Disavowed links have become a hot button topic in the SEO world. Understanding the positive and negative effects of using them can be the key to success.

The Scalpel and the Chainsaw: Pros and Cons of the Disavowing Links Tool

Creating a strong presence online has never been an easy process. Companies trying to beef up their marketing on the web tend to do so with the best intentions. Their approach is simple: more eyes on a web page mean more potential customers ordering products or services, or generating ad revenue through the increase in traffic. Some businesses will try to do this alone; others reach out to marketing firms who have training and expertise in SEO (search engine optimization) techniques.

Google and Microsoft, through their respective search engines, essentially become the portals through which the world accesses data. They are the gatekeepers for information, in a sense, and with that power comes responsibility.

Both companies want to facilitate and encourage businesses to properly publicize themselves with good quality backlinks that see a lot of traffic. They also want to provide their users with a good search experience, so that the user gets the data they want quickly and easily.

However, this is not always the way of the digital world. Businesses will sometimes cut corners and create arbitrary posts and “linkspam” in an effort to drive up traffic. Or, less than reputable SEO consultants will try to outwit Google’s and Bing’s ranking algorithms to get ahead, using various questionable methods, sometimes including offensive tactics perpetuated on other websites.

The powers that be at Google, Bing, and other search engines have been watching the trends closely, and have recently implemented new measures to devalue these low quality links. In conjunction with this change, they have discussed the option of disavowing links through built-in web tools.

The process of finding and disavowing links can be quite complicated and has generated some controversy. By exploring both sides of the argument, we can come to a better consensus on the importance of this issue and how it should be tackled.

Benefitting Your Web Presence by Disavowing Links

Having numerous low quality links can harm a business’s page ranking, leading to less visibility and ultimately less business. A simple change in a search engine’s algorithm could drop a company’s ranking severely if these “bad links” are not removed. Disavowed links, once recognized and filed through the search engine’s webmaster tools, can be detached from a business’s online profile, causing a possible return in ranking.

What makes disavowing links helpful is the control that a webmaster has to react to notices about unnatural links associated with their company. These harmful backlinks can come from a variety of sources, with the most prevalent being changes to ranking algorithms. Google changed the web strategies of many when they introduced their “Penguin” infrastructure earlier in the year. This change caused many top ranking pages to plummet because of the altered focus on quality links, forcing many companies to start hunting out where and what was causing the issue.

Whether the links came from the company itself or malicious SEO attacks by rival companies, the new algorithm did not care.

For instance, some of these links could not be altered because the owner of the domain housing the back-link is unreachable. In this case, disavowing links becomes the only avenue to reversing a page’s downward spiral by the website owner.

The same process is necessary when dealing with negative SEO; companies will deface a rival’s backlink profile through spamming low quality back links leading to a plummet in ranking. Disavowing links is a surefire way to correct this issue.

Can Disavowed Links Cause More Problems than They Solve?

The tool for disavowing links supplied by Google and Bing, while helpful in certain situations, is not meant for regular use. Google’s disavowed links page clearly states that it is an “advanced feature and should be used with caution.”

There can be a tendency for some webmasters who receive an unnatural link warning or manual penalty to immediately reach for this tool and start disavowing links. It essentially turns a finely tuned scalpel into a devastating chainsaw. If a webmaster is not careful when inputting exact domains and information into the tool, good quality links can be tossed out with the bad. Some may say that this problem is avoidable by being extra careful, but the larger the company’s web page and link profile, the more minute and complicated the information needs to be. Human error or a kneejerk reaction out of fear may cause more damage than the disavowed links do.

The amount of time that goes into recognizing low quality links, utilizing the disavowing links tool, and ultimately seeing results can be exponential. Google’s stance on how they deal with disavowing links leaves the ultimate power in their hands. Keep in mind that if a company uses the tool and files a domain to be disavowed, Google considers it a “strong suggestion rather than a directive.” In short, a company may take the time and effort to find a harmful link, yet not see any results in their page rank.

Written by Giovanni Zenone
Giovanni writes numerous blogs for Results Professional Marketing clients. He is an excellent researcher and writer and we’re proud to have him on our team.

Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to Results Professional Marketing and a clickable link back to this page.

Have a look at information regarding on page and off page SEO

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First of all, let’s clarify that the machine is Google and the other Search Engines and the User is thee and me.

The difference is simple; the user needs to get information that is useful to them and that they can understand, while the machine wants the website to show its keywords and attendant content that supports the keywords. But how does design fit in?

Website Design and Attention

Unfortunately, you and I have amazingly short attention spans. Yes; it’s sad but so true.
So we need help to keep our attention on a website. This is mainly done with designing it with:

• Color for eye trail
• Or with no color for unique interest
• With visuals
• And … headlines

Ah ha! Headlines! These are the points where SEO for The Machine and interest for The User intersect.

