The latest update to Google’s search engine algorithm entitled Penguin has put quite a few webmasters in a tizzy. This update seems to crackdown severely on unnatural links that are generated by a number of SEO strategies. This update appears to target pages that have a large number of low-quality inbound links that point to them.
This is different from the earlier Panda update that targeted spamming outbound links present on pages and used that as a page ranking criteria. There are a number of reports of businesses that were early adopters of SEO strategies seeing a drop in online traffic after this update as the old techniques that they had used to improve their site’s rankings now adversely impact them.
Some of the old techniques used which are now severely penalized include article spinning, purchase of links and inbound links from link networks. Well, if you look at it objectively, these techniques subvert Google’s attempts to identify sites that are genuinely focused on the content that they are supposed to be about.
Unfortunately for early adopters of these black hat techniques, repairing the damage may be much more difficult than one can imagine. In the grand scheme of things, creation is usually more difficult than destruction. The Internet turns that rule on its head. Creating a link may be very easy, whereas removing the link, especially after say a gap of 2 years may be well beyond the means of most people.
The problem is aggravated in the case of webmasters who have used such techniques to prosper. What Google is trying to tell webmasters across the board is to focus on the users. Unfortunately there is no sure-fire way to beat Google’s algorithms, especially when they keep changing ever so often. Once upon a time the holy grail of SEO was inbound links, and then it shifted to directory listings, articles posted, presence on blog discovery sites and now to social signals.
The latest focus seems to be on ways to show that you are as real as possible for Google. Some of the link building strategies of the future will revolve around the following guidelines. The first thing to take care of is to use your anchor text in as natural a way as possible. The way to do this is by posting a guest blog on a suitable third party website.
Try to avoid blog rolls as far as possible. Writing just one lengthy, informative article as a guest blogger on a relevant site with a back link to your domain will have more impact and prevent your site from being penalized. Try to have as many variants to your anchor text as possible. Do not restrict it to one phrase. If you have a genuinely good product, service or topic to write about, there will be quite a few phrases that are attached to it.
Optimizing to just one anchor phrase could be a fatal move in such a case. Aim to get links from quality websites rather than a lot of links from spam websites. You might want to consider looking at the level at which your website is optimized for a particular keyword. A good rule of thumb is that if a human finds that a certain keyword repeats many times on a website, Google will find it too and assign the page a negative score.
One important thing that all link builders will be forced to do is simply create better content. Creating better content is great for the users. More importantly, if your great content is created in a way that is easy to share (include social buttons close to article), chances are that it will really become popular among users. In an era where Google seems to trust social signals more and more, this is an essential adjustment that all link builders will need to make.
Mark BennettAbout the Guest Author:
This is a guest post by Mark Bennett of acquiweb.com, a site that offers savings and current information on comcast cable, as well as Comcast.com services.
