Last time we talked about the onpage optimization factors that can cause your website to be banned by Google. Those things included:

Hidden Text

Alt Image spamming

Meta tag stuffing

Title tag stuffing

Which were only a few of the SEO "no-no's" you should stay far away from.

Today I'm going to dive into some of the offpage optimization factors/techniques that you should never ever do. First let's dispell some popular myths.

If a "link farm" is linking to your website you'll get penalized and.or banned from Google - FALSE

If unrelated websites are linking to you, your website will get penalized - FALSE

Page Rank 1 websites won't help you because Google does not display PR1 websites in their backlink list - FALSE

None of the above are true statements for the simple fact that:

Anything a competitor could do to harm your website would NEVER be penalized by Google.

Think about it for a minute. If any of those could actually penalize your website, how many people do you think would simply add their competitor's websites from link farm websites, unrelated websites, and low PR websites? Unfortunately, it would be quite a few.

The only way you can get penalized by offpage optimization is if YOU link out to "bad neighborhoods", which would be:

Link Farms

Penalized websites (websites that are "gray barred" by Google)

Now, you would think this would be a pretty easy thing to stay away from, right? Wrong!

Example:

Take this case for example, Let's say I had a website and exchanged links with your website. At the time that we exchanged links, both of our websites were very quality, related websites, with a Google Page Rank of 5. This would be an ideal link trade.

Ok, now several months go by, and in the meantime, I'm doing all kinds of "black-hat SEO"

Note: Black Hat SEO is simply doing all of the things that can get you banned by the search engines. I mentioned many of these in the previous lesson.

After doing all of this Black Hat SEO, Google decides to ban my website, which gives me a "gray barred Page Rank" and I'm no longer in Google's index of websites. I'm completely gone from Google. So what, right? I mean, you could care less since it's not your website...

Well, guess what? Your still linking to my website, which is now considered to be a "bad neighbor" and you could actually get penalized MAJORLY for linking to me, without even doing anything differently to your own website!

Think about that for a minute...

You could actually drop hundreds of search positions without even knowing what you've done wrong!

There is good news!

Ok, here's the good news. You'll remember several lessons ago I mentioned a software program called SEO Elite, my favorite SEO tool

You can actually use SEO Elite to see if you are linking out to any bad neighbors! If you are, then delete their link immediately and I can almost guarantee you will see an increase in your ranking.

Let's go over how to do this:

Open up SEO Elite

Select radio button 4

Enter one of your links pages into the textbox

Select Google PR from the checkboxes and click "ok"

SEO Elite will then visit each website that you are linking to and will tell you whether or not they could be a possible "bad neighbor".

How? Well, let's have a look...

Once SEO Elite is finished processing, click over to the report view tab and look at the column labeled "Google PR"

If you notice any websites with a Google Page Rank of 0, this "could" mean they've been banned by Google. Notice I said it "could" mean this. They could either be banned OR, more likely they're just a new website and their Page Rank hasn't been updated by Google yet.

So, you'll want to write down which websites have a Page Rank of 0. Then...

You'll need to select radio button 6 within SEO Elite. This option will allow you to see if the website is still in Google's index. You'll want to enter all PR0 websites into the textbox, select the Google checkbox, and click "ok".

If Google returns 0 results for the website, that immediately tells you that they've been banned and you should remove their link immediately!

You would be amazed at the number of websites that have no idea why they aren't ranking well, when they've followed ALL of the good SEO practices I've taught. If this is you and you're still not ranking well, I would venture to say that you might be linking out to a penalized and/or banned website. 

So, how do you ensure yourself, 100% that you're not linking to a "bad neighbor"? I have just the solution...

Let's sidebar for just a moment.

How many of you search Google for "link exchange forms" where you can add your link to someone's website? I know I do...

Problem ... The problem with this is that many times those websites won't even ADD your link EVEN after you've gone through the trouble of adding their link to your website, filling out the form, and then waiting for their response.

Doing this can take hours upon hours and in many cases you come away empty handed. So... I've found a 100% FREE alternative to this.

There is a website that will actually allow you to trade links with other websites that are completely related to your website AND are actively interested in trading links.

Each member has a "rating", similar to an Ebay rating. The rating will tell you how many link exchange requests they've gotten, as well as how many of those link exchange requests they've actually exchanged links with

Simply, exchange links with the websites with high ratings and you're virtually guaranteed a response! Plus, all of the contacting of websites is done through our website, so you'll NEVER get in trouble for spam.

You'll notice the website above has had 5 link exchange requests and has honored all 5 of them. They would be a good website to exchange links with.

You could easily get 100s of reciprocal links in less than a week. Even less that a few days, to be honest.

Now, the website is brand spankin' new. It has been up for about 4 days now and already has over 550 websites you could quickly and easily exchange links with. So, I highly suggest you visit the site, sign up for FREE, and start trading links. If anything, once you sign up, you'll probably just be able to sit back and other members will contact YOU to trade links!

I've been signed up for about 2 days and have over 20 new links to my website with almost no effort on my part. The only thing I've done is add their link to my website after they add mine to theirs!

So... what's the website?

http://www.linkmetro.com  

Now, back to the original question... LinkMetro only allows quality websites to join. The process is all automated, so you can immediately tell if a website is a bad neighbor. If they are, then they will be kicked out of the directory! What's this mean to you? Well, it means you'll NEVER link to a "bad neighbor"!

Here are two short demo videos that I've created to show you the simple process of exchanging links via this site:

Demo Video 1 (Request a Link Exchange)
Demo Video 2 (Approve a Link Request)

Again, I highly suggest you take advantage of this completely FREE resource while it's still free.

Best of luck with your search engine optimization! To learn more, visit:  SEO Elite 


                                                            Resource

For more help, grab a copy of “MAP: Moving Ahead Plan,” an easy all-in-one business, marketing and advertising plan jam-packaged with lots of information. The new book features tips, downloadable tools, SBA-based worksheets and special sections from Tom Hua’s eBookWholesaler™ online program and Internet Marketing Expert Willie Crawford to and more to advance your business. It’s available at Booklocker.com: http://www.booklocker.com/books/2715.html also available at: Amazon.com and BN.com (Barnes and Noble) and your local library.

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