Google announced on its Search Central Twitter account on December 14, 2022, that it will make an update to eliminate the effect of unwanted links in the relevant month. We wanted to provide you with information about what the link spam update is and how it will affect the websites in this article.
What is Link Spam Update?
Websites perceived as link spam include too many clickable external links in their contecture. In addition to this feature, you could comprehend that sites where unrelated content is published with low external links are spamming. The authority of such sites generally remains very low. Furthermore, these sites can also badly affect the authorities of the sites they link to in their content.
Google launched its artificial intelligence algorithm called ‘SpamBrain’ in 2018 to combat and prevent malicious links. This event continuously improved, then it caused a 70% reduction in spam on hacked websites and a 75% reduction in gibberish spam on hosting platforms in 2021 compared to the previous year, according to Google data. In this struggle against link spamming, SpamBrain can detect spam directly. It can also find sites that buy direct links without any content and the sites used for forwarding the outbound links.
What to Consider After the December 2022 Link Spam Update?
The full implementation of the so-called December 2022 link spam update has the potential to take approximately two weeks from the announcement. Regarding this update, which shall cover all languages, it is expected that there may be significant changes in Google rankings by neutralizing harmful links and losing references from these stated links. Along with this update, Google will block unnaturally obtained links (obviously purchased, coming from detrimental sites) on a large scale, and this manipulation to move up in the rankings shall come to an end.
You can see below the requirements planned to be done to create a correct link-building that is not detected as spam by Google.
- The link will be published on sites that do not engage with spamming,
- Related to your field of activity,
- Providing information to the user,
- Links placed in SEO-compliant articles and relevant to the content will not be seen as spam; in this way, it is valid to say that it will benefit you to move up in Google rankings.
However, links can be connected to your site from networks that may be considered harmful without noticing . It is also required to check the links referred to your website at regular intervals, identify the detrimental ones and block them via the search console disavow tool.
How Can You Take Precautions Not to Be Affected by Link Spam Update?
With the link spam update, the references conveyed by external links indicated on spamming sites started to lose out. Even if you have not previously taken any measures against these effects that cause changes in rankings, you get protected against the negative consequences of this situation in the future. You can obtain the sites you prefer to publish from reliable SEO agencies and request your content to become SEO-compatible. However, it is logical to get help from an experienced SEO consultant to analyze potentially harmful sites.
As the experienced and award-winning Markethinkers team, we have been paying attention to the issues that Google might focus on with this update long before this development occurred. At this point, we can easily say that Google has confirmed that we are on the right track as a self-proclaimed expert in the field of SEO consultancy, link building, and content production. If you require help from an experienced team, you can get in touch with us at any time.
