Tips That Can Save Your Website From Google Panda Algorithm

It’s common practice throughout web design and development agencies to link back to their own site in the footer of their clients’ designs. Google’s Panda algorithm changed all this and now it’s sensible to consider keeping your link off your clients’ sites altogether.

The problem with these links since Panda is that Google may consider them ‘unnatural’ and therefore your site or agency will be issued with a manual penalty. Google’s official webmaster guidelines state:

“Widely distributed links in the footers of various sites…may negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results”. The algorithm updates are set to continue and with each change comes even stricter rules and therefore more penalties. The problems come when you already have your link on hundreds of designs out there, how can you possibly avoid penalties in this instance?

Reversing a Manual Decision

• SEO professionals have spent considerable amounts of time researching this and unfortunately it seems very difficult to get Google to reverse a manual penalty decision.

• Google themselves suggest that when you’re hit with an unnatural link penalty you should address the problem with the Lynx text-based web browser. This is due to Lynx showing websites in a way which is very similar to how a search engine spider views them. Another option is to consider using Open Site Explorer which is ideal for looking precisely at links. Through this browser you can see their source, anchor text variants and the quality of said links

Found the Link – What Next?

Once you’ve identified the problem links then there are some options you can consider, which we’ll detail below:

• 1) Add a “rel=nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag of your link• 2) Redirect links to a page that is blocked from the search engines• 3) Remove anchor text so it doesn’t say “Web Design London” or similar• 4) Create a spreadsheet that notes all of your altered links so you can be

continually assured of where changes have been made and so you can provide a body of records to Google when necessary. The spreadsheet should include the link from URL, link to URL, anchor text used, an email address for the linked site, the status of the link and details of any removal requests including dates, number of times it has been made.

It’s also recommended that you set up a Gmail account to deal solely with this problem. This action allows you to back up all actions taken by passing login details of said account to Google when you make your appeal.

Making your AppealOnce you have repaired and corrected all bad links, then you can make your appeal. You need to plan out your request in detail before submitting it and you should include the following information as a minimum:

• Who you are and a reference to the penalty letter• The reasons you believe you were penalised in full• The changes and ways you have addressed the problem, including your

spreadsheet to provide proof• The actions you have taken to ensure the same won’t happen again• A full apology addressed to Google stating all your errors in full• Name and contact details of whoever is heading up the team dealing with

the issue.

If an external SEO professional or agency was involved in the unnatural linking it is important you provide Google with their details so your site doesn’t get penalised for another’s misdemeanors. Resubmission doesn’t necessarily guarantee success but it’s something you should at least try.

Just Don’t Do It

Although you can take precautionary measures such as changing the footer anchor to ‘Web Design by X Agency” there is still the risk they’ll be flagged up as unnatural. Your best decision is to just skip it altogether. If you believe in your brand then you should be able to generate enough traffic and natural links to your site without the need for unnatural footer links.

James Blake Internet is a London based Digital Agency, specialized in Website Design, SEO and Web Development services. Read more interesting articles at our Blog