"What has gone wrong with our website, we were ranked #1 for keyword X and now we are languishing on page 10. We have not changed the site etc..."

Perhaps we can shed some light.

July 17, 2022

There is no such thing as a SPAMMY LINK or a BAD link. Links are either good (have link juice or strength in various degrees) or have a neutral effect (ie none). How do we know? Well we control over 4000 websites with an estimated 18,000,000 external links, and have been building links as part of an SEO strategy for over 12 years.

There is however an incorrect anchor text strategy often referred to as "exact match anchors" Read below and see why this could have happened to your website.

Please read a quick story

In 2001 Benedict^? created his first website for £23,000 for an electrical retailer. It was a small site that was well designed for its time and was well received by the client. However three months later the site had been visited 57 times.

This was embarrassing having charged so much for a site in the first place so, in December of 2001, Benedict^? sat down and tried to work out how to gain traffic for this site and the understand the relationship between content, code and backlinks.

He ran out a number of changes to the site free of charge to the client, as Benedict^? admitted that they might not work and could make things worse. By April 2002 the site was receiving 22,000 uniques a month and was sold in 2005 to a major brand.

So far so good...

Running forward to 2004 Benedict^? had become fascinated by Google and backlinks and how using anchor text and links from other sites he could improve on a sites Google page rankings (SERPs). He created a 1000 websites to be able to gather data interlinking the sites together and to independent sites through a system he coined Gates360.

He thought that this information would be a gold mine to SEO Agencies who were selling professional SEO Services to UK businesses. He was so wrong. Search Pioneers NOT wanted

He approached 35 of the largest SEO Agencies to offer this link building advice. Instantly it became very clear that whilst his link building skills, network of webmasters and sites were in high demand his advice and findings were not. Whilst he championed natural link building citing examples of hundreds of blogs and commercial sites and their use of anchor text he was largely ignored.

Clients wanted to be #1 for insurance so all links would link to the insurance page using the anchor "insurance - not cheap insurance or car insurance just "insurance". There was no telling these "experts" and then the inevitable happened.

Benedict^? warned that this was creating such an unnatural pattern that the most low tech computer could pick this up and it was only a matter of time until Google rolled out changes which not only discounted this practise but penalised it. Panda proved this, fortunately with not a single Benedict^? client being dropped out or marked down for this practise.

If your site has been penalised then there are things that you can do, although in reality a change in SEO attitude is required that often is harder than removing a few links. If you have made a number of changes and asked Google to re-include your site and still there is no improvement, then please call 020 8405 6418 and perhaps we will be able to suggest a few options.

Above is Matt Cutts take on 'incorrect use of anchor text' should you have few minutes. Matt Cutts works for Google and is fond of lecturing SEOs on how not to work. His history interestingly enough is as "the porn cookie king"; he was in charge of removing adult images from 'Google Images' when the 'strict filter' was applied. When someone spotted an intrusive image he would reward them with his wife's home cooked biscuits or so the story goes!