Frankly, all kinds of website designs can work. It can depend on whether the site is meant to be terribly professional and SERIOUS or if there can be a more casual aspect to it. But in terms of design, there are so many people on the planet, and so many tastes, that any number of a variety of creative designs can work equally well.

After We Have Your Attention …

Although a variety of looks will work just fine to appeal to the population, what is not left to chance is designing the website to draw the eye to important points of interest, and to the content that will make the user go to the next step. Whether the next step is to buy something, or to contribute in the form of a comment, to ‘like’ the article, or to fill in an inquiry form; almost all websites want something to happen.

The Goal of Website Design for the User

When get the the user gets there, they see something they like and/or can discern easily, OR they don’t – in about 2 seconds! So, since we generally have only seconds to attract The User to stay on the website, the design, eye trail, colors (or no color), simplicity and clear messaging, is ultra important. The goal is to have the user to see what he needs or wants – VERY fast – so that he’ll click into that landing page area. Once the user gets to a page that truly interests him, he is more inclined to spend the time to read and get the information he’s looking for.

Show Me the Pictures

Images are essential. People love pictures and our world is all about pictures now, not reading. Remember; one picture ONE main message. Another picture another main message, and so on. Photos, graphs, sketches and info-graphics all work. The search engines are not concerned with the images, unless you keyword them, which is a must.

What IS the Difference Between Website Design RESULTS for The User vs The Machine?

This is perhaps the most important question.

When it comes to Google, which is the worlds’ largest and most used search engine, their goal is to give the User the best experience possible. If you search for pink pumpkins, Google wants you to get a website that has pink pumpkins on it so that you receive the information you need … an authentic, bona fide pink pumpkin website.

On the other side: if you are selling pink pumpkins and are the website owner, then your site should be designed with that keyword and others that are similar, plus you’ll have pictures of pink pumpkins and content about pink pumpkins. Then, not only will The Machine like your website, so will The User. That makes it a success.

Wren Long Before founding Results Professional Marketing, Wren spent many years as a senior executive, managing a variety of companies, portfolios and functions. She specializes in marketing, internet marketing, and business consulting. Wren is an avid photographer, artist and traveler.

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Traditional and Festive Themed Cuisine…

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Everyone talks about key words, and how you have to have content with the key words that will work to bring people to your website.

But so often we get the question about how to develop key words correctly. Sometimes people try to make it out to be like rocket science, but it’s not all that complicated in some respects.

Yes, you DO need to know what people are searching for on the internet in terms of the product you have, compared to your competition, which can be focused for maximum success, and that’s where people like us come in.

But a little light listening will help you also, not just on the internet but in all your forms of advertising.

What are your customers telling you that they are having trouble with? For instance, if you do HR work and a client tells you that their biggest problem is choosing the right candidate because their personalities change once they are hired compared to the interview, you would not use the key word ‘HR consulting’.

Think with the information you were told; what would this person search? Perhaps he would look on the internet to find: “how to hire the right person” or “how to hire the right personality.”

When you are writing copy, or advertisements, or content for a website, base it on what people need exactly, not a general term that could apply to anything in a broad subject.

Use this information to boost your content so that it attracts the clients that need what you have.

Wren Long Before founding Results Professional Marketing, Wren spent many years as a senior executive, managing a variety of companies, portfolios and functions. She specializes in marketing, internet marketing, and business consulting. Wren is an avid photographer, artist and traveler.

Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to Results Professional Marketing and a clickable link back to this page.

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One of the best ways to get attention on the internet is to put your business in Google Places. Google is the most used internet search engine around the world. With Google Places, when someone is searching for a local business, your listing will show in relation to what is being searched.

The same service is offered on other search engines and you should register your business with them as well. But, for certain, go to www.google.com/places and sign up your business; it’s free. Keep your listing updated with new information as things change.

And things are changing in a different way, with the new plan that Google has for what they call Google Local. They also plan to integrate it all with Google+, so stay vigilant for more information on how this will all come together.

Read how choosing Keywords can be simpler than most people think.

Wren Long Before founding Results Professional Marketing, Wren spent many years as a senior executive, managing a variety of companies, portfolios and functions. She specializes in marketing, internet marketing, and business consulting. Wren is an avid photographer, artist and traveler.

Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to Results Professional Marketing and a clickable link back to this page.

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“Is your Website Backed-up?”

How many organizations backup their websites, or better yet how many companies even know if their website are backed-up. There are now a few companies that provide that services with the hosting responsibilities they take on for there clients. Web development is no longer just about putting up a website, particularly when you have databases involved located at the web-hosting site. This is common with Joomla, WordPress, JoomCart and other self contained platforms including self hosted shopping carts. These carts save a considerable amount of monthly leasing fees but require backups to be completed and moved off line.

