Is Google penalizing for backlinking from Ezinearticles?

Beverly Level X³

January 23, 2014, 5:29 pm

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Is Google penalizing for backlinking from Ezinearticles?

Seems like Google might be penalizing anyone who is actively using sites like Ezine articles and guest blog posts for the sole purpose of backlinking.

Ezine Articles and press releases have long been utilized by SEO professionals for building backlinks. In late July 2013, news broke that links should be no followed in press releases. Right around this same time, Google also mentioned that if you are guest blogging for links this could be a violation of their guidelines.

Apparently, the Google folks meant what they said. Now, Google has supplied example backlinks from Ezine Articles and a press release in Webmaster Tools. These are examples of links which Google felt were against its quality guidelines. You can see this notification below.

Is Google penalizing for backlinking from Ezinearticles?

source: http://searchengineland.com/ezine-...es-in-wmt-172968

Do you think backlinking from Ezine articles and Goarticles and other article sites is strictly off limits now? Or, do you think there is a way to get a high quality backlink without getting a bad backlink penalty? If so, please share your ideas for how this is done.

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Riley

Riley

If this is true, then many webmasters would need to remove the content posted on the Ezine articles site. Mostly Google is concerned with the spammy quality of these content farm sites and is refusing to honor the backlinks coming from them or even penalizing for excessive backlinks. Would just one or two backlinks from such a site hurt your site ? Who knows really, maybe it's the excessive backlinking from content farms that is harmful.

11 years ago

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rozferotu

rozferotu

They both work for me but I've been trying something new with my linking strategy. I think what they are going for is how you filter the links. So as opposed to linking directly to your website, link to one of the blogs that you're going to post it to. I like to post articles to ten blogs that all link back to one blog and on that post have all the links filter through that. Then point that one link to the original article. This is something that has been helping me get a lot of things ranked with no problem.

11 years ago

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Quinton

Quinton

What does this mean for all the SEO people who have hundreds of articles on Ezinearticles? Will they get a definite penalty or is there some way around it? Surely, it's impossible to take down so many articles or disavow all those links from that one site.

11 years ago

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Asmodeus

Asmodeus

Lots going on here...

First, and for the record, I think Google has lost it's mind with all the stupid, and many times irrational, penalties they've been dishing out lately.

Second, I do agree there is lots of spam related to articles, as it's a common way for webmasters to get backlinks, BUT there are also lots of great articles written by great writers...can a bot decide the difference??

Third, I think the whole issue of backlink spamming could be solved by simply getting rid of links as a factor in anything to do with ranking. Then site owners could link to sites because they WANT to when they feel it is a useful resource to their readers. No need for link farms and crap. Also, a person could then write helpful articles because they want to inform others, and not because of a link. You could still place links, but for gaining traffic purposes rather than just using it for a ranking factor.

Also, site owners could then place links to their own sites without worrying about a crosslinking penalty. Ironically, Google sees this as unnatural and manipulative when, in actual fact, it's the most natural kind of linking. Why wouldn't a site owner want to link to (and therefore show their audience) their other great sites they make? SEOclerks does it with codeclerks and listingdock. Heck, even Google does it. It's NORMAL. Google should understand that.

I think it's time that backlinking as any sort of ranking factor was removed so we don't have so many spam comments, articles, splogs, etc. The internet is overrun with it.

11 years ago

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Beverly

Beverly

Third, I think the whole issue of backlink spamming could be solved by simply getting rid of links as a factor in anything to do with ranking. Then site owners could link to sites because they WANT to when they feel it is a useful resource to their readers. No need for link farms and crap. Also, a person could then write helpful articles because they want to inform others, and not because of a link. You could still place links, but for gaining traffic purposes rather than just using it for a ranking factor.

Also, site owners could then place links to their own sites without worrying about a crosslinking penalty. Ironically, Google sees this as unnatural and manipulative when, in actual fact, it's the most natural kind of linking. Why wouldn't a site owner want to link to (and therefore show their audience) their other great sites they make? SEOclerks does it with codeclerks and listingdock. Heck, even Google does it. It's NORMAL. Google should understand that.

I think it's time that backlinking as any sort of ranking factor was removed so we don't have so many spam comments, articles, splogs, etc. The internet is overrun with it.

Thank you! And, +1 for this idea. Google needs to rethink how they value backlinks and get rid of the penalties and just make backlinks null so we can backlink if we want but they just won't count for SEO purposes. I want to be able to link to other sites, even my own without fear of penalty, because they are useful to my readers. And, originally this was what Google wanted to (going back ten years or more, this was their criteria, looking for sites that link out to useful and relevant authority sites). But, over time Google had to make so many changes to their algorithm to compensate for spammer backlinking activities so that now almost any backlink you get could be viewed as spam. And, that's really ridiculous, cause how else than a backlink from a related site will you get free direct traffic? From my own experience, backlinking from highly relevant blogs brought me more direct traffic to my article pages than SEO ever did. [quote] Third, I think the whole issue of backlink spamming could be solved by simply getting rid of links as a factor in anything to do with ranking. Then site owners could link to sites because they WANT to when they feel it is a useful resource to their readers. No need for link farms and crap. Also, a person could then write helpful articles because they want to inform others, and not because of a link. You could still place links, but for gaining traffic purposes rather than just using it for a ranking factor. Also, site owners could then place links to their own sites without worrying about a crosslinking penalty. Ironically, Google sees this as unnatural and manipulative when, in actual fact, it's the most natural kind of linking. Why wouldn't a site owner want to link to (and therefore show their audience) their other great sites they make? SEOclerks does it with codeclerks and listingdock. Heck, even Google does it. It's NORMAL. Google should understand that. I think it's time that backlinking as any sort of ranking factor was removed so we don't have so many spam comments, articles, splogs, etc. The internet is overrun with it.[/quote] Thank you! And, +1 for this idea. Google needs to rethink how they value backlinks and get rid of the penalties and just make backlinks null so we can backlink if we want but they just won't count for SEO purposes. I want to be able to link to other sites, even my own without fear of penalty, because they are useful to my readers. And, originally this was what Google wanted to (going back ten years or more, this was their criteria, looking for sites that link out to useful and relevant authority sites). But, over time Google had to make so many changes to their algorithm to compensate for spammer backlinking activities so that now almost any backlink you get could be viewed as spam. And, that's really ridiculous, cause how else than a backlink from a related site will you get free direct traffic? From my own experience, backlinking from highly relevant blogs brought me more direct traffic to my article pages than SEO ever did.

11 years ago

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mqss

mqss

Devaluing backlinks as a ranking factor won't remove any spam. Spam will migrate somewhere else like social networks. If social signals would be as powerful as backlinks for ranking purposes, there would be more blackhat, not less. Mark my words.

11 years ago

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Asmodeus

Asmodeus

Devaluing backlinks as a ranking factor won't remove any spam. Spam will migrate somewhere else like social networks. If social signals would be as powerful as backlinks for ranking purposes, there would be more blackhat, not less. Mark my words.

Of course there would still be spam, but at least the genuine resource linkers and good article writers wouldn't get penalized because Google somehow perceives them (erroneously) as spammers.

11 years ago

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