Apparently, Google doesn’t really care about penalizing sites in their index, whether that is by the page level, or flat out kicking you out of Google, no matter how legit your site is you have a giant target on your back if you are not careful. Over the last year there has been a lot of talk from M.Cutts about the “problems†with buying links. He has been pretty persistent with telling webmasters that they do not condone it.

I don’t really care much for the idea Google can tell you where you can and cannot buy advertising. However, it is their index and they can do what they want.

From what I have seen so far, as far as the penalizations go they are not across the board. I still feel like it is a manual handcheck and perhaps with some level of algorithmic manipulation.

The following are 9 reasons you should be worried if you are buying links:

1. You are buying links through a network

2. You are buying links in chunks, 3-5 at a time on one page.

3. You are buying all your links on sidebar, footer locations.

4. Your entire niche buys links.

5. Your site sucks, as in no one in there right mind would naturally link to you.

6. All of your links have perfectly, articulated anchor text that simply looks fake.

7. You are not a 300+ Million dollar brand name.

8. You are doing really, really well in the SERPS, and rank in the top spot for a majority of the money terms.

9. 70+ % of your sites traffic comes from Google organic results

The bottom line is if you are buying links you really have to be under the radar. I know this has been said for a while but more so then ever. If your entire niche is buying links then there is a much greater chance your site is going to get checked out in my opinion.

Don’t go overboard, actually buy links that will get you traffic and conversions.

PS. If your link profile is made up of 1/2 to 3/4 paid links you might as well stop now, and start building defensible traffic.

If you are in the Raleigh area, and want to discuss advanced SEO and SEM tactics, I encourage you to come out. I am holding the first of hopefully many more Advanced SEO meetups. We are holding the first session on Wednesday April 16 from 7pm to 9pm at the Carolina Ale House (Brier Creek Location).

The idea is to get together and share ideas, tactics and tricks that are working in the world of organic search optimization and paid optimization. SEO/SEM 101 is left at the door. This is the place to share in depth tactics that are working, and working well.

Feel free to signup over at spongecell for the Raleigh SEO Meeting. http://spongecell.com/event_page/view/594997

UPDATE:

After further notice it appears to be somewhat algorithmic in nature, and somewhat manual. Some sites I have noticed have gotten completely docked, and some sites have only had penalizations at the page level. Will keep an eye on this as it unfolds.

I talked to Matt Cutts, and he explained that if you are trying to recoup some of your lost rankings, then the best course of action is to get the paid links removed by contacting the site owners and telling them to take them down. Once you have made a good faith effort of removing the links then they might consider the reconsideration request.

Not sure how feasible it is to get this done, but this is what he said none the less.

It looks like Google has finally started pushing, what appears to be in typical “scalable” fashion, a paid link algorithm that is completely knocking out pages (not entire sites) that it feels have been heavily gamed via paid links.

This is going to open up a whole new can of worms, and will be interesting to watch how it unfolds in the coming weeks and months. Competitor sabotage here we come?

It appears I have been tagged by Taylor Pratt in a meme. Between starting a new job at Ignite Social Media, buying a townhome, and starting some new client work I have been completely strapped as of late. I have been so busy, the blog has suffered a lot, and I feel this is partially why Talyor tagged me!!

Anyways, I know everyone out there has always been itching to know all about Brian Chappell, well not really Here are 8 off the wall things you might not have known about me:

I tried to track the beginning of this meme and failed miserably. I am sure it goes back very far, way into 2007.

With that said, I have decided to single handedly put an end to this meme trail. This is the end of the line, no one else is getting tagged.

There is more to Social Media than front page Diggs…

If you think Social Media is all about getting on the homepage of Digg and only that, then you are wrong. Keep digging, there is a LOT more underneath the surface to be discovered. Most SEO’s get stuck on instantaneous traffic sources. The fact of the matter is that you need to take a holistic approach when implementing tactics in todays market for clients.

If you sell Social Media as a service on your SEO consulting site, you better be able to back it up with other tangible explanations vs. simply submitting content through power accounts, getting traffic (that wont convert for crap) and obtaining 25 backlinks from the linkerati and calling it Social Media.

There is more to reputation monitoring than subscribing to RSS feeds and other glorified RSS reader tools…

This space is growing as rapidly as any right now. Simply typing in a brand term and seeing results that come up from the major engines, blogs and websites just does not give you the whole picture. Aside from your key terms and brands you are monitoring, are you looking into trends around that phrase, are you looking into key influencers that you want to put on your radar around that term? There is no one solution here atm that does it all. However, understanding there is more to Reputation Management then exact match keyphrase monitoring, will help you going forward.

There is more to Social Media than Facebook and MySpace…

Facebook and MySapce to a degree got this all started. It really got marketers thinking about engagement beyond one sided conversations, and how to use it for business, outside of the daily personal ongoings that Facebook and MySpace facilitated. In reality that is exactly what Social Media is, leveraging two sided conversations in any form or fashion possible.

With all that said, I have decided to make a move. 3 years of in house, hyper competitive SEO poo slinging with theMadHat has taught me a lot (personal side note: look who’s ahead, your shady link tactics have been foiled! ). However, as of late things have started to get dull. Learning and connecting is the name of the game at this point so Ignite Social Media made sense. I am really looking forward to building out my Social Media skills and knowledge base over the coming years. I think Ignite Social Media Agency is a great place, and is going to be doing some fantastic things in the space. Keep an eye out.