Globe Runner’s client roster has one new addition: Digital retail site NICMAXX Online.

NICMAXX Online conducts e-commerce for NICMAXX, an electronic cigarette brand that has grown in popularity in key consumer markets such as New York, Las Vegas and Florida. Developed over eight years by smokers for smokers, its proprietary blend of ingredients closely replicates the sensory experience generated by traditional cigarettes.

Based in Addison, Texas, NICMAXX Online comprises the retail site https://www.nicmaxxonline.com/, social media accounts for Twitter (@NicMaxxStore), Facebook (@nicmaxxonline)) and other digital assets.

Apart from US customers, NICMAXX Online caters to overseas customers who may not have access to the product. Some countries still forbid the sale of e-cigarettes but do allow for purchase and personal consumption.

In a recent Wall Street Journal story, Wells Fargo valued the e-vapor market at $2.2 billion. NICMAXX Online is seeing strong growth in ecommerce with revenue tripling year-over-year.

“It’s always exciting to work on a challenger brand making ripples in a relatively new category,” said Globe Runner CEO Eric McGehearty. “The opportunities to build NICMAXX Online into a strong brand are tremendous.”

Globe Runner was started in 2008 by McGehearty in Lewisville, Texas. In addition to its core business of search engine optimization (SEO), the agency also offers online advertising, content marketing, branding and social media services.

A while back, Google gave website owners an advanced link tool called the Disavow Links Tool. It allows us to tell the search engine which links to ignore when they calculate the links to our website. Bing.com has a similar tool, as well, and was actually the first to make the tool available to website owners.

With the Disavow Tool, you simply come up with a list of URLs or domain names that you don’t like and put them in a text file called a “disavow file” and upload that file to Google (and Bing). When the search engine crawls the links again and recalculates the links to your site for search engine ranking purposes, they are supposed to disavow those links (not count them or ignore them). From my experience, I’ve seen a disavow file really help in cases where certain links were super low-quality or “toxic” links. About 5 days after submitting a disavow file, I’ve seen traffic start to go back up. Sometimes it takes a lot longer.

But here is where I’m surprised. When you upload a disavow file and Google accepts that file, they know that you’ve disavowed certain links or certain domain names (all links from that domain name). Why does Google still shows those links in the “links to your site” section of Google Webmaster Tools? Google still shows those links in your list, as if those links still exist–and they do. But why would Google still show them? You’ve disavowed them.

Apparently the disavow file data is not taken into account when they generate the “links to your site” list in Google Webmaster Tools. If Google removed those links from the list (the links that you’ve disavowed) then we would know that Google is taking the disavow file into account when calculating links to the site. That would be very helpful for website owners to know.

Let’s look at a specific example. In January 2014, I disavowed low quality links from the domain name “articlesnatch.com”, which a previous SEO firm created (they submitted hundreds of articles to that site in particular). Now, I personally feel that those are low quality links, just there for “SEO value” and therefore should be disavowed. But 6 months later, after I disavowed all links from that domain name, Google Webmaster Tools still shows links from that website:

In fact, looking at this particular list of links to this site, I disavowed links to socialbookmarkssite.com, articlesnatch.com, basearticles.com, and amazines.com all back in January 2014, over six months ago. Yet they still appear in Google Webmaster Tools as links to the site. These links were disavowed because the site owners refused to remove the links or we were unsuccessful in getting those links removed. This was part of a reconsideration request because the site had received a manual action for it’s links. The manual action was revoked after we disavowed these links and removed other links to the site.

It would be really helpful if Google, in Google Webmaster Tools, were to remove those links from the list of “links to our site”. I understand it’s a random list of links, but the least they could do is remove the links we’ve disavowed. That would tell us that they’re taking our disavow file into account when they calculate the links to the site. Or, at least mark the links somehow so that we know that they’ve been disavowed. How hard is that to do?

Bill Hartzer is Globe Runner’s Senior SEO Strategist. Connect with him on Google+ or on Twitter as Bhartzer.

Yes, there, I said it. Link building is dead. Link building for SEO purposes started getting really sick when Danny Sullivan went on his rant about link building back in June 2012. Well, here we are now, almost two years later, and we now have official confirmation that link building is dead, from Duane Forrester of Bing:

You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from. If you do, that’s the wrong path.

