It's every webmaster, Internet marketer and site owner's nightmare: you log in to your Google Analytics account and see a massive plunge in traffic. So you take a peek at Google Webmaster Tools and find a ton of links that you don't want pointing to your site. It doesn't even matter how they got there - if you've got bad links, possession is 9/10 the law. But in the last month there's been a lot of talk about Google allowing you to tell it to ignore those links and possibly pull your site back from the depths.
While this is still heresy at the moment, speculation has caused a massive divide among professionals in the SEO and IM industries. On one side people are saying that only black hatters will really care about this supposedly "coming soon" new tool, while many small sites and business owners feel that it could save their link profile and reinstate their rankings. Until the tool is released, we're stuck with the tedious and often impossible process of contacting sites to have links taken down, but for now it's fun to imagine the possibilities this could have on the search engine optimization industry.
The general idea is that one day you may be able to go to your WMT account, review your link profile and tell Google to ignore links that you don't want associated with your site. For instance, if you see links to your site on a webpage that has obvious spam, malware or other serious offenses, there will be a button or some other feature that will allow you to "disavow" that link from your account. It seems pretty simple except for the fact that in some cases there may be thousands or even tens of thousands of links that you want to remove.
Overall, the argument that only black hatters will need this tool just doesn't hold water. In this multi part series we'll examine 3 reasons why good guys and even pure white hatters may need to use this potentially powerful resource - if it ever comes out.
1.) Links are in a Bad Neighborhood
Just because you build white hat links on a particular site today doesn't mean that site is always going to be among the good guys. Take article directories, for example. At one time GoArticles.com was a popular place to get some decent links. But over time they increased the amount of advertising on the site, and eventually even started putting tons of ads within the content itself - a big no-no. So the site went from a PR6 to a PR2 and seemed like it was going to be worthless in short order.
At some point GoArticles smartened up and took the ads out of the content, and now they're back up to a healthy PR5. But if your site was tanking at GoArticles didn't clean up their act, you might want to get rid of those links. You might be able to do this by contacting the directory itself, but most people use multiple accounts even if they are white hatters, and in some cases this could be a daunting project - and one that Google might not keep up with. So a tool that instantly tells Google to stop counting such a link could prove extremely valuable when your good neighborhood links turn to bad neighborhood links - for whatever reason.
Another example could be those rare PR7 or PR8 links that you were successfully able to build. They passed you link love for a few years, but at some point the site or domain went back into the pool and was picked up by some spammy jerk who then began selling links on it. Now, because your once-white-hat links are on this bad neighborhood site, you could be penalized. Telling Google to ignore such links could be a great resource considering that actually contacting spammers and black hatters is deliberately difficult.
In the next installment of this article series we'll discuss another major reason that webmasters and site owners would need this tool: Negative SEO - the talk of the town for the last 60 days or so. But if you need help with your backlink profile right now, call the number at the top of the screen to speak to an SEO professional that you can trust. After all, this is a complex industry and if you're not an expert in it you could be doing more damage to your site than harm. Let us consult with you free of charge and empower you with information to make the right decisions. Call now.
