

Well-connected sites will grow in supporters more rapidly than spam sites and spam sites are likely to peak earlier. Spam sites will grow rapidly and decay quickly as you move away from the target node. This distribution can help signify that a site is using spammy link building practices. Because spam networks have higher degrees of clustering, domains will repeat upon hops, which makes spam profiles bottleneck faster than non-spam profiles.

Protip: I think this is one reason that domain diversity and unique linking root domains is well correlated with rankings. I don’t think the relationship is as naïve as counting linking domains, but an analysis like supporter counting, as well as Truncated PageRank, would make receiving links from a larger set of diverse domains more well correlated with rankings.

#5 TrustRank, Anti-TrustRank, SpamRank, etc.

The model of TrustRank has been written about several times before and is the basis of metrics like mozTrust. The basic premise is that seed nodes can have both Trust and Spam scores which can be passed through links. The closer to the seed set, the higher the likelihood you are what that seed set was defined as. Being close to spam, makes you more likely to be spam, being close to trust, makes you more likely to be trusted. These values can be judged inbound and outbound.

I won’t go into much more detail than that, because you can read about it in previous posts, but it comes down to four simple rules.

• Get links from trusted content.
• Don’t get links from spam content.
• Link to trusted content.
• Don’t link to spam content.

This type of analysis has also been used to use SEO forums against spammers. A search engine can crawl links from top SEO forums to create a seed set of domains to perform analysis. Tinfoil hat time….

#6 Anchor Text vs. Time

Monitoring anchor text over time can give interesting insights that could detect potential manipulation. Let’s look at an example of how a preowned domain that was purchased for link value (and spam) might appear with this type of analysis.

This domain has a historical record of acquiring anchor text including both brand and non-branded targeted terms. Then suddenly that rate drops and after time a new sudden influx of anchor text, never seen before, starts to come in. This type of anchor text analysis, in combination with orthogonal spam detection approaches, can help detect the point in which ownership was changed. Links prior to this point can then be evaluated differently.

This type of analysis, plus some other very interesting stuff, is discussed in the Google paper Document Scoring Based on Link-Based Criteria.

#7 Link Growth Thresholds

Sites with rapid link growth could have the impact dampened by applying a threshold of value that can be gained within a unit time. Corroborating signals can help determine if a spike is from a real event or viral content, as opposed to link manipulation.

This threshold can discount the value of links that exceed an assigned threshold. A more paced, natural growth profile is less likely to break a threshold. You can find more information about historical analysis in the paperInformation Retrieval Based on Historical Data.

#8 Robust PageRank

Robust PageRank works by calculating PageRank without the highest contributing nodes.

In the image above, the two strongest links were turned off and effectively reduced the PageRank of a node. Strong sites often have robust profiles and do not heavily depend on a few strong sources (such as links from link farms) to maintain a high PageRank. Robust PageRank calculations is one way the impact of over-influential nodes can be reduced. You can read more about Robust PageRank in the paper Robust PageRank and Locally Computable Spam Detection Features.

 

#9 PageRank Variance

The uniformity of PageRank contribution to a node can be used to evaluate spam. Natural link profiles are likely to have a stronger variance in PageRank contribution. Spam profiles tend to be more uniform.

 

So if you use a tool, marketplace, or service to order 15 PR 4 links for a specific anchor text, it will have a low variance in PR. This is an easy way to detect these sorts of practices.

#10 Diminishing Returns

One way to minimize the value of a tactic is to create diminishing marginal returns on specific types of links. This is easiest to see in sitewide links, such as blogroll links or footer paid links. At one time, link popularity, in volume, was a strong factor which lead to sitewides carrying a disproportionate amount of value.

The first link from a domain carries the first vote and getting additional links from one particular domain will continue to increase the total value from a domain, but only to a point. Eventually inbound links from the same domain will continue to experience diminishing returns. Going from 1 link to 3 links from a domain will have more of an effect than 101 links to 103 links.

Protip: Although it’s easy to see this with sitewide links, I think of most link building tactics in this fashion. In addition to ideas like relative mass, where you don’t want one thing to dominate, I feel tactics lose traction overtime. It is not likely you can earn strong rankings on a limited number of tactics, because many manual tactics tend to hit a point of diminishing returns (sometimes it may be algorithmic, other times it may be due to diminishing returns in the competitive advantage). It’s best to avoid one-dimensional link building.

Link Spam Algorithms

All spam analysis algorithms have some percentage of accuracy and some level of false positives. Through the combination of these detection methods, search engines can maximize the accuracy and minimize the false positives.

