Rectifying paid links where they don’t exist
Posted by multippt
Sometimes, in the process of building links, your links may end up in places where you may not really expect. These very places can result in a penalty. The problem is, Google expects webmasters to know that they have a problem with their websites, and they should do something about it, even if they don’t know what hit them.
“Bad” links?
Google regularly checks for links that may affect their search results adversely in order to prevent the problem of spamdexing. Here are some common places to look out for in checking your backlinks. They may not technically be paid/invalid links, but in Google’s eyes they are.
Blogroll
Sidebars sport great link opportunity, so that’s where Google targets at. While putting links in sidebar is not against Google’s code of conduct (even the Google blog has “useful links” in its blogroll), having non-nofollow links that seem too much like paid links can be deadly. Fancy a link to your site just above “Advertise here”? Not only that, this may even apply to your own site as well.
Reviews
Reviews have now become a new target for Google. They have received much scorn for their capability to manipulate the results (because it is considered quality content by the crawler). With the advent of paid reviews come a new era of penalties. These penalties range from a small decrement of your site’s PageRank, to the complete wiping off of your site from the index. While most reviews penalized are genuinely those who are the bad apples, what about those they happen to be hit by friendly fire?
Links near taboo words
It is unsafe to place links near certain words that Google are looking out for. Words like “advertise” are bound to attract attention.
Links in dedicated link pages
Wikipedia has a term for this. Having a link on these pages that show more links than content would be considered being in a bad neighbourhood (though, Google is now penalizing those who link to the neighbourhoods as well).
The remedy
Finding those links can be tough, even with Yahoo site explorer. But it is probably more better to rectify them rather than face Google’s punishment resulting from its misconceptions. You can make those links safe by converting them into no-follow (thus preserving some traffic).
Penalties come in all sizes and flavors, making it hard to determine if your site really has a penalty. Because a penalty does not always mean your site gets taken off the index, it can also come in the form of a visible penalty. PageRank is an example of an indicator. As always, you can submit a reinclusion request once you have dealt with the “problem”.
