The only disadvantage that using GWT might have is for Google being able to group you and your sites easier if they ever go on the offense against you. Very Very unlikely though. They take pride in their algo.
Personally, I wouldn't let any Google product anywhere near any of my sites, but maybe that's just me?
Actually, I tell a lie, I do use google fonts sometimes. lol
Seriously though, whenever I hear someone mention that they've had their site slapped, 99% of the time the next sentence that follows it always has 'webmaster tools' in it somewhere.
I hear it all too often to be coincidence, and I know that you wouldn't always know if you didn't receive the message, but it's still pretty obvious if your site gets kicked down a flight of stairs in the serps, with or without it.
Anyway, it's just like google to go after the 'low hanging fruit' and it makes perfect sense from a business point of view as well. I mean, they can either go out looking for data on sites to slap, or use the data that's delivered right to their door. That's got to be a no brainer, and it would be illogical for them not to do that, at least in my opinion.
I suppose everyone has their own choice to make, but I just don't get why you would give them an exact blueprint of everything that you're doing to promote your site if you don't have to. For me, the benefits of GWT don't outweigh the risks - not by a long shot.
They already have the blueprint, the only difference is that you see what they see. Google really doesn't need GWT to find and deindex your sites, if they want to they will find all your sites and nuke them.
I have seen BH sites that have been banned by G mixed with HB sites that hasn't and are still live to this day.
I think you're really selling yourself short as Google already knows everything about you , and yes they know which domains are yours, only if your really good you can hide that from them. and my philosophy is my sites are going to tank anyway so why bother to hide them.
Some of my clients insist on using GA, GWT etc and because i never use them on my own sites, it gives me the opportunity to see which are penalised and which are not.
There seems to be no correlation between sites that use GWT in terms of being penalised or not. At least with my sites that's the case anyway.
But i'm still not going to use it on my sites. Why give them any information that you don't need to? Why show them your sites are linked when you don't need to?
As for seeing if you have a penalty or not, well that's kinda obvious without GWT! lol
Use only links on engines that are dofollow and contextual. Use Scrapebox to find niche-related links, and tell the article manager to insert 1-4 of them into each article it posts. Duplicate that across three tiers. Hand-spin articles by hand in a super-nested way. 60% of all anchor texts are the brand, 30% the URL, 5% generic, and 5% related long-tail keywords. For tier 2 and 3 I use pretty much 95% URL / generic. Then depending on my SEO strategy (i.e. do I want to rank for loads of broad general keywords or do I want to rank for just one valuable keyword) I will buy domains with PR5+ backlinks, and create a blog network on them with specific anchor texts.
If generic broad rankings then I will use brand anchor text on the blog network. For specific term ranking, I'll do the same, but then for one or two of the super high PR domains I'll use exact anchor texts.
PaulieP what you use as text to promote this aff program? Long text or small one? Is this text duplicated for every page ( just change city and state for every post ) ?
@theguruland
I build a landingpage/site that looks like a local niche site, i do that using the "My Geo Posts Free" plugin, this plugin will give you the option to ad tokens in your content like welcome to [mygeo_city] and that token will insert the city of the visitor by making the use of proxies.
I create my content like: are you looking for a plumber in the [mygeo_city] area call 0800 blah blah, that will cover the little towns that may not come up in the proxy list most of the time it grabs a nearby town/city
One more tip, i have found that amateur looking website, like the styles from the early 2000 will give you more calls than a flashy, slider driven all rings and bell site.
Don't askl me why, but i convert mt calls and emails best with the old style themes, a great theme to have a look at is the free weaver II theme.
@PaulieP , thank you I understand but I do not understand for what then you use the ninja plugin ? I ve a plugin that cover all this stuff and if you PM me in private we can discuss this
Comments
Actually, I tell a lie, I do use google fonts sometimes. lol
Seriously though, whenever I hear someone mention that they've had their site slapped, 99% of the time the next sentence that follows it always has 'webmaster tools' in it somewhere.
I hear it all too often to be coincidence, and I know that you wouldn't always know if you didn't receive the message, but it's still pretty obvious if your site gets kicked down a flight of stairs in the serps, with or without it.
Anyway, it's just like google to go after the 'low hanging fruit' and it makes perfect sense from a business point of view as well. I mean, they can either go out looking for data on sites to slap, or use the data that's delivered right to their door. That's got to be a no brainer, and it would be illogical for them not to do that, at least in my opinion.
I suppose everyone has their own choice to make, but I just don't get why you would give them an exact blueprint of everything that you're doing to promote your site if you don't have to. For me, the benefits of GWT don't outweigh the risks - not by a long shot.
Google really doesn't need GWT to find and deindex your sites, if they want to they will find all your sites and nuke them.
I have seen BH sites that have been banned by G mixed with HB sites that hasn't and are still live to this day.
I think you're really selling yourself short as Google already knows everything about you , and yes they know which domains are yours, only if your really good you can hide that from them. and my philosophy is my sites are going to tank anyway so why bother to hide them.
There seems to be no correlation between sites that use GWT in terms of being penalised or not. At least with my sites that's the case anyway.
But i'm still not going to use it on my sites. Why give them any information that you don't need to?
Why show them your sites are linked when you don't need to?
As for seeing if you have a penalty or not, well that's kinda obvious without GWT! lol
I build a landingpage/site that looks like a local niche site, i do that using the "My Geo Posts Free" plugin, this plugin will give you the option to ad tokens in your content like welcome to [mygeo_city] and that token will insert the city of the visitor by making the use of proxies.
I create my content like: are you looking for a plumber in the [mygeo_city] area call 0800 blah blah, that will cover the little towns that may not come up in the proxy list most of the time it grabs a nearby town/city
Don't askl me why, but i convert mt calls and emails best with the old style themes, a great theme to have a look at is the free weaver II theme.
Goodluck