The story of the businesses so far: Ever since the Panda and Penguin updates a lot of websites are still out in the cold, trying hard to find out what exactly went wrong that they got the severe blow from the giant search engine, i.e. Google. According to some of these businesses, they wanted to have a better ranking or to do something different to get more leads and customers through their online presence. They went through a lot of online courses and read articles and blogs trying to find something effective. Thinking it is better to leave it to the experts, these businesses next did research on the best SEO companies and then hired the one they thought to be good for their business. The SEO professionals from the company started to work on the website and finally the efforts paid off. The ranking improved and the website started to get better response and feedback from its potential customers. Traffic improved and so did the ROI of the websites. But it seems that nothing lasts for long and the good days of these businesses were numbered, for the Penguin update (Penguin 2.0, the recent one especially) swept off these websites and they were left to drown in the lowest ranks in the bottom of the search results. The SEOs were of no use at this point of time and the owners were clearly devastated.

Things to watch out for: Now if it is really the links to your website then you must get into their details and learn of the types that can mean harm to you and remove them accordingly. Just go through the entire things explained here and try to understand and observe before you take any step. Remember, taking drastic and unplanned steps at this time will lead you nowhere. We have come to the conclusion that general directories, improper and spam links in the content and article directories can do some harm to you. However, it is always wise to do some research on your part as well, even after reading this. You can use tools like Ahrefs, Link Detox, Majestic SEO, etc. in order to measure and know of the links to your website and understand how Google sees them. However, even after these, you need to be going through different sites that can mean harm to you and therefore avoid their links.

Need to be avoided: General directories, for instance, can take in control of your anchor text. They though started on a pretty well note with Google, but after a while many fake directories came up and the SEOs were at times unable to understand and used them for their clients. Article directories too have a similar story and hence be wise before you try them. The links are also at times broken or the language use isn’t suitable. Also these are irrelevant to your content. Avoiding all these will save you from any algorithmic updates of Google.