Hi,
Its my first time so be gentle.
I just signed up to do some optimisation for my first client and I ran across some problems. Checking backlinks on Google everything is okay. When I check backlinks on all the web I get some disturbing results. It seems at some point in the past (not recent) the parent site of the
site I'm working on engaged in a link exchange program. It is linked
TO from many bad sites that hide the links in noframes content, layers with negative left settings, 1 pixel images, etc. Most of these sites have zero pagerank (surprise) but some do have page rank. None show up with the link: command even though some have pr 4 (?). I am absolutely not concerned with losing the page rank from these sites. I am concerned with a possible penalty if I bring it to Google's attention. How should I proceed? I feel as though the penalty was already assessed at some point (or the links have been ignored by Google for some time) since this site does not seem to be suffering any penalty and hidden backlinks from pr4 sites don't show up with the link: command. There are hundreds of these links out there and contacting all the webmasters is not an option as some of the sites are dormant and have not been updated in forever. It should be pointed out that the sites I'm working on don't have any inappropriate behavior at this time. I also checked the backlinks for many of the offending sites and the one I'm working on did not show up among results from any site on any search engine so evidently they fixed their part of the problem many crawls ago. The reason I'm so concerned is that the site I'm working on has a pr 6. The only site linking to it (as of the last crawl) has a pr 6 and is the one with the outdated bad links. Other than the bad links the site is from a reputable company with currently very good links and their page rank is indicative of the quality and scope of their operation. If I bring it to someones attention they could be penalised and my first client could lose their Google. If their behavior has already generated an as yet unindexed penalty they could hire me and then lose their business and think its my fault. I doubt this is the case as Google doesn't have to wait for an index to penalise.
On the positive side the main link from the pr 6 parent site to the pr 6 site (that I'm working on) has alt text that does not use their main keywords. They show up #1 for the keywords in the alt text so now I gather that alt text in image links is more important than I thought. It should prove to be a very effective entry to the business with an easily pleased client as i have already set up many other quality links. I just need to navigate through the link exchange mess. Is there a way to find out if this is something previously handled by Google without exposing the clients to undue risk?
Cut
