The concept of anchor text manipulation deals with replacing the URL with text which is more targeted to the keyword for which the site is trying to rank. Editorial links mostly do not use ideal anchor text. Many simply use the site link while others use text that is not ideal for SEO.

When the site owner or a SEO builds links to their own site, one of the many signals that point towards manipulation is when the anchor text is perfect. Try this...check OSE for Google.com. Look at the anchor text. Filter out the image alt text and just focus on the anchor text. Of course you will see "Google" a lot but you will see a nice variation of terms used to link to the same page. That is because those links are natural.

Look at your client's site. When you look at the top 20 links and 17 of them show "Best watch" for the anchor text, that is a clear sign of manipulation. Either the site owner or someone working on their behalf likely created those links. Another possibility is the site owner influenced the creation of those links. These links are not natural, or at the very least are less natural.

I hope that answers your question. I will also add the suggestion you are focusing on the wrong area. The best way for a site owner to build links is....to create amazing content which others find useful / helpful / amazing then let the world know about it. If you wish to build more links, then embed yourself as a member of the community related to the site's niche and sparingly mention the site.

Google does not require you to give in to blackmail. With that said, I completely agree with your approach. Paying $10 to remove all the spammy links from a domain with numerous links is an easy fix, and can help with Penguin and future updates as well. This opinion may not be popular, but in the business world we need to value our time as well.

For the sites which attempt to charge larger fees, I would recommend replying with the following...."We are attempting to remove links from a large number of domains. We are unable to afford the thousands of dollars it would require to pay site owners to remove links. We would request that you please voluntarily remove the link as a courtesy. You may also wish to consider that providing a followed link to a penalized site may cause your site to be penalized. Instead of removing the link perhaps you would be willing to change it to a "nofollow" link."

Best of luck!

You are not out of luck. In my experience Google will always remove a manual penalty IF you clearly demonstrate a solid, good faith effort on your part. At a high level these are the requirements:

• admit your mistakes and how they were made. Be completely transparent and do not attempt to hide anything.

• Commit to following all Google Guidelines going forward.

• Gather a comprehensive list of all known links to your site. Simply using Google's list from WMT is not enough. Neither is using WMT + OSE or any one tool. Use several tools together. What has consistently worked for me is WMT, OSE, AHREFs, Raven and SEMrush combined. Many site owners and SEO's fail here by not compiling a comprehensive list.

• Every link/domain on the list needs to be evaluated. All manipulative links need to be identified. You need to be certain all remaining links fully comply with Google's Guidelines. Many site owners and SEOs fail here due to wanting to save links.

• Every domain which provides a manipulative link needs to be contacted. All aspects of the contact need to be thoroughly documented. A copy of the actual e-mail sent, the date it was sent, the response, etc. must be maintained. Letters should be sent via three methods: the WHOIS e-mail address (including the private addresses), the e-mail address on the site, the contact form on the site. Not all methods will be available on all sites, but the overwhelming majority of sites will have at least one if not all methods available.

A document needs to be created (a spreadsheet works great) listing all the URLs, links to the letters sent, the responses, etc. If you can demonstrate to Google you sincerely performed every reasonable task to have the links removed, they will "partially" lift the manual penalty. In my experience that means the penalty will be removed but any manipulative links you were unable to remove would be devalued.

You should always be able to have a manual penalty lifted, but it requires an exceptional amount of effort.

@Ginger, you are correct in that most penalties will address the specific pages which were the target of manipulative links. It sounds like you have put forth an incredible amount of effort. I hope you might pursue having the penalty lifted.

I have carefully read all of your responses in this Q&A. You seem to feel that both Google and I are not listening because we are not responding in the manner you desire. Just because I do not agree with you does not mean I did not read or understand what you shared.

Hey looking to find some cool games to teach link building when doing a presentation to people who are new to link building and to make it fun.

Monopoly comes to mind.

You built your first link? Go directly to Google jail.

You built your second link? Pay poor tax of 50% of your traffic

If you are going to teach people, teach them NOT to "build" links and instead to earn links. The difference is not subtle.

"I see (using  open site explorer) my competitors have 10's of thousands of external links, so even if I kept at this rate it would be many years before I caught up. That is based on my current understanding, so how do I get to those levels, even if it is over a year or two?"

