Weekly SEO news: 3 September 2012
Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

Many webmasters are rattled by Google's recent updates. Although links are still very important, some people even want to change perfectly fine high quality links. Is this really necessary? How can you save time when improving your backlink profile?

In the news: Matt Cutts confirms that paid links are still bad, Facebook removes fake 'Likes', SEO is the most effective lead generation method, and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,
Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO
1. Fear, uncertainty and doubt: some webmasters change good links
Many webmasters are rattled by Google's recent updates. Although links are still very important, some people even want to change perfectly fine high quality links. Is this really necessary? How can you save time when improving your backlink profile?

backlink solution

Do not delete good backlinks

In an online forum, a webmaster asked the following question:

"Got an unsolicited citation from a media source but they used anchor text that I have been penalized on. FUD! Should I ask them to change it? By doing that I make a natural link unnatural, and Googlebot will detect that change (obvious tinkering). Nevertheless, I do have an OOP [over optimization penalty] and received the infamous link warnings about 5 months ago."

Save time and focus on good links, not on bad links
A single backlink from a media source won't cause problems. Actually, that kind of link is exactly the kind of link that Google wants to see. Other people link to your site because they find it good, newsworthy or interesting.

Although it helps to remove obvious fake backlinks to your website, you shouldn't invest too much time in trying to delete bad links:
  1. It's often not possible to delete a bad link.
  2. You might accidentally delete a good backlink.
  3. You still need good backlinks to improve your rankings.
A competitor can quickly build hundreds of bad backlinks to your site with a spamming tool. Getting rid of these links can be very difficult and time-consuming.

If you concentrate on building good backlinks, these good backlinks will have more power than the bad backlinks and your rankings will increase.

How to judge the quality of a backlink

You do not need special metrics to judge the quality of a web page. You can judge the quality of a link with these simple questions:
  1. Does the linking page look good to the average web surfer?
  2. Does the page have interesting content?
  3. Is the content somewhat related to my website?
  4. Does it make sense if the web page links to your site?
If you can answer all questions with "yes" then you should try to get a backlink from that page.

Backlinks are still the most important signal that influences the position of your web pages in Google's search results. Optimize your web pages for your keywords to show Google that your website is relevant to a topic. Then get high quality links to make sure that Google gives your web pages high rankings.
2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Matt CuttsMatt Cutts: don't forget that paid links will hurt your site

In an article in his blog, Google's Matt Cutts has reminded a webmaster that he shouldn't buy links:

"We saw links labeled as sponsored that passed PageRank. That’s a clear violation of Google’s quality guidelines, and it’s the reason that your website‘s PageRank as well as our trust in the website has declined.

Investigate how paid links that pass PageRank ended up on your website: who put them there, are any still up, and to investigate whether someone at your company received money to post paid links that pass PageRank without disclosing that payment."



Facebook to remove fake 'Likes'

"On average, less than 1% of Likes on any given Page will be removed, providing they and their affiliates have been abiding by our terms. These newly improved automated efforts will remove those Likes gained by malware, compromised accounts, deceived users, or purchased bulk Likes [...]

We do not and have never permitted the purchase or sale of Facebook Likes as we only want people connecting to the Pages and brands with whom they have chosen to connect."



Survey Survey: SEO is the most effective lead generation method

"59 percent of B2B marketers and 49 percent of B2C marketers credit SEO with having the biggest impact on lead generation — in both cases, those numbers are significantly higher than both PPC and social media."



WolframAlpha introduces personal analytics for Facebook

"We’ve developed a first round of capabilities in Wolfram|Alpha to let anyone do personal analytics with Facebook data. Wolfram|Alpha knows about all kinds of knowledge domains; now it can know about you, and apply its powers of analysis to give you all sorts of personal analytics."



Custom URLs for Google+

"Most likely custom URLs will soon be available to most Google+ users and pages. Will this alone help your SEO? Probably not, but it may make it easier to grow your circles, increase your influence, and in turn directly influence Google’s personalized search results."


Search engine newslets
  • Google shuts down Google TV Ads in AdWords.
  • Walmart unveils Polaris, a semantic search engine for products.
  • How to verify that Bingbot is Bingbot.
  • Google Merchant Center – one hot mess.
  • Unexpected photos on Google Streetview.
  • Search and browse your Facebook friends' photos on Bing.
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3. Recommended resources

Download the brand-new IBP 12

The new version IBP 12 is now available for download. IBP 12 has many great new features. Download it now and see for yourself:

New version 12

If you haven't done it yet, you can download the free demo version of the brand-new IBP 12 now.

seoprofiler

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4. Previous articles

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