“The Portent analysis found strong evidence that Google is steadily lowering the bar for what it considers spam link profiles.  We found that the majority of websites — 36 out of 50 — have “clean” profiles with less than 10 percent of their links coming from questionable sources.

We’ve discovered Google has been applying a stricter standard over time. In the initial Penguin update, the only sites we saw penalised had link profiles comprised of more than 80% manipulative links.

Within two months, Google lowered the bar to 65%. Then in October 2012, the net got much wider. Google began automatically and manually penalizing sites with 50 percent manipulative links.”

As we all know Google has become ever stricter when it comes to spammy backlinks. In order to get top rankings in Google, it’s vital that you ensure your website doesn’t contain spammy backlinks.

The following types of backlink can be considered spam:

• Too many keyword-rich links in press releases: If the linked keyword doesn’t make sense in the press release, it’s better to avoid that link.
• Low quality article directories: Links from websites that contain thousands of low-quality articles about every possible subject provide no value.
• Low quality blogs: automatically created blogs with a lot of articles about a wide range of topics usually trigger Google’s spam filters.
• Link lists with hundreds of unrelated pages: Link lists aren’t bad as long as they are related to the topic of a website. If a link page lists to every Tom,
• Dick & Harry, you should stay away from that page.
• Random forum links: If you’re not participating in an online discussion, you should not add your link to that forum.

Shortcuts often lead to dead ends:

People who use these spamming tools often said things like “this tool got my website to number one within two weeks.” Six months later the same person had to say “my website rankings plummeted.” Shortcut SEO methods lead to short-lived results.

The right tactics and methods lead to lasting results:

If you use safe SEO methods that play by the rules, you don’t have to worry about Google’s algorithm updates. It takes longer to get high rankings with safe SEO methods, but the results are worth the time and effort

So, Spammers – Your time is Up!