Web spam analysis allows for more false positives than email spam detection, because there are often multiple alternatives to replace a pushed down result. It is not like email spam detection, which is binary in nature (inbox or spam box). In addition to this, search engines don’t have to create binary labels of “spam” or “not spam” to effectively improve search results. By using analysis, such as some of those discussed in this post, search engines can simply dampen rankings and minimize effects.

These analysis techniques are also designed to decrease the ROI of specific tactics, which makes spamming harder and more expensive. The goal of this post is not to stress about what links work, and which don’t, because it’s hard to know. The goal is to demonstrate some of the problem solving tactics used by search engines and how this impacts your tactics.

17 Types of Link Spam to Avoid

It’s become very obvious that recent updates hit sites that had overly aggressive link profiles. The types of sites that were almost exclusively within what I called the “danger zone” in a post about one month before Penguin hit. Highly unnatural anchor text and low-quality links are highly correlated, but anchor text appears to have been the focus.

I was only partially correct, as the majority of cases appear to be devalued links rather than penalties. Going forward, the wise SEO would want to take note of the types of link spam to make sure that what they’re doing doesn’t look likea type of link spam. Google’s response to and attitude towards each type of link spam varies, but every link building method becomes more and more risky as you begin moving towards the danger zone.

1. Cleansing Domains

While not technically a form of link building, 301 “cleansing” domains are a dynamic of link manipulation that every SEO should understand. When you play the black hat game, you know the chance of getting burned is very real.Building links to a domain that redirects to a main domain is one traditionally safe way to quickly recover from Google actions like Penguin. While everyone else toils away attempting to remove scores of exact-match anchor text, the spammers just cut the trouble redirected domains loose like anchors, and float on into the night with whatever treasure they’ve gathered.

When Penguin hit, this linkfarm cleansing domain changed from a 301 to a 404 almost overnight.

Link building through redirects should be easy to catch, as new links to a domain that is currently redirecting is hardly natural behavior. To anyone watching, it’s like shooting up a flare that says, “I’m probably manipulating links.” The fact that search engines aren’t watching closely right now is no guarantee of future success, so I’d avoid this and similar behavior if future success is a goal.

2. Blog Networks & Poorly Executed Guest Blogs

I’ve already covered the potential risks of blog networks in depth here. Google hates blog networks – fake blogs that members pay or contribute content to in order to get links back to their or their clients’ sites. Guest blogging and other forms of contributing content to legitimate sites is a much whiter tactic, but consider that a strategy that relies heavily on low-quality guest blogging looks a lot like blog network spam.

With blog networks, each blog has content with a constant ratio of words to links. It posts externally to a random sites multiple times, and with a lot of “inorganic” anchor text for commercially valuable terms. Almost all backlinks to blog networks are also spam.

I cringe when I see low-quality blogs with questionable backlinks accepting guest blog posts that meet rigid word length and external link guidelines. Quality blogs tend not to care if the post is 400-500 words with two links in the bio, and quality writers tend not to ruin the post with excessive linking. Most of us see guest blogging as a white-hat tactic, but a backlink profile filled with low-quality guest posts looks remarkably similar to the profile of a site using automated blog networks.

I’d obviously steer clear of blog networks, but I’d be just as wary of low-quality inorganic guest blogs that look unnatural. Guest blog on sites with high quality standards and legitimate backlink profiles of their own.

3. Article Marketing Spam

Article link addiction is still a real thing for new SEOs. You get one or two links with anchor text of your choice, and your rankings rise. You’re not on the first page, but you do it again and get closer. The articles are easy and cheap, and they take no creativity or mental effort. You realize that you’re reaching diminishing returns on the articles, but your solution isn’t to stop – you just need to do more articles. Before you know it, you’re searching for lists of the top article sites that give followed links and looking for automated solutions to build low-quality links to your low-quality links.

Most articles are made for the sole purpose of getting a link, and essentially all followed links are self-generated rather than endorsements. Google has accordingly made article links count for very little, and has hammered article sites for their low-quality content.

Maybe you’re wondering how to get a piece of that awesome trend, but hopefully you’ll join me in accepting that article directories aren’t coming back. Because they can theoretically be legitimate, article links are generally devalued rather than penalized. As with all link spam, your risk of receiving more harsh punishment rises proportionate to the percentage of similar links in your profile.

4. Single-Post Blogs

Ironically named “Web 2.0 Blogs” by some spam peddlers, these two-page blogs on Tumblr and WordPress sub-domains never see the light of day. After setting up the free content hub with an article or two, the site is then “infused” with link juice, generally from social bookmarking links (discussed below).

