What The Google Spam Links Update Means For Your Website

Chloe Humphreys April 11, 2023

Google’s algorithm updates thousands of times a year, with many of these updates going completely under the radar as they are only minor. However, every so often, larger updates are rolled out that really shake things up! The good thing about algorithm updates is that they are designed to reward websites that are following best practice, so as long as you have these in place, everything should be fine. However, they can sometimes cause fluctuations in rankings whilst Google establishes which websites should rank where, and again, if everything is done well, then you’ll regain your strong positions and potentially surpass them. 

One of the latest updates was rolled out in December 2022, which is the Google Spam Links Update. We all know back linking is an important part of any SEO strategy, and back in the day you could build endless amounts of poor quality links and be rewarded for it. There have been updates similar to this in the past, however this update has a few components which make it bigger than its predecessors. We’re going to delve into what exactly this link update entails, what the impact could be on your website and what you can do to make sure you’re following best practices with your link building strategy. 

What Is The Most Recent Google Spam Links Update?

The latest Google Spam Links Update is all about clamping down on websites that are purposefully building spammy links or those that are against Google’s guidelines. This involves more advanced machine learning systems that have improved spam detection and utilising them to identify unnatural links that are there only for the benefit of Google’s bots. This was fully rolled out by mid-January 2023, so if you saw ranking decreases around this time, it could have been a result of the Google Spam Links Update. 

The Impact of the Google Spam Links Update On Your Website

With Google Spam Links updates, it is unlikely that your website will be penalised as a result of having these unnatural links directed towards them. This is because anyone could go and build spammy links to their competitors’ website to decrease their rankings. The main objective of the Google Spam Links update is to neutralise any of the authority that is passed through, so you won’t gain anything from these links. Although you won’t be penalised for spammy links, you won’t benefit from them. 

However, you can be rewarded for having a natural looking link profile. Because of this, if your competitors who are trying to rank for the same keywords have a much better and more natural link profile, this will be taken into account as a ranking factor. If theirs is better, they could move up the rankings, in turn moving you down them. So, although you won’t directly be penalised, if you don’t make your link profile a priority, you could indirectly suffer. 

How To Build A Natural Link Profile

Based on all of the above information about the Google Spam Links Update, the important thing you need to focus on is building a natural link profile. This is now, more than ever, a vital factor in helping you to remain competitive in the SERPs.

In order to do this and benefit from the Google Spam Links Update, Google provided the following guidance:

“Site owners should ensure that they follow the best practices on links, both incoming and outgoing. Focusing on producing high quality content and improving user experience always wins out compared to manipulating links. Promote awareness of your site using appropriately tagged links, and monetize it with properly tagged affiliate links.”

Link building is an important part of SEO, for any business, as it is one of the best ways to build authority to your website and to target particular keywords that you want to focus on. However, as highlighted in the above statement regarding the Google Spam Links Update, your priority should always be focusing on producing high quality content and improving user experience. Here is a brief introduction to some factors that need to be considered when building a natural link profile: 

Link From Genuine Blogs

You need to be reaching out to genuine blogs that are within your/your clients niche, as they are links that could have naturally occurred and they will appear that way in the eyes of Google’s bots. For example, if you are link building on behalf of a womens gymwear brand, you would want to make sure you’re reaching out to blogs that are focused around health, fitness, healthy lifestyles, exercise and casual fashion. When a blog that is highly relevant to your brand links to your website, this is going to look natural and help you to benefit from the Google Spam Links Update. Plus, when you’re choosing highly relevant blogs to link to your website, then you are likely to gain genuine clicks from interested potential customers, which you would never get through spammy link building. 

Focus On Link Variety

Make sure that you are building links to a variety of different pages, and using a variety of different anchor texts. As an example of different anchor texts, say we wanted to build a link to our SEO Manchester page. The first time, we might use the anchor text SEO Manchester, but the next we would use “SEO in Manchester”, the next “Manchester SEO Agency” and so on. Providing variation in terms of the pages you are building links to, as well as the anchor text, really helps with creating a natural link profile. It is also important to prioritise informative anchor texts that closely describe the page that is being linked to, both for SEO and accessibility purposes. Learn more about this in our importance of website accessibility in SEO blog.

Create Link Worthy Content

The best thing you can do to create a natural looking link profile is to create content on your website that people want to link to! This is the ultimate natural link, and you don’t have to spend anytime building it. If you’re a lead generation business, prioritise creating pages that are highly informative in your niche, so people will refer to them to delve into more detail about topics raised on their websites. For e-commerce businesses, focus more on relevant and interesting blogs relating to the industry you’re in, again, that provide unique and interesting information to your sector that people will want to link to. This is easier said than done, but focusing on your content marketing is a great way to ensure you’re writing content that people will benefit from to enhance your own business, then gaining links as a result is just an added bonus. 

Final Thoughts On The Google Spam Links Update

Link building has always been a crucial part of SEO, but it has changed dramatically over the last decade in terms of the types of links you should be building. If you need help building a natural link profile, or it hasn’t been a priority up until now, contact us and one of our link building experts can identify the weaknesses in your profile and assist you with implementing a strategy moving forward that means your website will benefit from the Google Spam Links Update, rather than suffer as a result of it.