Black Hat? Is it really possible my new client paid someone to SEO the word "here"?

[Dweber]

I just took on a client and first thing I saw in Webmaster Tools was the dreaded "Unnatural Link Patterns" message dated Apr 7th, 2012.  MajesticSEO is reporting 212 backlinks, OSE is reporting 251.  Nothing out of the ordinary, in fact they only anchor text is their brand.

However, we then ran an SEO PowerSuite Crawl and found 429 backlinks with 78.1% of links use the anchor text "here" and 77.9% of all links point to the same URL.  If this is indeed true I can see why they got the message from Google.

The company has admitted they hired a service to do SEO for $299/mo for several months but when they saw no results they quit.  Could this company really have gone after "here".

It not, I can't find anything that would give them the message they got from Google Webmaster Tools.

[firstconversion]

Hi Domenic

How many are sitewides? What is the ratio of single domain to domain links vs sitewide to domain

Which of the two letters did you get? the crap links links discounted message or the you are penalised message for crap links message?

What links are Google Webmaster Tools reporting? That should be your best indicator of what Google thinks

S

[KyleChamp]

I highly doubt they intentionally tried to target the word "here". More likely is the links they produced was something like (to see blah blah blah, click here) and “here” was the link to the site. Probably a bunch of spam.

[Dweber]

Stephen, thank you,

The message is the less I think, never seen worse: Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links...[fix it and resubmit.]

I looked over the links in WMT and 163 pointing from one site, using "here" linking to one particular blog article.

The issue is a technical one.  The site in question is their Web 2.0 Community Site, powered by Ning Software, where they answer all sorts of questions on the topic.  They have a blog roll and every single member automatically displays the currently blog roll in their profile.

Google is counting every single member profile and every single page with the blog roll as a link with the word "here".  Full sentence is "Great article on blah blah, find it here."  B/c it's appearing on 163 pages, they have 163 "here"s linking to one page.

This get's slightly more confusing.  There are a lot more than one "here" because the guy who says "check it out here" has multiple posts saying that however linked to URL in question is the same for all 163 and that post was made on June 28th while the WMT message was on Apr 7th.

So I'm still a bit stumped

I'm going to get them to remove the blog roll or maybe we can put a nofollow tag on the blog roll link.  I've never seen blog roll links count for full link value.

[Dweber]

Thank Kyle, we figured that, we just weren't sure why/how, but we're getting there.

[EGOL]

We have sites that have never received linkbuilding and "here" is one of the top anchors for each of the sites.

[Dweber]

EGOL, there are 163 links in Google webmaster tools.  Looking back I see over 8 instances of the link "here" on the blog roll, each pointing to 8 different blog posts (specific URLs) multiplied by the 163 pages...give us 1304 links with "Here" when OSE is showing 251 links from 50+ domains.

So I can see where this is a direct +60% Penguin violation, the issue is why is Google counting obvious duplicate content for every single one.

[b4004040]

Domenic,

Sounds like you've figured out the issue. I recently had to request removal from several blogs because of undifferentiated, site-wide links in their blogroll to our site. Very tiresome and required lots of followup emails. Good luck!

On a side note, how do you like SEO PowerSuite? Lately I've been frustrated by the disparity between MajesticSEO and OSE for backlink analysis. I'm looking for another tool and would like to hear what you have to say about PowerSuite.

Thanks

[Dweber]

It can literally take 8-10 hours for SEO PS to crawl 1site, for that reason it does appear more thorough.  That being said, SEOPS identified the word "here" as did Google WMT, but G WMT points to a completely different aritcle (different URL) than SEOPS.

As I said I was confused b/c the G WMT links are from a "here" post June 28th and the WMT message was 4/7/2012.  So I think...maybe...just perhaps....SEO PS was pulling the "Here" for the actual URL that got the letter where for some reason the links in G WMT are from a later date.

Bottom line.  SEO PS was the only tool that found this information.  SEOMoz and MajesticSEO failed.

[b4004040]

Right on. I'll take the additional wait for increased accuracy any day.