Despite their prevalence, these sites don’t do much for rankings. Links with no weight come in, and links with no impact go out. They persist because with a decent free template, clients can be shown a link on a page that doesn’tlook bad. Google doesn’t need to do much to weed these out, because they’re already doing nothing.

5. (Paid) Site-Wide Links

Site-wide footer links used to be all the rage. Google crippled their link-juice-passing power because most footer links pointing to external sites are either Google Bombs or paid links. Where else would you put a site-wide link that you don’t want your users to click?

To my point of avoiding the appearance of spam, Penguin slammed a number of sites with a high proportion of site-wide (footer) links that many would not have considered manipulative. Almost every free WordPress theme that I’ve seen links back to the creator’s page with choice anchor text, and now a lot of WordPress themes are desperately pushing updates to alter or remove the link. Penguin didn’t care if you got crazy with a plugin link, designed a web site, or hacked a template; the over-use of anchor text hit everyone. This goes to show that widespread industry practices aren’t inherently safe.

6. Paid Links in Content

There will never be a foolproof way to detect every paid link. That said it’s easier than you think to leave a footprint when you do it in bulk. You have to trust your sellers not to make it obvious, and the other buyers to keep unwanted attention off their own sites. If one buyer that you have no relationship to buys links recklessly, the scrutiny can trickle down through the sites they’re buying from and eventually back to you.

If you do buy links, knowing what you’re doing isn’t enough. Make sure everyone involved knows what they’re doing. Google is not forgiving when it comes to buying links.

7. Link Exchanges, Wheels, etc.

Speaking of footprints, I believe it’s possible to build a machine learning model to start with a profile of known links violating guidelines, which you can acquire from paid link sites and link wheel middlemen with nothing more than an email address. You can then assess a probability of a site being linked to in that manner, corroborating potential buyers and sellers with a link graph of similar profiles. I have no idea what kind of computing/programming power this would take, but the footprint is anomalous enough that it should be possible.

Exchanging links through link schemes requires a lot more faith in a bunch of strangers than I can muster. In a link wheel, you’re only as strong and subtle as your “weakest links.” My opinion is that if you’re smart enough to avoid getting caught, you’re probably smart enough to build or write something awesome that will have superior results and lower risk than link wheels.

8. Low-Quality Press Release Syndication

High-quality syndication and wire services possess a few unattractive attributes for spammers: there are editorial guidelines, costs, and even fact checking. Low-quality syndication services will send almost anything through to any site that will take it. You’ll end up with a bunch of links, but not many that get indexed, and even fewer that get counted.

My experience has been that press releases have rapidly diminishing returns on syndication only, and the only way to see ROI is to generate actual, real coverage. I still see link-packed press releases all over the web that don’t have a chance of getting coverage – really, your site redesign is not news-worthy. I’m not sure whether to attribute this to bad PR, bad SEO, or both.

9. Linkbait and Switch

In this context, we’re talking about creating a real piece of linkbait for credible links, and later replacing the content with something more financially beneficial. Tricking people into linking to content is clearly not something Google would be ok with. I don’t see linkbait and switch done very often, but I die a little every time I see it. If you’re able to create and spread viral content, there’s no need to risk upsetting link partners and search engines. Instead, make the best of it with smart links on the viral URL, repeat success, and become a known source for great content.

10. Directories

Directories have been discussed to death. The summary is that Google wants to devalue links from directories with no true standards. Here’s a Matt Cutts video and blog post on the topic. Directory links often suffer from a high out/in linking ratio, but those worth getting are those that are actually used for local businesses (think Yelp) and any trafficked industry directories.

1. Would I pay money for a listing here?
2. Are the majority of current listings quality sites?
3. Do listings link with the business or site name?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, don’t bother with a link. This immediately excludes all but a handful of RSS or blog feed directories, which are mostly used to report higher quantities of links. When I was trained as an SEO, I was taught that directories would never hurt, but they might help a tiny bit, so I should go get thousands of them in the cheapest way possible. Recent experience has taught us that poor directory links can be a liability.

Even as I was in the process of writing this post, it appears that Google began deindexing low-quality directories. The effect seems small so far – perhaps testifying to their minimal impact on improving rankings in the first place – but we’ll have to wait and see.

11. Link Farms and Networks

I honestly can’t speak as an authority on link farms, having never used them personally or seen them in action.

