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You can report link schemes to Google here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93713?hl=en Here's Google's guidelines on link schemes: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en&rd=1 It's unlikely that you'll hear back from Google. The best thing you can do is report it, and move on to creating quality content and natural backlinks for your client. Google eventually catches on to manipulations.

Another good practice to take into effect is to start going to Google Webmaster Tools and going to: Search Traffic > Links to your site Goto full view and download / export a copy to cvs, open in either google sheets or excel and date it, next time you have an issue, you can repeat the above process and then using a compare feature ( plugin / extension ) in google sheets ( not sure if there is one for excel ) and figure out what links were removed much faster. Ahrefs can do a good job, but since it doesn't have all your backlinks, can also be just as much frustrating.

Personally, I'd recommend Moz Local.

Hey Paddy, Great summary man! Your 1,2, 3 = There are lots of other signals as well which Google can look at besides anchor text. Overall site health is essential https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link https://blog.kissmetrics.com/site-structure-enhance-seo/ All the best, Tom

Thank you for your quick reply. I have one more question but am opening a new topic for it as it is more of a discussion,

Redirects usually don't pass all link juice to the target URL but may in time. You won't get accurate reports on the www version of your site because it's redirecting to the non-www URL, so use this primary URL when running reports with SEO tools. Regarding the number of links, you may find that people generally link to the www version just by habit, and that's why I personally still use this as my primary for most projects. Another thing to do is check Google WMT to make sure both www and non-www properties are listed. You'll then be able to select the preferred domain in site settings. You didn't ask but I'd strongly suggest you go over some PageSpeed and YSlow recommendation. It's very slow and JS heavy, and this is simply bad for all the reasons you already know.

Which is? Help yourself why don't you? Please share. 150 per page is deemed spammy. and a pyramid structure is the best for spiders with links flowing through the site.

Hi there, Just to add to the other replies, there isn't really a perfect time to start link building nor is there a fixed number of links that could get you penalized. The focus should be on quality and if you're getting links that are genuine, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about. As others have said, you should start as soon as you have something worth sharing. If you publish a page and aren't sure why it deserves to get links, then you're going to struggle to get them no matter when you start. You should also remember that not every single page you publish will generate links and this is fine. You may publish one blog post which is very high quality but not necessarily going to get lots of links, but may rank well for a certain keyword. So try to focus on quality over quantity with the content that you create and promote only your best and more link-worthy content. I hope that helps! Paddy

It sounds very low quality so either way I would simply ignore these. If you want to be sure crawl the linking sites in Screaming Frog or some such and look at the external links tab. You can then find the page(s) with the external link. It is likely these were part of a link network and have since dropped and are no longer counted. Either way, even if they are helping (which they are probably not) you don't want to copy a broken, backwards strategy - focus on quality and your link building efforts will have longevity. Hope that helps. Marcus

Thanks APFM. This is probably more tools than I want to deal with on a regular basis right now. If you had to boil it down to two or three, which would you choose. Also, what is "wbf"? I Googled it and got World Bodybuilding Federation!.

Thank you all for your answer's. I agree, 52 is not low. I'll be leaving the link as is.

Hi Chloe, I agree with Tim: concentrate on producing awesome content for the main site. Just redirect the other domains to your main site. Greets, Bas

When it comes to anchor text, you want the links pointing to your site to look natural. That said, if you are trying to rank for the keyword "Best India Travel Destinations" and every guest post link you get is exact match anchor text, this can look suspicious to Google. There isn't some magic percentage for exact match anchor text, but I usually never go over 15%, especially if most of the links are coming from guest posts. Hope that helps.

It's absolutely still beneficial! And if it's high quality content, there's a good chance it's been building up even more authority over the course of those years. It would probably be a good idea to make sure the content gets marked "updated" or "new," though. No sense in just slipping the link in there and walking away.

Hi there. The effect on linkbuilding is diminished. With the proper care and a lot of precautions the links coming from free blogs still impact positively. Of course, the trick is not simply done by creating a blogspot or a WordPress with a few articles and some links. I insist that priced care should be taken in consideration. Hope it helps. GR.

Hi Feilim, Please check below article on exact topic.I hope it will help you. A Step by Step Guide to Integrating Long-Tail Keywords Within Blog Posts @ http://neilpatel.com/2015/05/07/a-step-by-step-guide-to-integrating-long-tail-keywords-within-blog-posts/ Thanks

Thank you!

The only safe move here is to create amazing content for both blogs - but why have 2 blogs? Why double your effort when you could be using all the content to prop up the main site? Andy makes a very good point here.  If you have a good article about Brass Widgets on your website and you decide that you want to write a second Brass Widgets article to publish on another website, then you are going to publish a second article that will compete with you and take some of your traffic. Even if the articles are slightly different or very different they will still be "competing" - either at the short tail keyword level or the long tail keyword level.   The result will be damaging to your traffic.  The amount of damage will be proportional to the strength difference of your domains and  the diversity of keywords in the articles.  If the second domain is a lot more powerful than your own domain you could lose almost all of your traffic to the second website. I have a website that publishes only unique articles.  Some of those articles have been written by other people in my industry who have similar articles or entire websites about the topics that they gave me to publish.  I never asked any of these people to write an article for my website.  Every one of them came to me with an offer.  With content written by these other authors, my website frequently outranks their website for primary and secondary keyword of the industry.  They might have a website that is powerful for the topic, but I have a website that is authoritative in the industry.  It can be hard to predict who will win at different levels but my site now competes and brings in lots of traffic for topic areas where I have never written. Publishing on your own site, as Andy suggests, builds the strength of your site and does not invite potentially strong competitors into your keyword space.   There are benefits of sharing articles.  You get exposure as an "expert" on another website, which might have amazing traffic that includes visitors who will seek you out to do business.  You can often get a link on those websites that  will send lots of traffic to your website.  The best situation for all is if you simply want to get your message out to as many people as possible, but if there are competitive concerns then you must weigh the value of a link with the value of the exposure and the risk of a very strong competitor moving permanently into your space.

You can't use how a site looks or feels to you to get an indication of if it is safe or not... You need to be checking, aside from the MOZ spam score, through something like SEMrush, what their traffic is like. Have they had any penalties that might be affecting them? Use The Wayback Machine as well to check the history of the site. This can tell you if it was ever a site you would rather not be associated with or if it has been recently purchased because it has good history and links. Expired domains can surface very frequently and people will charge for gues blogging and lins etc. You should also check who else links to the site. Are there reputable sites that link to it for a good reason? Just a few more tips to keep an eye on. -Andy

Link reclamation for the client as well as the top competing websites. This can be a lucrative way to build up natural link profile, and obtain "new" links on older domains. I usually run Cognitive SEO with top three competitors, view links that are shared  and which are lost vs. live. This is an easy way to reach out to previously interested parties as well as build updated relationships.