If you are building links, doing link building in the “traditional”, old-style ala 2003 link building, then you’re doing it wrong. What Duane is saying is that if you ask for a link, and you know ahead of time that you are going to get a link on X site, then guess what? You’re not doing it the right way or in any that’s acceptable, according to Bing and, (I’m going out on a limb here) Google.

You should be earning your links, and not building links. Link Building is Dead.

It’s now link earning, not link building.

So how do you earn your links? One way would be to start focusing on being a content marketer. A content creator. Someone who is not doing old-style SEO, but doing Public Relations. Reach out to the media. Reach out to bloggers. Don’t worry about where your links will be placed, and don’t worry about whether or not those links are going to be “nofollow” links or not.

One reason I mentioned HARO last week and the low quality, inorganic, unnatural links that Google flagged during a reconsideration request last night, is that typically Help a Reporter Out is not a source of low quality, spammy links. It’s a source that allows you to connect with real reporters/journalists/media outlets who will mention you, your company, or even your client if there is a fit. They’re after information or quotes that they can use in real content. And that real content is where you want to be mentioned, not some fake, low quality article or blog post that no one will read.

So how could the search engine determine whether or not a link is natural, and organic? There certainly are several ways, and obviously Bing and Google have algorithms to deal with these sorts of things. When I say that they can tell, they can tell. But let’s speculate on one simple way:

If a link is added after-the-fact, meaning that the URL was crawled by the search engine and a link was not there, and suddenly appears in content at a later date and time (after the initial crawl from an initial discovery of the URL), then there is a chance that it’s an inorganic link. To be honest with you, as a blogger I typically don’t go back to older articles and place links. I may add internal links to other pages on the same site, but that’s different. If a link appears several months later in an older blog post, then why was it added? Most likely it’s an inorganic link.

The search engines could be counting URL mentions and brand mentions as “links”. I’m speculating, but what if the search engines are now counting brand mentions just as if they were a link and passing on some sort of value (not PageRank) but something else, let’s call it “BrandRank”. What if a brand mention in Forbes or on CNN.com was just as good as getting a link from one of those sites? It’s possible, and probable in the future if Google is going to put less value on links in the future.

So, now we have “official” confirmation that traditional link building is dead. Great. That only means that what I am doing to build brand awareness for clients, and what Globe Runner as an agency is doing, is right on track: we’re brand builders, content marketers, and that’s how we do SEO now.

Yep, link building is dead. RIP link building. I sure won’t miss it.

Bill Hartzer is Globe Runner’s Senior SEO Strategist. Connect with him on Google+ or on Twitter as Bhartzer.

As you probably know by now, Google has been on the prowl lately, flagging and penalizing links from directories, paid and sponsored links, links in guest blog posts, and, now you can add Help a Reporter Out links to this list that you should be cautious about.

In the response to a recent Google Reconsideration Request (I’m in the process of cleaning up a client’s links and getting rid of their Google manual penalty), Google gave three example links that “violate their guidelines”. Their response was something like this:

Now, I realize that this particular website does have inorganic links pointing to the website. And I’ve been working hard to clean up the organic links pointing to the website, mainly done by a previous SEO working on this particular website. However, the links that Google points out as examples in their response to our reconsideration request are like this:

– two links from Help A Reporter Out.
– one link from a media outlet who picked up a press release we distributed via a newswire.

The first two links provided as “inorganic” links by Google are, in fact, where the owner of this particular business was quoted in an article. In BOTH cases of the first two URLs, we had used the Help A Report Out service to respond to a request for a quote from a business (which was in a particular industry). As far as we knew, the reporter or journalist was writing an article and needed a legitimate quote from a business owner. Not only was the business owner quoted properly, we’ve seen traffic from these articles to the website. And, oh yeah, for those who care, the “anchor text” of the links are “branded” (i.e., the anchor text is the company’s name) and NOT a keyword-rich anchor text links.

The second link that Google flagged as being inorganic was, in fact, where a site picked up a press release that was put out on a popular press release distribution service. The news that was being reported in the press release was that this particular business was an official Toys for Tots drop-off location. Even the Toys for Tots website lists this business as an official drop-off location.

So, at this point, it is my impression that Google now doesn’t like links obtained from using Help A Reporter Out, and they don’t like links that are from websites who pick up stories from popular press release distribution services. Why?

