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“Penguin Safe Links” Bullshit Spreading Around

By IrishWonder | October 22, 2012

Partial knowledge is a dangerous thing. You have heard of Google’s Penguin update(s), maybe you have even gone as far as reading a few blog posts on the topic, not necessarily even the official version on Google’s blog or Matt Cutts’ take on it, enter the real world…

You have a site to rank, what are you to do in the post-Penguin world? Sure you could try removing links (which is, IMHO, Google’s conspiracy plan for you to out yourself and everybody else somehow related to what you’ve been doing as not a single person has confirmed so far they have recovered after being affected by Penguin just due to removing links – but that is a topic for another post), but what if it’s a new site and you have nothing to remove? Well, you have to build some links. But how do you build links that won’t get you screwed? Obviously, you build something that hasn’t attracted the wrath of Google explicitly yet. Or have somebody who knows better build these for you.

So what’s a poor site owner / marketing agency looking to outsource to assume seeing Facebook ads like this?

Penguin Safe Links Bullshit Spreading Around

Supposedly the business advertising their services knows what Penguin safe links are, right? Does everybody actually follow all Matt Cutts rants against infographics and guest posts being abused to death and being the new kind of spam? How does one ensure the quality of the service provided if they don’t know the first thing about what’s safe and what isn’t? How many people out there actually know, post-Penguin? Ads like that one (the actual site withheld to protect the innocent) surely boost people’s confidence and trust in you knowing what you do, especially when they head over to your site and read things like “Our SEO articles have been published by SEOmoz, SitePoint, and Search Engine Journal“.

 

Seriously, shut the #$&*@ up!

Nevermind that when they get from the aforementioned Facebook ad to your site, it’s not some landing page talking specifically about infographics or guest posting but just a general page about white label SEO services (what a targeted approach, unless the end goal is just to collect a nice email list to spam later with all kinds of other poorly targeted offers, which is quite often seems to be the model for too many similar agencies).

How’s a poor soul looking to outsource their linkbuilding to know how poorly guest posting scales? How are they to know that what they are about to get is either a slew of low quality posts on low quality untargeted sites or a few decent but way overpriced pieces on a few select sites that are surely nice to have in a site’s link profile but in the long run don’t have that much impact and won’t get the site ranking overnight? Only somebody who practiced it directly, and in the exact given niche, knows for sure.

Penguin Safe Links Bullshit Spreading Around

And no, guest posting in the SEO niche doesn’t come even close and cannot be compared – it’s a totally different animal, with much different priorities and more tolerance to self-pitching on average than any other industry – at least we all know and understand perfectly well why we’re all doing this. Outside of that niche, largely, doing the thing properly is one hell of a job. Especially if you keep in mind that guest posting is not about getting links at all – it’s about building relationships… Building relationships in a short time for a bunch of different industries? Requires some serious whoring skills!

And infographics, OMG, all the tasteless meaningless unreadable shit people refer to calling it infographics… Don’t even get me started. So take two most resource intensive (if done right) linkbuilding techniques – guest posting and infographics… Scale it all if you can! While preserving the bloody quality! You stand better chances catching a leprechaun on a moonless night in downtown New Delhi.

 

It ends where it began

Oh, but there’s an upside to this story. You get a service like that to build you some links, once they are finished and you get to the next round of Google’s mass mailing campaign and you get a love letter from them telling you that maybe possibly you have some links that can possibly be disliked by Google but Google won’t tell you which ones, you now have something to do! Why, remove those feckers of course! The online linkbuilding economy has come the full circle, the cycle is now complete!

I’m only surprised we don’t see any Facebook ads advertising link removal services – maybe it’s just my luck? I surely have seen a few link removal tools being pitched here and there, why not the services? Or are we getting there yet?

