Google has reinforced to webmasters that low quality backlinks created on external websites without their permission are not the difference between a well ranked website and a poorly ranked website. Instead, webmasters have been reminded that backlinks make up just part of the criteria that Google uses to rank a website, and that time spent on optimising areas other than SEO linking can prove much more effective than spending time battling with other sites to have low quality links removed.
Insuring that the site is well structured with regularly updated quality content is also an important factor. Google suggests tasks such as doing a usability study, asking for a site review or using a website testing tool to analyse visitor stats are all valuable ways to spend time optimising a website.
However although it may prove more beneficial to spend time on improving other aspects of a website’s quality, Google has also reminded webmasters that this does not mean that if efforts are made to remove low quality backlinks, and improvements are made on the quality of SEO linking, then this will not benefit the website. Apart from anything else, a webmaster may be concerned about a user’s perception of their website if they come across it in amongst a bunch of spam like links. They therefore advise that if it seems easy enough to request the removal of these links then it is worth doing.
Finally Google concludes that low quality backlinks are often not around for long, and may already be being ignored by their algorithms. However if webmasters do want to bring these links to Google’s attention, they can do so by using the spam report or the paid links report available.
For more information visit googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com
About the author: Jack Mclaren
PPC Executive – Jack MclarenA PPC Executive at 4Ps Marketing, Jack is responsible for account management and the day to day running and optimisation of a number of pay per click customers. He spends a great deal of time managing the company’s relationship with Facebook where 4Ps have begun to specialise, and also working on improving account performance across international and domestic markets.