We have always warned against some of the “Get your site to the top of Google” SEO offers, and this week saw an example as why this advice is sound. One of the ways that less reputable SEO companies have worked their “magic” in recent years has been to build vast networks of links to spammy and non relevant content, and then to link these into their clients websites. In the short term this ploy worked well and people saw their sites rising up the Google rankings. But Google started to realise that this was producing skewed search results and with recent algorithm changes, Google have been focusing on link quality rather than quantity and have been heavily penalising sites that have used this technique. As a result, some sites have slid down the rankings, or even disappeared all together! The problem is that once these inbound links to your site are in place, it can be very difficult, or even impossible, to get rid of them! To enable website owners to get themselves out of this mess, this week, Google launched a Disavow Links Tool. This tool let’s you tell Google to ignore links from spammy sites that are hurting your search listings. I am sure that no one who reads our blog post will have fallen into this trap, but if you suspect that your search listings are being affected by spammy links, feel free to get in touch. We would be happy to help you address the situation.
