Google is continuing to clean house with blog networks getting deindexed. Today, Build My Rank got de-indexed by Google, effectively shutting their doors immediately with a post stating that it had been a good run.
With so many SEO companies relying on these types of networks to obtain rankings for their clients, you have to wonder how large of an impact this is going to have. If your whole SEO campaign was based on one of these blog networks or links from one of these blog networks, chances are your sites are going to have trouble maintaining their rankings.
So what is a site owner to do? Well, listen to what Google has to say about what they want. Here is an interview that includes Matt Cutts. It is fairly long, but you can hear him start to address this issue within the first ten minutes:
http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP11742
From this it sounds like Google is not done. Perhaps these initial blog network de-indexings are the first salvo against the type of promotion they frown upon. There are many other types of tools being used that Google frowns upon. Paid links, reciprocal links, link farms…. Then you can move into the automated tools which include Xrumer, SENuke and others.
For those forward thinkers, this can be an opportunity to seize upon rankings that have long been unobtainable. By following Google’s advice, if you build a very usable site with the best content for your topic on the web, you should rank at the top of the search engines. In the real world, this is not the case, but by keeping your content fresh and updated, you can certainly meet the demands that Google places on you as a website. This is a good first step, and perhaps one way to avoid getting Google slapped!