“I’m telling you right now, the engines are very very smart about this kind of thing, and they’ve seen link farming over and over and over again in every different permutation. Granted, you might find the one permutation – the one system – that works for you today, but guess what? It’s not going to work tomorrow; it’s not going to work in the long run.” – Rand in 2009

My sense is that this prediction came true over and over again. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

12. Social Bookmarking & Sharing Sites

Links from the majority of social bookmarking sites carry no value. Pointing a dozen of them at a page might not even be enough to get the page crawled. Any quality links that go in have their equity immediately torn a million different directions if links are followed. The prevalence of spam-filled and abandoned social bookmarking sites tells me that site builders seriously over-estimated how much we would care about other people’s bookmarks.

Sites focusing on user-generated links and content have their own ways of handling trash. Active sites with good spam control and user involvement will filter spam on their own while placing the best content prominently. If you’d like to test this, just submit a commercial link to any front-page sub-Reddit and time how long it takes to get the link banned. Social sites with low spam control stop getting visitors and incoming links while being overrun by low quality external links. Just ask Digg.

13. Forum Spam

Forum spam may never die, though it is already dead. About a year ago, we faced a question about a forum signature link that was in literally thousands of posts on a popular online forum. When we removed the signature links, the change was similar to effect of most forum links: zero. It doesn’t even matter if you nofollow all links. Much like social sites, forums that can’t manage the spam quickly turn into a cesspool of garbled phrases and anchor text links. Bing’s webmaster forums are a depressing example.

14. Unintended Followed Link Spam

From time to time you’ll hear of a new way someone found to get a link on an authoritative site. Examples I have seen include links in bios, “workout journals” that the site let users keep, wish lists, and uploaded files. Sometimes these exploits (for lack of a better term) go viral, and everyone can’t wait to fill out their bio on a DA 90+ site.

In rare instances, this kind of link spam works – until the hole is plugged. I can’t help but shake my head when I see someone talking about how you can upload a random file or fill out a bio somewhere. This isn’t the sort of thing to base your SEO strategy around. It’s not long-term, and it’s not high-impact.

15. Profile Spam

While similar to unintended followed links on authority domains, profile spam deserves its own discussion due to their abundance. It would be difficult for Google to take any harsh action on profiles, as there is a legitimate reason for reserving massive numbers of profiles to prevent squatters and imitators from using a brand name.

What will hurt you is when your profile name and/or anchor text doesn’t match your site or brand name.

“The name’s Insurance. Car Insurance”

When profile links are followed and indexed, Google usually interprets the page as a user page and values it accordingly. Obviously Google’s system for devaluing profile links is not perfect right now. I know it’s sometimes satisfying just to get an easy link somewhere, but profile link spam is a great example of running without moving.

16. Comment Spam

If I were an engineer on a team designed to combat web spam, the very first thing I would do would be to add a classifier to blog comments. I would then devalue every last one. Only then would I create exceptions where blog comments would count for anything.

I have no idea if it works that way, but it probably doesn’t. I do know that blogs with unfiltered followed links are generally old and unread, and they often look like this:

Let’s pretend that Google counts every link equally, regardless of where it is on the page. How much do you think 1/1809th of the link juice on a low-authority page is worth to you? Maybe I’m missing something here, because I can’t imagine spam commenting being worth anything at any price. Let’s just hope you didn’t build anchor text into those comments.

17. Domain Purchase and Redirect/Canonical

Buying domains for their link juice is an old classic, but I don’t think I have anything to add beyond what Danny Sullivan wrote on the matter. I’m also a fan of Rand’s suggestion to buy blogs and run them rather than pulling out the fangs and sucking every ounce of life out of a once-thriving blog.

Domain buying still works disgustingly well in the (rare) cases where done correctly. I would imagine that dozens of redirected domains will eventually bring some unwelcome traffic to your site directly from Mountain View, but fighting spam has historically been much easier in my imagination than in reality.

This list is not meant to be comprehensive, but it should paint a picture of the types of spam that are out there, which ones are working, and what kinds of behaviors could get you in trouble.

Spam Links: Not Worth It

I have very deliberately written about what spam links “look like.” If you do believe that black hat SEO is wrong, immoral, or in any way unsavory that’s fine – just make sure your white hat links don’t look like black hat links. If you think that white hat SEOs are sheep, or pawns of Google, the same still applies: your links shouldn’t look manipulative.

I’m advising against the tactics above because the potential benefits don’t outweigh the risks. If your questionable link building does fall apart and your links are devalued, there’s a significant cost of time wasted building links that don’t count. There’s also the opportunity cost – what could you have been doing instead? Finally, clearing up a manual penalty can take insane amounts of effort and remove Google’s revenue stream in the meantime.

Related articles

• 10-Minute Link Building Tutorial For The New SEO (business2community.com)
• SEO Trends (ntechvision.wordpress.com)