TIL a lot of new freelancers think a 'backlink' is just any link from another site, but after reviewing 50 client reports, I've seen that a link from a spammy directory can actually hurt more than help.

Has anyone else had to explain to a client why their 'cheap link building' service from two years ago is now causing manual actions?

4 comments

4 Comments

shanes666d ago

Wait, they're still getting manual actions from links that old? That's brutal.

bell.jessica6d ago

Remember a client who got hit for a blog comment from 2012 that just said "nice post!" @shanes66. The site was a pet food store, and the link came from a now-dead gardening forum. Took them weeks to clean it up because they had to find the site owner from a decade ago just to beg for a removal. Google's memory is way too long sometimes.

joseph_bailey6d ago

Actually @bell.jessica, that sounds like a Penguin penalty, not a manual action, which Google can drop if the links are cleaned.

charlieh744d ago

Honestly, Google's long memory is a good thing. It stops people from just buying a bunch of junk links, getting a quick ranking boost, and then trying to wipe the slate clean like it never happened. If you built spammy links two years ago, that was a choice to try and cheat the system. The penalty sticking around makes you actually fix the mess you made, which is fair. It forces real cleanup instead of just waiting for a reset.