Link Schemes and Black Hat Techniques
Google Penguin updates go against sites not abiding by Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. They frown at black-hat methods including but not limited to cloacking, keyword stuffing, duplicate content (having the same page identically appear on multiple domains which you own or control), or blatant linking schemes.
A recent example would be the Interflora penalty. Their “advertorial” marketing approach was caught by Google. How they operate was simple: they paid other people to write reviews and post them on other (non relevant) sites, in hopes that they would boost their Google rankings and search engine dominance.
Matt Cutts, recently, sent his followers a Twitter reminder, emphasizing the fact that Google’s guidelines on paid links passing PageRank (PR) apply to “advertorials” as well.
What we can learn from this case study is essential. While low quality back-links might lower your rankings or not count at all, paying for ads or links to boost your PR is against Google’s policy. This does NOT mean you are not allowed to advertise or link-build. Google is against this approach on non relevant web sites, but they like to see value pointing to value.
If you do advertise or insert paid links on targeted websites, at least, avoid keyword stuffing. In fact, diversify your hyperlinks and make them look natural. That means you have to blend in the ad or link within the content, and at the same time, do it on a small scale.
From what I understood, Interflora got penalized because of doing this paid advertising on a major scale, and targeting non relevant sites. That’s like spending your advertising budget on all kinds of TV and radio commercials, expecting to increase your brand awareness and generate sales.
That’s a dumb, and now dangerous marketing approach, as sales are generated when you’re targeting a relevant crowd of buyers or prospects, not a pool of individuals who don’t want to hear from you, yes?
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