Weekly SEO news: 17 September 2013
Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

There’s a lot of turmoil in the world of link building. For years, many webmasters relied on spam and automated backlink building tools to get high rankings on Google. These methods don’t work anymore. Fortunately, there is a way to get high quality backlinks to your site.

In the news: Google's John Mueller says that you don't have to react to all manual actions, a webmaster reports how Google's disavow links tool damaged his website, most keywords are 'not provided' by Google, the latest search engine statistics, 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. Three simple steps: how to get good backlinks
There’s a lot of turmoil in the world of link building. For years, many webmasters relied on spam and automated backlink building tools to get high rankings on Google. These methods don’t work anymore. Fortunately, there is a way to get high quality backlinks to your site.

Step 1: forget robots and think like a human
No robots

Before Google’s Penguin update, many webmasters thought that link building was for robots. You entered your keywords and the link building tool automatically created hundreds of backlinks with your keywords in the anchor text.

The fact that these backlinks didn’t make any sense for human visitors didn’t worry most of these people. Unfortunately, Google didn’t like these backlinks at all and as soon as their algorithms were good enough to detect these backlinks, websites that relied on spam backlinks experienced massive ranking drops.

The age of fully automated link building with robots is over. If you want to succeed in the modern world of link building, you have to think and act like a human.

Step 2: find good target websites

Getting relevant links is the only sustainable link building strategy. The basis of a successful link building campaign are the websites that link to your site. Finding these sites can be difficult. It is easy if you have the right tools.

SEOprofiler offers a variety of powerful tools that help you to find good websites that should link to your website:

  • The competitor backlinks tool: websites that link to your competitors are websites that should link to your website. The competitor backlinks tool in SEOprofiler helps you to find these sites.
  • The keyword backlinks tool: backlinks from related web pages have a higher impact on your search engine rankings than backlinks from unrelated web pages. The keyword backlink tool in SEOprofiler helps you to find potential link partners that are related to the topic of your website.
  • The hub finder: web sites that link to more than one of your competitors are so-called hub sites. These sites help search engines to categorize your website. If search engines assign your website to the right category, your web pages will get higher rankings for keywords that are related to this category. The hub finder tool in SEOprofiler helps you to find these hub sites.
  • The link opportunity finder: the link opportunity finder tool in SEOprofiler automatically creates link related search queries and it automatically retrieves the results for these queries. You will get good link partner suggestions as quickly and efficiently as possible.

    For example, you will find related blogs that can write about your company or your products. Just like all other link tools in SEOprofiler, the link opportunity finder in SEOprofiler is integrated with the backlink manager to make it as easy as possible to keep track of your link building activities.

Powerful link building tools

Do not use the PageRank of website to judge the quality of a website. Use common sense. Has the content been created by real people? Are the ads on the website reputable? Does the website list contact information? Further information on how to judge the quality of a website can be found here.

Step 3: get the backlink

Find a reason to contact the owner of the other website. Would a link to your site be a resource for visitors of the other site? Can you contribute unique content to the other website?

Write a personal message and let the other webmaster know that you are a real human being. Try to form a relationship. Tips can be found here.

The backlink manager in SEOprofiler helps you to find the contact information of other websites. It also keeps track of your conversions and it provides additional information about your link partners. The link manager helps you to build backlinks as efficiently as possible:

Manage your backlinks

This time, it’s personal

If you want to make sure that your links lead to long-term rankings, it is very important that you build links like a human being. Focus on relevance. Show others that you are a real person. Link to other websites whenever it makes sense. Treat others like you would like to be treated.

You don’t need hundreds of links to succeed. A handful of really good backlinks can have a huge influence on your Google rankings. The tools in SEOprofiler make it as easy as possible to get these backlinks. If you haven’t done it yet, create your SEOprofiler account now:

Free trial Test full version


Create a free trial account now or get the full version and save 99%.

2. Search engine news and articles of the week

Google's John Mueller: you don't have to react to all manual actions

On Google+, Google's John Mueller said: "That generally means that we're not counting some of those links in the way that we might have in the past. [...]

If you're not aware of the specifics, remember that we're essentially ignoring those links, so the rest of your site, and the other natural links, will be used as before. In short, you don't need to take action, but if you're aware of specifics, it's always good to clean up the issues directly too."

Editor's note: John Mueller basically says that Google can detect bad backlinks and that it's not necessary to use the disavow links tool.



John MuellerGoogle’s John Mueller: URL citations can help pages get indexed
"In a Q&A session on Google Hangouts, Google’s John Mueller said that Google uses unlinked URL citations to find new websites. [...] But our goal here isn’t necessarily to pass any PageRank, which we don’t do with those kinds of links."



Official Bing information: how not to build backlinks

"Duane Forrester, Senior Product Manager at Bing, explained how you should not build links to your website."



StatisticsThe latest search engine statistics

"Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in August with 66.9 percent market share, followed by Microsoft Sites with 17.9 percent and Yahoo! Sites with 11.4 percent (up 0.1 percentage points). Ask Network accounted for 2.6 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.3 percent (up 0.1 percentage points).

19.1 billion explicit core searches were conducted in August, with Google Sites ranking first with 12.8 billion. Microsoft Sites ranked second with 3.4 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.2 billion, Ask Network with 489 million and AOL, Inc. with 241 million (up 1 percent)."


Google query data disappearing at an unprecedented rate

"In mid-July, on average roughly 43% of Google organic search visits did not pass the user’s search query to the website receiving the visit. By the end of September, that figure may very well double. Currently, over 70% of search queries are not being provided. [...]

Some have pointed to the contradiction of Google continuing to pass queries for paid search clicks while increasingly hiding the same information from organic search as an indication their motive is to force marketers to pay to play."


The sad state of my search traffic after disavowing 35,000 links
"Shortly after Google released Penguin 2.0 in late May, my rankings started to drop. They dropped like a rock. [...] Other SEOs noticed similar effects after disavowing links. [...]

Immediately after this, I removed the disavow file from Google Webmaster Tools. [...] Even after removing the disavow file, my ranking never recovered. [...]

When you disavow your links, best to heed Google’s advice. Use with caution."

Editor's note: if you haven't actively spammed Google in the past, avoid Google's disavow links tool and focus on improving your website.



Search engine newslets

  • Bing Ads now compatible with Google AdWords' enhanced campaigns.
  • Introducing the new Yahoo Answers.
  • Report: August 2013 ChannelAdvisor same store sales (SSS) for eBay, Amazon, Search and CSE (comparison shopping engines).
  • China's 3rd, 4th largest search engines merge.
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3. Recommended resources

How to get a website health-check quickly and easily

Doing a regular audit of your web pages is important if you want to make sure that search engines can index all of your pages. The more pages your website has, the more likely it is that there are many errors that have to be corrected.

The website audit tool in SEOprofiler automatically checks your web pages once per week. You will get a report that shows all the issues that should be corrected. By correcting these issues, you make sure that search engines can index all of your pages correctly. Here’s a screenshot of the overview page:

SEO website audit

You can get the website audit tool and all other tools in SEOprofiler for our special offer price:

Free trial Test full version for $1


Create a free trial account now or test the full version for only $1.

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