August 2018

The answer is simple – inbound links can hurt your search ranking. Since the first Penguin update, Google has evaluated the quality of inbound links, anchor text and the type of links you are getting back to your website. Old school SEO tactics such as forum signatures, blog comments and article links don’t carry the weight they once did and in some cases can get you hit with a nasty penalty. While it was once assumed that inbound links could only help and never hurt you, even Google has admitted negative SEO is a “real thing.”  They released the disavow tool to help webmasters handle the negative links they don’t want associated with the website. Disavowing is a strong but effective method of link clean up. While you should always attempt to do manual removal and clean up of links, it’s not

The importance of anchor text with respect to a linking strategy cannot be overstated. Backlinks are a huge part of the search engine algorithm. When initiating a linking campaign, it is vital that external sites link using the appropriate keywords and terms in the anchor text. Types of Anchor Text There are a few different types of anchor text. They are: Branded anchor text (name of the business, such as “Stack Digital.”) Naked URL (URL linked to such as “https://www.stackdigital.net”) Commercial keyphrases (your main niche keywords such as “seo” or “marketing agency.”) Other keyphrases (random text linked to that points at your site such as “click here” or “read this article about backlinks.”) Images (alt text) (image linking, not a real “anchor” text but it does dilute the percentage of your links that are considered X anchor.) Linking webmasters will almost always use the company name

Every SEO client I’ve ever worked with has a budget that is, at some point, limited. This SEO budget generally falls somewhere between $50 and $50,000 per month. Whether your budget is $250 or $5000 you are looking for the best marketing value for your money and the most results per dollar spent. (View our own SEO pricing here.) Hiring a Cheap SEO Agency Almost every SEO agency would love serving more clients and be doing more work. While it’s a busy lifestyle, it’s one we love. Good marketing agencies want to provide substantial value to their clients and that value is limited by budget. (If you want to see how agencies may think about this topic, see Selling Cheap SEO Services.) Consider this from a paid ads perspective. Your ROI may be $3 for every $1 you spend or it may be