LINK AUDITS

For well over a decade, links have made the SEO world go round. In the early years, links were easily manipulated. As search engines got older and wiser, they began to put more efforts into and take more vigorous measures to spot link manipulation. Historically, external links into you website didn’t hurt you. If Google was able to identify the links as being unnatural, they simply discounted the link as far as its value for your rankings. But over the last several years, that’s changed. Google launched the Penguin filter. No longer content to merely discount unnatural links, Google began punishing sites for them.

During the same timeframe, Google became much more aggressive in what they deemed unnatural links as well. Webmasters soon found that links they’d generated in years past were coming back to haunt them. Some of these links were generated using accepted practices at

the time but have since become a Penguin target. Some of these links weren’t generated by the webmaster at all.

But to Google, having bad links is having bad links, regardless of the circumstances surrounding their procurement.

Why do sites receive a manual action?

If you believe one of the Penguin updates have negatively affected your rankings, you’ll want to read our information on Penguin recovery. If you’ve received a message through Google search console notifying you that you have a manual action on your site, you can find out more about manual penalty recovery here.

If you haven’t been hit by a Penguin update or received a manual penalty, but are nervous you might, our link audit service can assist in identifying any potential risks and help you take proactive measures to avoid getting caught in the Penguin filter.