This document discusses how to identify and manage risky links in order to avoid penalties from Google's Penguin algorithm. It advises auditing all current links to determine which are risky, such as those with commercial anchors, banned words, or from sites with no social activity. Risky links should be removed carefully rather than all at once to avoid further harm. If penalties occur, the recommendations are to rebalance link profiles and rebuild cautiously while waiting for Google to reevaluate the site. Proper link removals, disavowals, and reinclusion requests may help recover from manual penalties.

2. HOW TO SPOT
A SHI**Y LINK
BY PAUL
MADDEN

3. HOW TO SPOT
A SHITTY LINK
BY PAUL
MADDEN

4. HOW TO SPOT
A SHITTY LINK
BY PAUL
MADDEN

5. Former professional
spammer

8. The Provider of the
Largest Number of
Links in the UK

9. 2012 A
BAD
For blatant SEO
YEAR

10. PRE 1ST
QUARTER
OF 2012
Some counted Throw as many
some did not links as you
dared
If you threw
enough of the right

11. WHAT
CHANGED?

12. &
Further Penguin
Pressure
Unnatural Link Disavow Penalties all
Warnings over the
place

13. WHAT IS
PENGUIN?
Squawk!

14. PENGUI
IS A PENALTY OR
N
FILTER

15. DESIGN
TO DULL THE
ED
EFFECT OF
People Chasing the
Algorithm

16. LINKPENALTI
ES

17. Google have sent a
number of waves of
unnatural link
warnings
There is now a
much more formal
They are still
procedure to get
sending them
the penalty
removed

18. THE
WE ALL
PROBLEM
NOW FACE

19. Links are
STILL the
Signal

20. THE MYTH
OF NATURAL LINKS

21. WE ARE THE
SIGNALTHEY
NEED US

22. A WARNING
ABOUT
SHEEP

23. Don’t follow what everyone
else does or you’ll be in
the next filter
Guest Infograph
Posts ics

24. TYPES OF
WHAT’S
LINK
LEFT ?

25. PAID LINKS

26. GIFTS

27. ADVERTORIAL

28. Infographics
Guest posts
Directories
Social Bookmarks
Paid in content

29. THERE ARE
TYPES OF LINK
2
PROFILES

30. EVERY LINK HAS RISK
YOU HAVE TO MANAGE
EACH ONE

31. Validate every link opportunity
Only buy link building services if
the company can demonstrate
that they know what risk is and
how they handle it
Be realistic in your link risk
exposure

32. WHAT WAS
OUR
RESPONSE?

33. We needed to try understand what the link
risk was of every link we had placed or
were going to place

34. Google have To rank you have
hidden what to build, but you
they consider a have to manage
bad link well the risk far more

35. MANAGING THE RISK OF
LINK BUILDING
1. 2. 3.
Audit what you Have someone Determine what is
have audit your links risky and what to
with experience remove

36. Removing is almost as bad as not
removing
If you determine what the problem
links are, out of every 100 links you
identify as bad Google probably
only thinks 20 are bad
Removing all 100 is as bad for
your rankings as getting penalised
in some cases

39. SIGNALS OF RISK
WHAT TO LOOK FOR

40.  far higher % of on anchor
 higher % of sitewides
 higher % of suspect cctld
 more links that 40x or 50x

41. PROPENSITY 4 DISAVOW

42. Poor link metrics Wrong Reason for
(Majestic / Moz / PR) CCltd the site
Banned What makes a link Links to bad
Words problematic? places
Commercial No Social Activity
Anchors again on a site (Twitter /
No interaction
and again Facebook)
on the site

43. LOOK AT EVERY
OR EVERY
LINK
SUSPECT ONE

45. Risk is obvious in the anchor text distribution

48. WHAT TO DO IF YOU
GET CAUGHT?

49. 3 Main Risks:
Penguin Link Link
Devaluation Warnings

50. REBALANCE
AND WAIT FOR GOOGLE

51. REBUILD
WITH CAUTION

52. Manual Penalty:
Link audit and clean-up
Link removal attempts
(keep records)
Disavow the links that
you cannot remove

53. REMOVALS

54. FOR EVERY
LINK YOU
You REMOVE
have to consider what
you might have to add & how

55. WAIT

56. REINCLUSION
YOU AREN’T SUCCESSFUL TRY AGA
REQUEST

57. KNOW WHEN YOU
BEATEN

58. 301’s
DON’T WORK AS WELL AS
THEY DID

59. REDIRECTIONS
AND NEW DOMAINS
BEWARE WHAT PAS

60. SAY
HELLO!
paul@manuallinkbuilding.co.uk
@pauldavidmadden
manuallinkbuilding.co.uk

61. IMAGE
CREDITS
Slide 4 – Vote by jonathan mcintosh
Slide 10 – Signals by nottsexminer
Slide 14 – Builder by Titanic Belfast
Slide 20 – Camel by wwarby
Slide 21 – Lion by amandarichard421
*Paul – Rest stolen from the interwebs