SEO is not dead. As long as there are search engines, there will be a way to optimize a given site to help it rank better on a given search engine. At Elite Strategies, we do not give into temptation of whatever the latest and greatest link building tool or tactic is. We have seen many Google updates in the past and we will see many more. A small percentage of our sites were penalized by this update, and this was mainly due to the practices of SEO companies employed before we were contracted. We are currently making the effort to bring them back and are already seeing positive movement.
How do you assess your site for bad practices? 1. First thing to do is get a complete report of all of the sites that are linked to you. You can do this using free methods such as Google Webmaster Tools, Backlinkwatch.com or paid tools such as Majestic SEO or Ahrefs. 2. Take a look at these links and in particular take a look at the anchor texts. Put the anchor texts in a spreadsheet and measure the percentages of anchor texts. If there is a heavy emphasis on one or two particular keyphrases, chances are you are not looking good. 3. Take a look at the websites themselves that are linking to you. Are they related to your content? 4. Look at the text within the site linking to you and immediately surrounding the anchor text. Is this text readable? Does it come across as not relevant or spun? Chances are if you have fallen victim to these practices, it is near impossible to remove links. You can submit a "reconsideration request" from Google, but chances are nil that that will work. The best thing you can do is build links in an attempt to outweigh the ratio of bad links with newer, good links.
How will Google know how to rank for my keyword if I am not using anchor text with the keyword in it? This is a really good question. Google does a great job of scanning your code, domain, images, structure and links and will make the determination based on that. You will be surprised at how well Google does a great job at ranking for "the correct" keyword. If you start to see that you are not ranking for what you want to rank for, write better content, look into "LSI" content, optimize your on site factors better, and use better linkage.
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