In the last two years, there have been some really important updates to Google’s ranking algorithms. One of those updates has to with the kind of links you’re getting to your website, how frequently you’re getting them, and where you’re getting them from.

On April 24, 2012, Google made one of the most important changes they’ve ever made: Penguin. This update focused on many different types of black hat SEO (in other words, the wrong way of doing things), but most important in that list was the item of unnatural links. Unnatural link building could refer to paid links from blog networks with low quality content, way too many links at one time, or the actual words used to link to you.

Let’s say you have a website trying to rank for Fort Collins SEO, and you built 1,000 links per week from different types of sources. Seriously, who gets 1,000 links per month, especially for a phrase like that? It’s pretty obvious that this is unnatural. And all of the links say the keyword? Really? Come on, how could Google not catch onto that?

It’s important to focus on getting quality links from people that actually want to link to you. Offer quality content, and attract those links naturally. If you’re going to get involved in link schemes from low quality sites, it’s bound to catch up with you. Plain and simple, don’t do it.

See you next time!