Many websites have fallen victims to Google’s emphasis on quality. And over the past few months, one of the targets has been unnatural links on your websites used for enhanced indexing and ranking. Google’s webmaster tools guidelines clearly demonstrates its non tolerance towards unnatural websites. Since December 2010, Google has sent out numerous emails consisting notices to websites of the unnatural links that are directed on their sites.
The email being sent out by Google looks like:
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to (your website)
Dear site owner or webmaster of (your website), We’ve detected that some of your site’s pages may be using techniques that are outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you’ve made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google’s search results. If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team.
Many webmasters seem to be completely taken off guard by this email. And to that end, many have discussed their concerns on the Google webmaster forum. One of the many such queries discussed on the forum is by studione on the 16th July 2011
is http://playarena.nl/
“ Hi
I noticed this message send from Google two weeks ago about detecting unnatural links on my site www.playarena.nl/. My site is an online flash game site, with many games to be played.
I read the guidelines: links added as part of a link exchange scheme may be considered excessive. I’m using Linkex for finding reciprocal link partners and by now have only two reciprocal links. Is using Linkex banned by google, as I read that exxesive use of reciprocal is not excepted. But in my case its accepted.
Could somebody help me out on this.
With Kind regards,
Playarena”
How to avoid this:
- Make sure other websites link to your website, however in a natural way to increase your page ranking
- Don’t participate in link schemes which include, manipulating, buying or selling PageRanks. According to Google’s Matt Cutts “remove the paid links that pass PageRank”. In addition to that, avoid linking to web spammers and engaging in too much reciprocal linking
- Consider evaluating your link exchange scheme and discard off the links that would be unaccepted under the Google’s guidelines.
- Also consider evaluating the content on your website and other websites which are along similar lines to yours
- Furthermore, avoid using lists of keywords in an attempt to “cloak” pages, or upload “crawler only” pages
Once you have made the above recommended changes:
- Sign in using your Google account to Google webmaster tools
- Add and verify the website you want Google to reconsider
- Request Google to reconsider your website
Once requested to be reconsidered, we suggest you hang in there tight. Google is usually fair to both the the webmasters and the users, you won’t have much problems there.
Check out Page Traffic Buzz for more articles by Navneet Kaushal.
WebProNews is an iEntry Publication