Warning! Don't buy likes and follows!

Recently we’ve noticed a drop off in ranking related to clients that would appear to have an excellent like and follow count. On the surface these businesses would appear to be doing very well with lots of likes and follows, but scratch the surface and everything is not what it would seem.

We are unique in the way that we log historical like and follow data. So, we are able to see if a client’s like and follow count is rising over time and the rate at which it’s going up. This is how we spotted the issue. We were noticing that some of our new clients were coming to us with a high volume of likes and follows then over time shedding them. Initially we put this down to a natural drop off, but then we noticed that their rankings were dropping simultaneously so we decided to investigate further.


Facebook frowns upon people buying likes and it would
appear that Google do as well.

After a few weeks of investigation we found that the reason for the drops were due to these clients having bought likes and follows off doggie websites.

These sites are generally based outside of the UK/US and will offer you the ability to buy around 5,000 likes and follows for say $50. The problem is that all of these likes and follows are generated via fake Facebook and Twitter profiles. Then over time Facebook and Twitter establishes and removes these fake profiles which results in a large amount of these likes and follows being removed.

Generally you may not think this is an issue, but in an age where Google is spam crazy this is a perfect way for them to see (in an automated way) if a webmaster is using black hat techniques to artificially improve their social signals. The rise in like and follower numbers is not an issue but the drop is. This is noted by Google and can result in a drop in ranking.


With every Penguin update Google have clamped
down heavily on any signs of spam.

In reaction to this we have put an alert system in place. This system will automatically alert you if your like and/or follow count goes down. We can then investigate this and look for a solution to avoid any ranking disruption before it happens.

The joy of our like to follow system (available as part of our quarterly service) is that all of the likes and follows generated are from other real people so they are high quality and future proof. You may not get 10,000 overnight but over time the benefits will be massive.

We hope you found this article interesting and if you have any questions please get in touch.

Your virtual detox

So, Christmas is over for another year and lots of people’s attention will have turned to their January detox. No coffee, no alcohol and lots of exercise!

While you’re at it why not detox your virtual life as well. We’re talking about the potentially toxic side of your backlink portfolio. Don’t worry we don't mean the links we achieve for you. Our links are built using link exposure and are totally white hat.

Greens for your website! Managing the toxicity of
your off-site is becoming very important.

There are however a couple of reasons as to why it is worth taking a look at your backlink portfolio. Firstly, you may have undertaken some old fashioned link building previously which may now be counting against you. Secondly, you may have been attacked more recently by a negative SEO campaign.

While site owners can do certain things from an SEO standpoint to get their sites to rank higher, there are also things like building low quality inbound links or engaging in other forms of search engine spam that can harm their rankings.

But what if it wasn’t you?

It could’ve been your competitors, black hat SEOs or spammers who have used negative SEO techniques to bring down your site in the rankings. In fact, black hat forums are filled with stories from people who have succeeded using this technique. All these spammers do is place 1000’s of spammy backlinks on low quality sites.


Since the latest penguin update link quality has become
vitially important, both historically and ongoing.

Another technique we've seen are negative SEOs buying 1000’s of likes and follows for your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Google is now looking at Facebook and Titter accounts that gain likes and follows very quickly. They wont penalize you for the gain but if they then see the like and follow count decrease this is a sign that you fraudulently bought these likes and follows and it will count against you.

As a client of Click Submit what are we doing to fend against this threat?

We introduced a product (at no additional cost) about 3 months ago called the “negative SEO alert system”. This system simply monitors the following:

- A rapid increase in your backlinks total.
- A rapid increase or decrease in your Facebook likes.
- A rapid increase or decrease in your Twitter followers.

If we detect an abnormal pattern then our system will alert you automatically and ask you to get in touch with us. Once you touch base we will firstly establish whether the pattern is due to an attack or another non sinister factor.

If it is due to an attack then what can be done?

When Google decided to go public with the importance of high quality links and more importantly the adverse effect of low quality links they obviously saw that there could be a major issue with negative SEO. To a degree we do buy in to the theory that bad links are simply ignored and will not move your ranking any higher or lower. However, we do also think that it’s of real benefit to show Google that you care about your link portfolio. So, Google introduced the ability to Disavow backlinks. This basically means that you are able to submit a .txt file informing them that you do not indorse certain links coming in to your site.

How do you establish your bad links and submit a Disavow file?

It’s really simple to do yourself or we can do it for you. For full information on this check out our new “how to submit a Disavow file to Google knowledge” base article.

You may also find the following video by Matt Cutts (head of Google's web spam team) interesting.

Got any questions about this article? Don’t be shy. Get in touch!

Google's greatest threat & the genius that extinguished it

Social Media was a threat, now it's just part of the Google algorithm

A few years ago social media was widely thought of as the greatest threat to Google. There were people predicting that Twitter and Facebook could pose a threat by releasing a more intuitive search product based around an algorithm fusing both a general search and your social preferences.

So what have Google done to combat this threat?

We’d have loved to have been in the meeting where the powers that be at Google discussed the potential competition from social media and how they could combat it. Their solution was genius.

Google decided to develop their own social media platform called Google +. Now, everyone thinks Google + is poor, which it is. In fact its mind blowingly poor! But that’s not the point, Google + exists in order for you to sign up. They don’t care what you do after that. All Google + was about was getting you to agree to some terms and conditions that would then enable them to monitor your every move. This includes both search and socially.

In making Google + so poor it also gave Facebook and Twitter a false sense of security. It didn’t provoke a war whereby Facebook and/or Twitter considered launching a search engine element to their service. Pure genius!

Google also decided to include elements of social media called “social signals” in to their algorithm. These are publicly available elements of your social media profile. The main example of this (if you're a company) would be how many likes and follows you have. They also monitor how engaging your content is and how socially active you are.

So, how can you take advantage of this element of Google’s algorithm?

There are two main areas that you, as a webmaster, can take advantage of:

Firstly, keep your content fresh and engaging. Don’t just update your news feeds for the sake of updating them. Secondly, try and gain as many new likes and follows as possible but don’t buy them off a dodgy website. If Google sees your like/follow count going up quickly and then reduce they will penalise you. You need to gain good quality likes and follows from other quality real people/businesses.

Do Click Submit have a product that can help?

Of course we do! It’s included as part of our quarterly service and It’s called "Like to Follow". You can see an overview of this on the Like to follow page or a more in depth view via the Like to Follow knowledge base article.

Got any questions about this article? Don’t be shy. Get in touch!