Well, a Google manual review from a reconsideration request flagged those links as being inorganic links. In other words, the website is still manually penalized because of links obtained from Help a Reporter Out and a popular press release distribution service. If Google isn’t targeting Help A Reporter Out specifically, then perhaps HARO needs to do some more “policing” of the reporters who are using their services, as the last thing we need is for things like this to happen. There’s not much we can do about popular press release distribution services, though, as the popular press release distribution services really can’t do much about low quality websites picking up your press release. They are, though, being a lot “pickier” when it comes to the press releases that you submit to them, as they really do, in fact, need to be news.

Bill Hartzer is Globe Runner’s Senior SEO Strategist. Connect with him on Google+ or on Twitter as Bhartzer.

UPDATE: I want to clarify a few things that have come up regarding this. First off, I can tell you that in the case of the HARO articles, these were from legitimate HARO requests. In fact, we responded to requests for quotes from HARO. Just like we have done in the past with great success. The sites where the articles appear seem to be legitimate news sites or media sites. However, upon further investigation, it appears that the sites in particular where our links appear are “doing fishy or spammy things” in regards to inter-linking and duplicating of the content/articles. So, I believe that our client is “caught up” in this, and being innocently penalized because we innocently responded to a HARO request for a quote.

In no way are we, nor our client, involved in the “fishy or spammy” things that these websites/media outlets are doing. So, I still am recommending that you be very cautious in what you respond to when HARO is involved.

Update 2 I’ve updated the title of this post so that it is clear that Google has only flagged links that were a result of responses to HARO requests as being inorganic, unnatural links. I do not want anyone to get the impression that Google is targeting HARO in any way other than flagging inorganic links.

If you answer yes to this question, then you have a potential search engine ranking problem on your hands. But the good news is that it can be fixed. If you are seeing other websites outrank (or show up higher in the search results than your site) and they appear to have copied your website content, there definitely is a problem. Here is what you need to do in order to fix this situation.

Google has released a new form that allows sites to report scrapers.

To make sure that you’re really experiencing someone who is copying your content and using it without your permission, we first need to check.

1. First, you need to see if someone has truly copied your content. Take one of the URLs that you suspect it’s happening to (a page on your site) and run it through CopyScape.com. This will show you if any of the pages they find on the web are copying your content. If the site outranking your content shows up in this list, then there’s a good chance you have an issue.

2. Next, you need to take the title of one of your pages. I prefer to use the title tag, but it could be a very unique headline (such as the title of a blog post) and put it in quotes and search for it in Google, like this:

"Link Removals: Sometimes Websites Get Taken Down"

That’s the title of my last blog post here on this blog, so I thought that I would go ahead and use it as an example. When you search for the title in quotes (hopefully it’s unique) then you should only see your page or your blog post. But, if something else shows up in the search results, then:

• The phrase in quotes you searched for might not be unique enough. Try a sentence from your page.
• You might have shared the post on social media sites like Google+, Twitter, or your Facebook page. That’s okay.
• The content that’s stolen or copied from your site might be showing up

If it’s the last case, that your content appears to have been taken or copied, then there are generally a few reasons why:

• Your site is not as trusted as the other site. Unfortunately, sometimes if you have a fairly new site or a site with Google Penguin issues then the other site (the site scraping/copying/stealing your content) is going to rank better.
• The other site has higher PageRank than your site, and has more links or more trusted links than your site.

This last issue can be a problem. Because the other site has higher PageRank, it gets crawled and its content gets indexed faster than your site’s content get crawled and indexed. Therefore, the way Google’s duplicate content filter works is that whatever page or site gets crawled first, that’s the originator of the content. Then, if Google finds other copies, then those won’t rank as well as your site’s content.

One good way to deal with a situation like this is to get more trust and authority for your website. I know that can take time, and it involves getting new trusted and authoritative links to your website. It’s not an easy fix.

Another way to deal with this, though, is something that you can do RIGHT NOW. Whenever you add new content to your site, like a new page or a new blog post, you must immediately go over to Twitter and/or Google+ and post something about it. Include the original URL of the page, and not just a “tiny url”. It needs to be the full URL if possible. Twitter will change it to a tiny URL, and that’s okay. Google Plus is also important, as well. When you post, Google finds the new URL and will crawl it. This will minimize the chances that the other site will get your content posted and crawled.

