Friday, October 16, 2009
Webmasters who check their incoming links in Webmaster Tools often ask us what they can do when
they see low-quality links. Understandably, many site owners are trying to build a good reputation
for their sites, and some believe that having poor-quality incoming links can be perceived as
“being part of a bad neighbourhood,” which over time might harm their site’s ranking.
If your site receives links that look similarly dodgy, don’t be alarmed… read on!
While it’s true that linking is a significant factor in Google’s ranking algorithms, it’s
just one of many.
I know we say it a lot, but having something that people want to look at or use—unique, engaging
content, or useful tools and services—is also a huge factor. Other factors can include
how a site is structured, whether the words of a user’s query appear in the title, how close the
words are on the page, and so on. The point is, if you happen to see some low quality sites
linking to you, it’s important to keep in mind that linking is just one aspect among many of
how Google judges your site. If you have a well-structured and regularly maintained site with
original, high-quality content, those are the sorts of things that users will see and appreciate.
That having said, in an ideal world you could have your cake and eat it too (or rather, you could
have a high-quality site and high-quality backlinks). You may also be concerned about users’
perception of your site if they come across it via a batch of spammy links. If the number of
poor-quality links is manageable, and/or if it looks easy to opt-out or get those links removed
from the site that’s linking to you, it may be worth it to try to
contact the site(s)
and ask them to remove their links. Remember that this isn’t something that Google can do for
you; we index content that we find online, but we don’t control that content or who’s linking to
you.
If you run into some uncooperative site owners, however, don’t fret for too long. Instead, focus
on things that are under your control. Generally, you as a webmaster don’t have much control over
things like who links to your site. You do, however, have control over many other
factors that influence indexing and ranking.
Organize your content; do a mini-usability study with family or friends. Ask for a site review in
your favorite webmaster forums. Use a
website testing tool
to figure out what gets you the most readers, or the biggest sales. Take inspiration from your
favorite sites, or your competitors—what do they do well? What makes you want to keep coming back
to their sites, or share them with your friends? What can you learn from them? Time spent on any
of these activities is likely to have a larger impact on your site’s overall performance than time
spent trying to hunt down and remove every last questionable backlink.
Finally, keep in mind that low-quality links rarely stand the test of time, and may disappear
from our link graph relatively quickly. They may even already be being discounted by our
algorithms. If you want to make sure Google knows about these links and is valuing them
appropriately, you can bring them to our attention using either our
spam report or our
paid links report.
So setzen wir das um
We archive Search Central announcements because client questions often trace back to a change that was announced years ago. Reading the original is faster than reconstructing it from second-hand summaries.
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