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In terms of the current algorithm change, we really don't know yet. I suspect that Donnie's right - it's really the same sort of stuff that we've referred to as over-optimization all along: Keyword stuff copy, titles, URLs Aggressive exact-match anchor text SEO-targeted copy (like 1000s of thin pages that only differ by a keyword) Suspicious code-order changes Hidden or partially hidden content I suspect that, unlike the past, Google may start treating over-optimization more like Panda. In other words, dozens of over-optimization variables will get fed into a model and spit out one unified factor. I also suspect the threshold will be pretty high - you're going to have to be knowingly manipulating your site in an aggressive way. I don't think anyone is going to get penalized for an extra keyword repetition or a TITLE that's a bit too long.

Hi Mike, I'm glad that you had the foresight to warn the client ahead of time. A lot of people are learning the hard way that quick-and-cheap link building methods can indeed cause penalties. My inbox is full of examples Worry about links coming into your site that aren't legit, and links going out of your site that are irrelevant to low-quality sites. The fact that YoChicago.com happens to link to a site that has an unnatural link profile should be no problem.

Only once has a site I reported been penalized in any way. It will probably not happen for most people

Have you received a warning? Seen a drop in traffic/rankings? If so, then your best hope is to have them taken down - ideally by the person who built them. If that's not possible, get a spreadsheet together and list the actions you took on each crappy link. It's extremely tedious, but you can then link to the GDoc in your re inclusion request and show which ones were removed and which ones you tried to remove.

If you know the sites in question, look in your analytics refferal data for any traffic from them.

I have to agree with the other responses: content is the most important thing because everything centers around that. Even with the recent link changes, that hasn’t changed. If anything, those changes plus Panda, Google+, etc. has made content even more important. You have to have good, unique content that makes your website worth linking to and worth sharing. Any business in any industry can come up with unique content that is worth linking to and worth sharing. It takes hard work, but is well worth the effort. The problem I have with “link building” is that it becomes a separate beast unto itself where the question becomes “How do I get links?” instead of “How do I get people to know/like/trust my business?” In other words, link building is a tactic of the larger marketing strategy. I actually like Google's recent efforts because it brings link building back to what it should be. That is how I present link building to my clients. The specific tasks within that then become finding websites for companies or organizations that are in related industries or finding blogs/news organizations talking about that industry. Certainly I automate that discovery as much as I can. Once found, the automating stops because at that point it is about making connections with those companies and organizations. As part of that connection, ask for a link. Doing that can get you a link while also helping the business. Which, really, helping the business is kind of the point of our jobs, right? Does it take time? You bet. It is a pain and trust me I wish there was an easy way. But there is no quick fix and any quick fix tactic is probably spammy and will be shut down eventually by Google and Bing. So, why take that risk with some of those tactics you mentioned? At best, you are looking at a short term gain and a panic attack in the future when Google and Bing make a change. Why do that? By treating link building as a form of building connections, links I built five years ago are still around today adding value to my client's websites. The best thing is that links built that way—extending a real world connection—will never be penalized by Google because there is nothing spammy about them. Sure it takes time, but I’ll take the long term effects every day of the week. My distribution of time is dependent on the exact needs of the site obviously. But in general for a site that has been up and running for a year or two my main focus and effort is on content. From there, my time is divided something like this: 50% Content 20% CRO/Usability 15% Link Building 10% Social 5% On-page optimization

Another useful feature is the ability to remove pages from the index. I've needed to do this a couple times. It's free and only takes a few minutes to set up so I'd do it for every site. Google seem to be developing and refreshing a lot of things at the moment too so I am sure Google Webmaster Tools will only improve with time.

This works and is quick/cheap to do. The much better options is a well written page on each area. This way each page is 100% optimised for the keyword and contains useful, local, relevant information. Start with the largest areas (on search volume) and add a few more pages each week/month. If you have a list of areas as large as this then use slightly larger areas and target the big town for the page but also make references to the smaller villages within that page. Means the higher volume is well optimised and the lower volume pages are semi-optimised on a relevant page. Interlink each of these pages to 2-3 of the others to create low OBL, relevant, varied, internal linking - rather than a single page like above with links to all of the pages.

Yeah I use a 301 redirect. The url is Lukasgraham.dk

Thanks for the answer Carson! I took your advice and just laid out the two scenarios, so we'll see what get's decided. Unfortunately it doesn't look like we have WMT setup, so I don't know if those sites have warnings, but you make an interesting point. Also the spammy stuff has been stopped for sometime now, so the worry is more whether it's diluting our link profile from being stronger by retaining these types of links. (And of course getting penalized for having them in the future.) I think it's a rare occurrence that an SEO has the opportunity to remove so many links as easily as this, as I know most would have to contact each site individually. I just know that big changes usually result in significant outcomes/consequences, so my worry would be rank drops. Just because, no matter how you slice it, we would be giving up a large quantity of links, even if they are lower in quality. Regardless, the link building plan moving forward is to build links using legit higher quality tactics, however, my bias is to just pull the plug and say goodbye to these spammy links and move on. I'll just have to see what higher ups say. Thanks again for the advice. It's great to know that even as a one person SEO department that there's a great community like this where I can discuss these kinds of scenarios.

No, and sorry if it seemed like I was disagreeing. I just wanted to clarify and add some thoughts.

hi i have a question related to this but havent got answers yet i have purchased a lot of different domains and realize now that many of them have backlinks from pornsite and maybe even spamming sites. will that effect the sites i am about to link to? i give you an example i purchase domain abcdef.com which has over 1.000.000 backlinks from different sites, all from adult to spammy - many of them also good I put a simple wordpress blog on abcdef.com and write an article about sexdating or sextoys and link to fx. sexshop.com and sexdating.com which are also adult sites - will this help the ranking for sexshop.com and sexdating.com or will it hurt them? thx

What I would probably do is build the whole thing out on the test.example.com and move the website from there to example.com.