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  • Penguin Safe Links Bullshit Spreading Around

Topics: Myths and Crap, Snake Oil | 14 Comments »

Posted on 22 October 2012 by Irish Wonder

IrishWonder has been practicing SEO since 2000, dealing with both whitehat and blackhat techniques. IrishWonder believes in using the right tools for the job rather than sticking to whatever ideology. Since 2005, IrishWonder has been a moderator at Syndk8 Black Hat SEO forums, and also offers SEO consulting services at irishwonder.com. IrishWonder's latest project is ContentMango.com, an online content shop to be launched soon. Bullshit is IrishWonder's pet peeve no matter where it happens to appear.

has written 2 articles for SEO Bullshit

  • http://deepfootprints.co.uk/ Joel Chudleigh

    Hi Irish Wonder
    Nice point and well made. Google’s next priority is going to be deciphering which guest posts are “real” guest posts. i think that they are probably going to use domain trust factors to help influence on this and low quality sites that are just publishing any old guest post will have the links devalued – and rightly so.
    If you Google “link removal service” you will see that a whole industry has popped up in the past few months. Probably run mainly by the ex owners of link networks – they will be the most effective candidates for the job!

  • http://twitter.com/TimothyAlcock TimothyAlcock

    Seeing this makes me angry the snake oil Seo’s out there are making it harder for good seo’s to gain trust from clients, default setting to some is your all bs merchants. Cant blame the clients because they have often lost a considerable amount of money on these type of companies.

    Im gonna stop there before I get ranty, I with ya on that one irishwonder :)

  • http://www.syndk8.co.uk/ Earl Grey

    What are you babbling about you crazy fool?

  • Leo Mcdevitt

    Want to fix Penguin problems? Quit gaming the system. $5 content from India isn’t gonna do it. Buying back links isn’t gonna do it.

    Finding a writer who can regularly produce content that is useful to your visitors will do it. If you produce “evergreen” content – blogs, etc. that have ongoing usefulness. You will get ongoing link-juice, without upsetting that rascally penguin.

     

  • http://www.ribbun.com/ Vikas Singal

    Irish, Google remains same even after 10 years. They want to fool people. They want to remove people from doing normal effects. I do a lots of link building for my clients and I rank them with those usual methods which i have been doing from past 4 years. Google just wants to make a noise…but they dont have guts to take link building off from their evaluation process…It works Man it still works .. :)

  • Galaxy Boy6666

    etfreygd

  • smek2

    You are absolutely right, SEO is bullshit. Spread the word, brother.

  • smek2

     ”Seeing this makes me angry the snake oil Seo’s out there are making it harder for good seo’s to gain trust from clients”
    Again with the white hat/black hat SEO bullshit. ALL SEO’s are snake oil salesmen.

  • http://twitter.com/TimothyAlcock TimothyAlcock

    “ALL” ? I cant see how this is the case 

  • Jon Wade

    I am a member of a guest blogging site and it is clear that there are 2 types of guest bloggers - enthusiasts looking to promote their website, and professional (as in paid, not great) SEOs pumping out 400 words of thoughtless rubbish for a link. Unfortunately the SEOs have started to dominate the site, making the whole process of finding a good blog to post on or a good article to publish all the harder. 

  • Jamvibol

    Agen Bola : Wigan Athletic Masuk Kategori ‘The
    Best Karakter’

    Indo Eleven – Kontribusi Sergio Busquets di
    Barcelona akhirnya mendapat pengakuan. Gelandang bertahan Blaugrana itu dipilih
    menjadi Pemain Catalan Terbaik Tahun 2012. Prestasi Busquets ini terbilang
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    Gelandang berusia 24 tahun itu akan menerima penghargaan tersebut akan
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    dari regional Catalan.

    Untuk kategori pelatih terbaik jatuh kepada pelatih Wigan Athletic,
    Roberto Martinez sementara pemain muda Barca, Sergi Roberto dipilih menjadi
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  • Charlie Solano

    seo is getting tougher day by day due these panda or penguine update. now it is not easy to get ranked in minimum time. people are trying other platforms as well such as facebook, twitter or Mylife Refunds which comes under social media promotion.

  • web design bangladesh

    Hello Admin
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    Please Suggest me.

    Thanks
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  • http://www.friv4game.net/ Friv 4

    I see google algorithm change this to 2/3 of the web site in English and altered it to make people like me frustrated seo. bed as they are doing the wrong thing when such changes