Hi Simon,

Your situation is very common Simon. At a very high level, here are the steps:

1. Build the best quality site possible. There are literally hundreds of pieces to this puzzle but a few are:

• hire a great graphic design to provide your site a high quality look and feel

• engage a professional web developer to develop the best possible website

• provide a mobile website which appears correctly in smartphones, ipads, etc

• ensure your site works as intended i.e. no broken links, forms work correctly, etc

• ensure the site appears correctly in various browsers (IE, FF, Chrome, Safari, Opera)

• provide an intuitive layout along with solid navigation

2. **Provide the best content possible. **

• Create "best on the web" type of content

• Create content for users, not search engines

• Ensure your content is engaging and relevant

• Strive to provide content related to current events

• Ensure any images are sharp and clear

• The site's content should ideally encourage users to like / tweet / +1 / share / link

3. Promote the site.

• Once you have a solid website platform with fantastic content, tell the world about it!

• Use social media to connect with others who have an interest in your product / service

• Read industry blogs to find current information and influencers

• Ask your audience what content they want to read about

• Take every opportunity to tell everyone about the site

Martijn and Todd share some good points. I'll add a different viewpoint. If your site offers solid navigation and no island pages, sitemaps are completely unnecessary.

When you register your site, Google will begin attempting to crawl the main page of the site. If you offer standard, crawlable navigation, then Google will find every page on your site naturally. Sitemaps offer Google and Bing a list of links to your site's pages. If a link is noticed in your sitemap which has not been otherwise crawled, then your sitemap offers an opportunity for search engines to crawl the page.

As for timing, just be sure there is actual content on your site prior to submitting a sitemap. I had once installed forum software on a site and then submitted a sitemap to Google prior to any posts being made. I received a penalty notice and had to submit a reconsideration request to have the site later indexed.

There are only a few cases where I can see the benefit of submitting a sitemap. A couple examples:

• if you add a new sub-domain which is otherwise not linked to by your main site

• if you add an island page to your site which you wish to be indexed

"As for the client's site hacking, as far as I'm aware their webmaster & in-house team dealt with that when it happened."

The webmaster and inhouse team likely had a gap which was exploited. It may be best to bring in an outside security consultant to review the matter.

"if our messages go unacknowledged, what else can we do about it?"

In my experience, 25 - 60% of removal requests are honored, depending on the site. If you are working with numerous site owners, either some of them will respond or you are likely doing something wrong. Ways to contact a webmaster:

• use the WHOIS information to send an email

• use information from the site. Before you say they don't have anywhere, check thoroughly.

• use the site's Contact Us form

• call the site with the number on the site or their WHOIS phone number

• mail the site

• check for social pages such as facebook and contact them via that method

You shared there are around 20 sites linking to your client's site. Some of them should respond.

Can you share more details about these reciprocal links? What is the purpose of placing them on your site?

Generally speaking, I would recommend that you do NOT copy these links from your competitor. The optimal way to use an analysis of a competitor's backlink profile is so you can copy the good links and leave the bad ones.

If you want to search your competitor's site for these links, you can try using the site: operator in Google, or perhaps the specific site's own search box.

There are forms of quality reciprocal links. They can be found on a "Resources" type of page on your site. If your site focuses on health topics you may link to the Mayo Clinic, the National Institute of Health, and other quality sites. The purpose of these links are to help your readers locate quality information. Some relevant sites may link to you as well and these links could be reciprocal which is fine.

If you have a "Resources" page where you provide links with perfect anchor text (i.e. "best real estate agent") to sites which are not relevant to yours, that is a rather obvious attempt to manipulate search engine rankings. The links you provide will offer little to no value, as well as the links you will receive. You need to give search engines a lot more credit. You are spending time and effort on what frankly amounts to bullsh*t SEO.

Investigate all your competitor's links. Look for their best links and investigate them. You want ideas, not to copy cat. The best you can do by copying your competitors is to eventually catch up to them. Provide better content, focus better keywords, be more current and relevant, be more authoritative and then you will gain links that a competitor can't copy...because the links you gain have to be earned.

Hi Marc. I would recommend contacting the help desk help@seomoz.org. The help desk personnel don't normally read the Q&A so your response should be much faster by e-mailing them. If you need even faster results you can give them a call as well.

Under anything remotely normal, it is highly unlikely a search engine would consider a "website developed by EGOL Design" as a paid link. If a site owner tried a footer of "[website development], [website design], [graphic artwork], [seo] and other work performed by ABC Enterprises" where each term in brackets was a link, that clearly steps to the spammy side.

Even then I wouldn't necessarily call it paid links, but manipulative links which falls into the same category.