Links in a Link Farm - Using Google Webmaster Tools to Locate the Bad Inbound Links to Your Site

February 7th, 2009

It’s again 11:30 at night - I’m having a hard time keeping my 40-year old Mommy eyes open - but I’m on the scent of some bad links using Google Webmaster Tools. I’m continuing to work on a Google blacklisting, or apparent penalty for a client’s organic visibility.

Here are a few of the sites that I’m investigating - check them out to see how the bad link farm code is being utilized - and here’s where to look

Scroll to the bottom of the home page if that is the URL I’ve provided below - see the small font, or invisible code by reviewing Source Code under the View menu bar

http://www.omproducciones.com/2007/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4&Itemid=2

http://zeffiro.org/ - this one is invisible - you have to View Source to see the “phentermine” type links - there are hundreds if not thousands of those links buried in the home page’s source code. Sad irony or intended irony? First line of the site - Behind the message is the thought - well, behind this website is a mess of a link farm either intentional or unbeknowst to the owner.

http://www.berensononcology.com/index.html - buried source code at the bottom of the home page - you can see this one a little easier than some of the others - you can tell some thing is there - just highlight the opaque content at the bottom of the page. You can see that some of the links (if not all) go to a Spanish (.es) domain, and then redirect to www.topmeds10.com - so are all of these sites in a known link farm, and participating in such services, or are they unaware and innocent victims that are getting penalized by Google?

So, here is another bad link noted by Google Webmaster Tools:

www.jeremyfoster.com - note the code at the bottom of the page

Here’s what my client’s web pages would look like:

Files that were posted to a hidden subdirectory containing keyword embedded URLs such as the one below:
/phentermine-same-day-shipping.html

It’s interesting to note that many of these sites in the link farm, which Google Webmaster Tools has identified for us, are from Korea, such as those below:

http://www.bitl.co.kr/

http://www.skad.co.kr/board/board_1.ph…de=tb_free&page=&v_number=23538 Jan 25, 2009
http://www.farmmilk.co.kr/bbs/zboard.p…=on&select_arrange=hit&desc=asc Jan 24, 2009
http://www.farmmilk.co.kr/bbs/zboard.p…amp;select_arrange=headnum&desc=asc Jan 24, 2009
http://disk.co.kr/

So, my question is for Matt Cutts and Google - once you’ve identified these sites - and you know that your site was hacked and these links have at least been removed from your site- how do you get back in Google’s good graces?

I’d be really appreciative if Matt Cutts would comment on this blog entry and offer some advice as to how to fix. Here’s what we’ve done thus far:

1) Removed hack attack folder from client website
2) Added folder to Google Webmaster Tools to block - accepted this past week
3) Added folder to robots.txt - Google Webmaster accepted this past week
4) Noted that 68% of our organic terms have fallen out of Google since hack attack and months that followed shortly thereafter
5) Reviewed Google Webmaster tools for other link problems - noted a few others that aren’t very good links - cleaning up now; requesting removal

Any other suggestions?

Posted in Link Building & Link Farms, Search Optimization (SEO). No Comments »

 

When SEO Competitors Play Unfair? Do We Do the Same, or Report Them, or What?

December 18th, 2008

by Laura M Thieme

It’s the fourth week of my maternity leave. For those of you who don’t know this already, I delivered Melina Francis Thieme on November 24, 2008 via c-section. If you want to read about this, you can but please proceed with caution, as the word “breast” is referenced in terms of “breast-feeding” so if you’re offended by such, please don’t follow this breastfeeding link). I’m checking emails as of this week late at night, but am off until January 2009. Life has changed - and it involves sleep deprivation - like attending an SES week of parties for a month now, with no break in between. The hangover morning after never ends - but the sweet reward of having a child in your life for the first time is amazing. Having waited 40 years for your first child brings an even sweeter change in your life.

At this point, I’m only handling high level issues for clients - and one is a project where a client’s website has slipped out of the top rankings for their two main keyword phrases in Google alone. Yahoo & MSN are in tact, and in fact have improved, but in Google - not so much - they’ve declined since we took on the project. They had been blacklisted in Google when we came on board, but these two terms were intact. Now - not so much. Slowly but surely, other terms have declined - and one has to wonder if the blacklisting from a site hijacking is the issue, or if something else is happening.

For example, their leading SEO competitor tactics include setting up a network of nearly 50 or so websites that are for little purpose other than that of SEO. Why does Google reward this type of action? My client and I play clean SEO, but this competitor does not. So what should we do? Do we do the same, as some of our former clients have asked us to, or do we report them publicly to cause enough pain that Matt Cutts will invariably weigh in on it (as done on www.seomoz.org), or do we beat them at their own game doing something else on the fringe? Preferably, I’d report the buggers publicly - and am considering doing so. The issue though - is why is that the competitor wins with a multitude of fake websites, and my client, who has one clean site does not. Their site was hijacked in March - but is that still the problem, and why can’t Webmaster Tools at Google tell me that I’m penalized?

I caught up with a friend of mine today and he was surprised to hear that we don’t work with SEO projects exclusively anymore. We provide three-in-one SEM services, which include paid search, SEO and website analytics. I told him it was because often our clients’ competitors resort to SEO tactics that we do not support, including setting up a network of websites that are fake, or created for one sole purpose - and that is to garner top five positions in Google for a particular keyword phrase or group of phrases. Clients who paid top dollar often indicated they did not care if we did anything illegal, and in other cases, wondered why their 40-page website did not show up for something really popular such as herbal supplements.

Lastly, after you’ve done all the right SEO things, there gets to be a point where you have no other choice than to build links - and what if building links is a waste of time in general? Can’t we just do paid search and get along? Shouldn’t tracking traffic and making your website better from a conversion perspective be the main focus?

So, let us know what you think? When you see your top competitors playing unfair, and it’s costing you SEO keywords, or possibly even an SEO client - what do you do? Do you report them, play unfair, or beat them at their own game another way?

Posted in Search Optimization (SEO). 1 Comment »