New info on Google

Google still needs text to understand your web pages, rich-media ads have higher click-through-rates, Google doesn't allow phone numbers in AdWords texts, and more.

A new study shows that Google's tolerance of spammy backlinks is decreasing:

"The Portent analysis found strong evidence that Google is steadily lowering the bar for what it considers spam link profiles. [...] We found that the majority of websites — 36 out of 50 — have “clean” profiles with less than 10 percent of their links coming from questionable sources. [...]

We discovered Google has been applying a stricter standard over time. In the initial Penguin update, the only sites we saw penalized had link profiles comprised of more than 80 percent manipulative links.

Within two months, Google lowered the bar to 65 percent. Then in October 2012, the net got much wider. Google began automatically and manually penalizing sites with 50 percent manipulative links."

Google has become much stricter when it comes to spammy backlinks. If you want to get high rankings on Google, you should make sure that your website doesn't contain spammy backlinks.

The following backlink types can be considered spam:

• Too many keyword-rich links in press releases: If the linked keyword doesn't make sense in the press release, it's better to avoid that link.
• Low quality article directories: Links from websites that contain thousands of low-quality articles about every possible subject provide no value.
• Low quality blogs: automatically created blogs with a lot of articles about a wide range of topics usually trigger Google's spam filters.
• Link lists with hundreds of unrelated pages: Link lists aren't bad as long as they are related to the topic of a website. If a link page lists to every Tom, Dick and Harry, you should stay away from that page.
• Random forum links: If you're not participating in an online discussion, you should not add your link to that forum. 

Shortcuts often lead to dead ends:

People who use these spamming tools often said things like "this tool got my website to number one within two weeks." Six months later the same person had to say "my website rankings plummeted." Shortcut SEO methods lead to short-lived results:

I really like this last one I can not tell yu how many people tell me I can go to this Indian company and they promise me number one rankings quick!  Now all they will get yur web site is black listed.  Go slow, use tested and old but good ways to get yu ranked.  Also remember that Google is not the only game in town!

The article was written byAxandra with my touches added of course.

Until next time

Joe R