The dust is slowly settling on the Penguin update, and now webmasters are starting to re-focus their link building efforts, and adapt to the new post-penguin landscape. If you want to reclaim the top spot in the search engines, the following tips will help you to rebuild a good link profile.
1. Focus on related links
Gone are the days when you could just pay an SEO consultancy to get you a bunch of links, with page rank being your primary concern. Now, if you want to rank well for a particular niche, you need links in that niche. You should have been focusing on closely related links to begin with, but if you weren't, now you need to reform your ways.
2. Build a Natural Link Graph
Instead of worrying about having your anchor text exactly right, focus on the text that surrounds your link. Google might get suspicious if all your links are to "[My awesome video game store]", but if some of the links look like "You can buy video games such as Mass Effect and Call of Duty from [this store]", you still get credit for having your link mentioned next to "video game", and your links look far more organic.
3. Get a mix of dofollow and nofollow links
A natural link profile includes a mixture of dofollow and nofollow links. Don't dismiss the value of a link just because it is nofollow. If you're not sure how to check your own link profile, or what dofollow and nofollow means, then you may want to get an online marketing company to help you whip your links into shape.
4. Authoritative links still count for a lot
Authoritative links are incredibly valuable. Instead of chasing after links from anyone and everyone, try to get links from some of the top sites in your niche. Google places a lot of value on those links, and they'll also be beneficial from a human trust standpoint too. If a market leader likes what you have to say, consumers will want to listen to you too.
5. Add value with your content
Any good SEO consultancy will tell you that the best way to gain traffic is to have content that people want to read. An online marketing company can help you to get links, but if you want your site to grow naturally then you will need to have content that people want to link to without being prompted. This has always been true, but the truth of the statement is even more noticeable in the post-Penguin world.
Building links on the Internet is a lot like building relationships in the real world. If you're honest, interesting, and helpful you won't have any trouble getting people to link to you. A little bit of a nudge through an online marketing strategy is a good way to kick-start your efforts, but once that marketing is done your site will live or die by the quality of its content.
on
4. Authoritative links still count for a lot
I totally agree with that point, but it’s so hard to convince the owner of the top sites to link you. or it’s expensive 😉
on
I think you “hit the nail on the head” when you stated that a lot of what really needs to happen to be successful is to build relationships and have good content. As you said, finding market leaders in your niche that give you their blessing is a good way to start some relationships. Google isn’t the all to end all, sometimes word of mouth works really well. Just think of all the times you’ve heard about a site from a friend or perhaps the radio or tv.. If a person visits your site once and you have great content, they will be back. “If you build it (well), they will come.”
on
If only writing great content was easy!
on
Great tips! However, I would like to add that post penguin, google seems to value social media much more. I have experimented with Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ and have had some interesting results. With Google+, I am able to get sites indexed within a day and Tweets really seem to give me a boost as well. How do you think Google values social media now?
on
Hi Antwannon, There no question that Google needs to use social to deliver the relevant results its users expect. I think you’ll start to see them do this more and more.