Ranking Elements

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  Andy Beard –

  Excessive Repetition of the Same Anchor Text in a High Percentage/Quantity of External Links to the Site/Page:

  • It would depend on how they are acquired for long-term benefit
  • If you create a WP theme with Buy Viagra in the footer, don’t expect to be flavor of the month with human reviewers

  Hiding Text with CSS display:none; Styling:

  • Is it part of a navigation system that allows the user to eventually display the content?
  • If you hide a whole bunch of keywords, or keyword stuffed links, it could be a significant factor

  Over-Optimization of Internal Link Anchor Text:

  A perfectly optimized link points to content that is a perfect landing page for the keyword, and Google isn’t going to give you a penalty for something they expect you to do, tell the truth with your links.

  Use of Keyword-Rich Anchor Text Internal Links in Footers:

  • With CSS you could have the header in the footer or the footer in the header
  • does 100+ links in that part of the visible page make sense for users?

  Link Acquisition from Buying Old Domains & Redirecting:

  If redirecting and hosting the old content on the new domain, this can be achieved successfully.
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  Debra Mastaler 
  – A lot of the comments you hear about widgets/301’ing microsites/buying old domains etc affecting you negatively is a result of overblown scare tactics perpetuated by a handful of people. There are a lot of legitimate uses for these tactics and when done well and as part of an overall marketing plan, they are successful.
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  Tom Critchlow 
  – A lot of these factors depend on intent. For example, cloaking by user agent can be fine so long as the intent is pure and many large sites get away with it and have done for years. Also, a fair number of the link factors (such as manipulative bait and switch campaigns) are more likely to have 0 value than negative value. We’ve seen Google preferring to de-value spammy techniques/links rather than apply penalties for them where possible.
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  Carlo Del Rio 
  – I have yet to see a net negative from buying old domains, but it often doesn’t make any positive ranking either. Currently manipulative link acquisition is the biggest threat in causing negative results. Crossing repetitive anchor text and high velocity acquisition is like playing with matches—eventually you get burned.
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  Peter Meyers 
  – It seems like the negative impact of link farms is very niche-specific. In some cases, Google really cracks down (real estate, for example), but in smaller niches I still see people running blatant link farms and getting away with it. I’m not sure the penalty has really made its way into the core algorithm.