Try to keep your links out of "bad neighbourhoods"
Every year we go through thousands of websites to ensure that we maintain a high quality catalog of sites. Once they are approved, we then ask publishers to try and stick closely to our quality criteria to try and keep them that way. However, the task of going through each of the 200 or so elements of “quality criteria” would probably create enough material for a small book (which i’m not sure you’d fancy sifting through) . So what we have decided to do instead is simply pose the question: what can I do to reduce the quality of my blog?
Answer: create links to sites that are considered to be “bad neighbourhood“. These are primarily sites related to the 3 P’s: Pills, Porn and Poker. Whilst it may seem financially rewarding in the short term to link to a “bad neighbourhood” site, there can be negative consequences and risks in the long term to your blog.
Let’s take a look at each category of the 3 P’s in a bit of detail:
The first P: Pills
This category relates to all types of pills and substances such as Viagra, anabolic steroids or any type of forbidden drugs. According to the law, it is forbidden and considered a serious offence to sell these type products by mail without a valid medical prescription. It is important not to links to such sites, especially those selling Viagra (only available on prescription) which can be ordered without a valid prescription.
The second P: Porn
Porn sites are not well ranked by Google. It is not clear why, however, Google often removes porn sites from the top ranking results. The most suspected reason is that Google views porn as not apporpriate for the wider public. Therefore, linking to porn related sites can have negative consequences for your own blog’s ranking.
The third P: Poker
This category relates to sites such as online casinos, gambling and of course…poker! If you are not already linked to one of these sites, try to avoid it. A lot of online casinos are often based in tax havens which provoke tense relations with certain countries that often try to block the advertisement of these sites on search engines. The bottom line is: search engines associate poker and related sites as spam. And linking to spam damages the integrity of your blog.
Google’s selection criteria can often be ambiguous, however, there is little doubt regarding their position on spam. Try to avoid linking towards Pills, Porn or Poker sites for the following reasons:
- You will run the risk of being penalised by search engines
- Your blog can be considered part of a “bad neighbourhood”
- Advertisers will not want to buy links from sites that are regularly pointing to “bad neighbourhoods”
- Google doesn’t like the 3 P’s and neither do advertisers
If you want to maintain a high quality blog, remember to avoid linking toward the 3 P’s. This comes naturally to most bloggers; however, it’s worth bearing in mind the reasons why. Furthermore, remember to keep your site protected by keeping up to date with the latest WordPress or CMS versions to keep out any potential hackers from secretly creating these links. We often see good quality blogs inadvertently infested with links to Viagra or poker sites without their knowledge.
A good way to check this is to perform the following request on Google:
site: myblog.co.uk poker
or
site: myblog.co.uk Viagra
And so on, and so on…
Is your blog well protected?