If you are using WordPress, and you make a blog post, there are settings in WordPress that will cause your site to send a “ping” to Google (and other search engines and sites) to notify them of an update. It will send them the new URL. This also will help cause Google to crawl your new page.

Another way to deal with copied content that’s outranking you is to file a DMCA takedown request. Find out more about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which, when filed properly with Google and the site’s web host, will cause that content to be taken down. Google will remove the page for their search results and the site’s web host usually complies by removing the content, as well. They might even remove the entire website.

Finally, if you are having trouble with Google search engine rankings of your content and there is a scraper site involved (someone copying your content and outranking your site) then you can use Google’s new Scraper Tool to notify them of the problem. This doesn’t mean that they’re going to do something about it right away, but they may use that information in a few possible ways:

• Google may use the data to program a new part of their algorithm. Very likely.
• Google may use the data to remove the other site from their search results. Highly unlikely.

Whatever the situation, Google will use the information you give them somehow. I would first deal with the situation by doing several or all of the tasks I mentioned above. But then you might want to report it. That might, at a minimum, just give you a “warm and fuzzy feeling” that you reported it to Google.

Bill Hartzer is Globe Runner’s Senior SEO Strategist. Connect with him on Google+ or on Twitter as Bhartzer.

One of the services we provide here at GlobeRunner is a process of cleaning up a website’s links. Due to the recent Google Penguin algorithm updates in the past year or so, a lot of sites have suffered dramatic search engine ranking losses and have had severe hits to their site traffic. One thing that we do very well here at Globe Runner is get a site’s traffic back due to Google penalties.

The Google Penguin algorithm update determines whether or not you have low quality links or “questionable” links pointing to your website that attempted to manipulate your site search engine rankings. If you have low quality links pointing to your website, you need to get those links removed. Not only do you need those links removed, you can also disavow the links.

During the link removal process that we go through, which is extremely thorough, we come across some pretty strange situations. In fact, in some extreme cases, we may not mean to get a website banned or taken down by the site’s web host. But, sometimes that happens. One such situation occurred, and now, when you go to the site, you see this message:

Well, I guess we got the link removed, ya think?

Bill Hartzer is Globe Runner’s Senior SEO Strategist. Connect with him on Google+ or on Twitter as Bhartzer.

By now, you probably have heard that if you do not like the websites that are linking to your website, you can tell Google (and Bing.com) that you don’t like them. You can upload a file with a list of domain names or URLs of sites that they should not take into account when considering the links to your website. Google has extensive information about the disavow links process here.

Keep in mind, though, that it is impossible to know if a website that you do not own has disavowed links or not.

But how do you know if your website has disavowed links already? I know that can sound a bit weird, but to be honest with you it’s not a weird question. In fact, with so many different people working on websites nowadays, and companies hiring various search engine marketing and switching SEO companies all the time, it’s sometimes not an easy question to answer. Sometimes you don’t actually know if a disavow file has been uploaded in Google Webmaster Tools. And even if someone “thinks” or “knows” that they uploaded one, there’s no telling what domains or links were disavowed.

So, it can be confusing, but there is a really easy way to figure out:
– if a disavow file was uploaded
– what the file looks like

It’s also helpful, for example (or mandatory) that you have the actual disavow file that was uploaded, especially if you are going to analyze the links again and possibly submit a new disavow file. Usually I just add on to the current file after removing the duplicates. But again, you have to have the last disavow file that was uploaded.

Here’s how to find out if your site has disavowed links.

First, go to the disavow links tool. On that page, you’ll see a list of websites that you’ve verified in Google Webmaster Tools. The following is a screen capture of what it looks like, for my personal blog/website:

Select your site’s URL and then click “DISAVOW LINKS”.

Then, click the disavow links button again:

Once you click that button, you’ll be taken to a page where you’ll be notified when you last uploaded a disavow file, as shown below. If there a file has been uploaded, then great: you’ll see a download button, as shown below:

If you don’t see a date and time and a download link, then the site does NOT have a disavow on file with Google.

By the way, have I mentioned that we’re experts in dealing with disavow files and helping websites recover from Google linking penalties? Feel free to contact us if you have questions about the process or need help. Remember, if it’s not done right you can easily hurt your site’s rankings even worse than they are now.

Bill Hartzer is Globe Runner’s Senior SEO Strategist. Connect with him on Google+ or on Twitter as Bhartzer.