Search Engine Marketing News
SEO execs urged to check links for malware
Tuesday, 11 November 2008Businesses engaging in search engine optimisation (SEO) may do well to ensure that websites linking to their own sites do not harbour malware.
This is according to advice from Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal, who noted that while Google's official stance is that inbound links are not likely to affect website rankings, a number of SEO professionals have reported lower rankings as a result of bad links in certain instances.
To this end, it is important that marketers check that sites linking to the website in question have not been flagged up by Google as a distributor of malware through the search engine's Safe Browsing Diagnostic Checker, he commented.
"If Google feels that the site is malicious, chances are linking to these bad sites, or building links from them, can hurt your rankings - which in the long run, can damage your business," Mr Baker stated.
According to recent comments made by SEO specialist Jill Whalen to Entrepreneur.com, the only way to receive quality inbound links is to have content that is worth linking to in the first place.