Managers of some companies who are Wed-clients, those dollar conscious budget pinching, cost cutters are putting them selves and there companies and huge risk when the buy the $6.00/per month hosting saving $5.00 or $20.00 per month while risking their business future in doing so. What we see happening is Professional Hosting Companies offering a menu of services including web-site backup. These backups are scheduled to have the database backed-up more often than the general static pages. The database is where the transaction records are held for every purchase, new post, new comment, new twitter etc.etc. etc.. Each one of these transactions changes the database rendering the latest backup to a out of date status.

With that in mind the question “Is your Website Backed-up?” brings on a whole new meaning and level of importance.

Checkout Domain901 Website Backups

Written by Gerry Baldwin

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Upset and Confusion

Recently I have come across a lot of confusion as to the relationship of Website Names (Domain Names) which become the Uniform Resource Locator otherwise know as the (URL) and the actual website itself. This confusion is most often due to some upset over “who owns my website name” and do I have control of it. This upset is generally caused by a current website owner wanting to make a change in regards to Hosting location (where on the internet your website resides) or wants to make a change in developers, the creator of your website. Sometimes the owner just wants to take over control of development and hosting. The problem is the person who registered it is generally the developer and does not want to give up the business.

WebSite Names Versus WebHosting Explained

There are a number of other considerations in this which I will cover in a later posts but for now lets look at how and what defines Names versus Hosting and my recommendations.

The WEBSITE NAME as an example may look like this when you register it mywebsite.com and like this www.mywebsite.com when it gets connected to your website and addressed on the internet. Your WEBSITE NAME can be registered under one or multiple extensions, such as .org .net .ca .us or anyone of a number of extensions depending on where your are focusing your interest in marketing or what part of the planet you live on.

What is the purpose of a website name?

There are two main purposes of a website name.

1. Provide a unique name for your website on the internet, like a company name so your site can be easily located (fairly obvious purpose).

2. In the background it provides the ability to point your WEBSITE NAME to the location where your website is being hosted, using DNS pointers. What are DNS pointers?

DNS Pointers

This is simply the Domain Name System used by the internet. Your website name is known as a Domain Name as in www.domain901.com is our domain name. But part of the DNS is the “NS” or named server, as in <=”” b=””> this is how your website name gets pointed to the location of your website hosting, by using a “NS” or Naming a Server to go to. The actual input would look like this sample if you were pointing your Domain Name to our hosting location ns1.domain901.com and ns2.domain901.com there are always two or more “NS” named server involved. A location for this input is provided by each name registry company for each Domain Name you register just for the specific reason of attaching your WEBSITE NAME (DOMAIN NAME) to your actual website. There should not be any long complicated NAME SERVER. It is generally very short, simple and specific. Long and complicated means you are sharing hosting and unless this is a specific desire or need you should not be involved.

Each website hosting company has their own unique location on the internet as every website does, just their purpose on the internet is specific to hosting their clients websites such as yours.

As an example Domain901 Marketing Inc. manages a large number of website names not on our registry. We don’t own a registry, we use a very specialized company for that. We do point our clients Website Names to the specific web-hosting location specified by our clients. Some of our clients have their Website Names pointed to hosting managed by Domain901.com, but the location of the web-hosting is at a different location than the registry. Domain901 Marketing Inc. does not mix registration with hosting. Our hosting is very separate very secure and like our Domain Name Management our web-hosting supports auto renewal. So no one loses their Domain Name or the Hosting Contract. I have seen that happen more than once where some one says I can get web-hosting for $3.95 per month and when the first year goes by and there was no auto renew in place, their site is down losing business while management scrambles around trying to find who what when and where regarding the Domain Name for their business.

The important questions to ask are. Will the name be registered with a company on the Internet that is equipped to:

1. Check to see if the name combined with the extension you want to use is available.

2. Accept Payment from you to register that name and hold it in your name “or who ever registered” secure so it cannot be stolen.

3. Allow you to register it for more than 1 year which is a smart thing to do if you are intending to be in business for a extended period of time.

4. Allow to set the renewal for auto billing/auto renewal to ensure the name never lapses and gets picked up by some one else, and your name is gone or it costs a small fortune to get it back.

5. Allow you or your trusted adviser to point the name to the location where your website is being hosted. (This is where some users have the confusion and this is where the control of the name comes in.)

6. Allow for separate Name registration and Web-Site Hosting as stated earlier, I strongly recommend from experience do not Register the WEBSITE NAME where your website is being hosted.

7. Register with a trusted Name Registry and registered by yourself or through a very trustworthy company or person no one else.

The other big question is WHO IS MANAGING THE NAME AND THE HOSTING? If you are unsure you are living on the edge of a disaster!

Gerry Baldwin As co-founder and CEO of Results Professional Marketing, Gerry’s focus is on the creation and delivery of solutions to clients from small businesses to national companies. He has had an extensive career with such companies as IBM, Compaq and HP. Gerry has been developing and implementing effective internet solutions since 2005 to a wide range of clients.

Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to Results Professional Marketing and a clickable link back to this page.

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