Denver SEO News – Google De-indexes Blog Networks

Yesterday, March 21^st 2012, the SEO forums were buzzing with the news that some major link building networks had been effectively shut down by having sites de-indexed by Google.

It became official that various private blog networks were de-ranked and de-indexed by Google since the last week of February after they released the latest version of their search algorithm, Google Panda 3.3.

What is Private Blog Networks?

Private Blog Networks are composed of services that offer quick back-link creation through publishing articles on an array of blogs.  These blogs serve as repositories of articles (usually spun or rewritten ones).  These spun articles are heavily laden with self-serving keywords and links.  Before the release of Panda 3.3, Google’s search engine bots might have overlooked this type of link-building tactic, but, fortunately, they have caught up, and companies who are using this type of link-building services are paying their dues.

These types of sites, that publish short posts across a network of blogs, had been seen as an easy and time-effective way of getting a large number of anchor-text rich links pointing back at a target site.

Despite trying to up their game in terms of relevance and content however, most of these sites suffered from having a large number of clients saturating the network. 

But Guess what?… Google Doesn’t Like Spun Articles

As Google is always improving its search algorithm to deliver high quality services to its millions of search users, the likelihood to game its system becomes more challenging especially for those greedy black hatters who deliberately violate major policies and rules most search engines want their users to follow.

One of the most commonly abused link creation strategies is the heavy creation of spun articles, which are usually dumped to cheap private blog networks to produce numerous back-links.  Google considers these spun articles as thin contents because they don’t offer much value both to readers and search engines.

Originality or uniqueness is one of the main factors used by Google to determine the quality of content.  Their latest search algorithm has now the capability to detect spun articles from original ones.

It can hardly be said that Google’s drive for quality has been kept secret. In addition to February’s announcement that there would be a modification in the process of link assessment, Matt Cutts has recently announced they will be “getting tough” on sites that have obviously been over-optimized for SEO.

 Although it has been over a year since the implementation of the Panda filter, many sites had still been able to achieve high positions in SERPs thanks to low-grade, quick link building procedures.

However, these techniques now appear to have been hit by the recent updates from the Google Web Spam team. There have been a few sore comments, especially from those whose business model has revolved around providing these services and smaller companies who don’t have the time and effort to compete with larger rivals (who incidentally have more to spend on paid search if their organic listings drop).

 It does however; reinforce the mantra from Panda that sites should be concentrating on high quality, useful and innovative content, which will attract links naturally. Those that haven’t planned a content strategy nor have decent SEO copywriting in place ought to make this a priority.

With this latest development from Google, search marketers should learn from the mistakes of those websites that are completely eradicated from the SERPs and create SEO strategies that have long lasting effects and are ethical to the eyes of search engines.

If you are currently looking for high competitive SEO Services, only hire a SEO Company who knows well the workings of major search engines and doesn’t employ unethical tactics to raise your rankings.