14 Effective Link Building Strategies In The Post Panda/Penguin Era

Google is renowned for its update in algorithm in order to try and prevent the gaming of the search engine rankings. This has caused a swirl in the world of the webmasters. In February 2011, there is the introduction of the Panda update that has changed the complete scenario of the search results. It has altered more than one out of every 10 searches. The Panda and Penguin updates have made some serious changes which have forced the webmasters to modify their strategy in order to optimize their website.

It is quite visible that search engines are getting smarter and therefore, it is essential to redefine the link building strategy. With the introduction of the Panda updates, webmasters were looking for new tactics which can help them to establish their goals and to skyrocket in SERPs. In the April of 2012, it was found that Penguin update has hit 3% of the search results by knocking out the sites that comes with link profiles which appears to be suspicious.

Adopt An Unique Strategy…

The truth in case of link building is that you can implement either some rarely used strategy or the wide spread strategy, but your strategy may prove to be a golden egg for one website whereas for another it can turn out to be rotten egg. Unless you know the accurate steps that needs to be followed for earning links, you would be looking for the webmaster who can sympathize with you and can put your links on their website. Therefore, it is highly essential that you stay updated with the latest strategies that can help you in proper link building process.

Strategies That Help You Make A Smarter Move…

In the event of the Panda and Penguin updates, it is important to dig deep into the matter to find out the common patterns that have contributed in the list of the rankings of websites. There are some of the strategies that you need to keep in mind in order to make your efforts flawless.

#1.      Recognize The Feasible Links

The adoption of the shotgun approach will not help you survive long in the market and therefore, you need to focus on finding the link opportunities. You need to check the relevance of the link and authority. It is significant to focus on the domains that are related to the niche and approach these opportunities strategically. Ask yourself if at all it is possible to build the link from the targeted site that will make sense to the visitors.

If the visitors are not there, then it’s useless to waste your time. You need to identify the feasible link opportunities before you start with your link building process.

#2.      Use Balanced Anchor Text

It is important that about 40% of your links should represent your brand, domain name or URL, whereas 20% of the link should focus on the exact keywords that you are targeting. The remaining 40% will make use of any part of the keywords that is mixed with the brand name and other anchor text like “click here”. Excessive number of backlinks with the same anchor text or continuously using the similar anchor text may not give you the desired results.

#3.      Avoid Mass Link Building Tactics

Applying any kind of strategy which can help you achieve thousands of links in a shorter span of time may appear to be suspicious to the Google. This will again drag you down to the previous position and will find difficulty in acquiring a good rank in Google.

If you are achieving numerous links due to the use of the software or buying the links, then there would definitely be specific patterns which will allow the algorithm to detect in the nearer future. The only authentic way through which you can expect to receive massive links in the shortest time is with the use of viral content and it is the only way through which you can keep the position of the website intact.

#4.      Analyze Your Competitor’s Links

Are you coping everything that your competitors are doing? Then, don’t do so as this will automatically affect your ranking and also you will hamper your business. It is important to create your own identity and take the best from the competitors to improvise it and implement in your strategy. You need to take a minute to look at the link profile of your competitor in order to get an idea. Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs & Majestic SEO are great tools to look into you competitor’s link profile. This will also allow you to get a broad idea on the amount of work that you need to do in order to give ranking to a specific term. You should think strategically to stand out from the crowd.

#5.      Emphasis on Building Relationships

It is the best tactic that you can adopt in order to find the best and relevant links for your website. It is true of the relationships that happen in the real world. You need to attend different conferences, seminars or meetups which can improve the chance of finding the people of your own industry and then you can automatically create a platform through which you can build up the valuable network. You should focus on developing real relationships in the initial stage, rather than concentrating on the links. It can always be effective to keep the business cards to keep in touch with the person.

#6.      Interview The Industry Experts

It does not matter whether it is a text interview or higher quality video interview, you can definitely make use of this tactic in order to establish links to your website. It is found that there are many people who are either not aware of this strategy or they seems to be quite disinterested in applying this method. But, truly speaking it can turn out to be the most effective way to generate links to your site. You need not be scared to go and talk to the experts in your niche. It is the best way through which you can ensure success.

#7.      Play The Role of A PRO

Just completely erase your thought regarding link building and page ranking; you just need to focus on diversifying of links. You should build links that won’t get indexed on the site that make use of the “noindex” meta tag. The objective of doing so is to create the brand quality and also drive more traffic to the website from places where you normally do not visit on the internet.

#8.      Dofollow Vs. Nofollow

You will come across with every website that contains nofollow and dofollow links. There are some people around who are highly concerned about the number of such links, but there is no such ratio that you need to maintain on the site. You need to do few researches about the ratio that is widely used in the niche sites and get the idea on it. If you are having these links in a proportionate amount then you can certainly keep the spam sites far away and you will definitely gain the higher page rank while improving the amount of visitors to your website.

#9.      Branded Links Are Very Important

Google has its own metrics in order to understand the quality of the link and therefore, it is essential to have links that are branded and highly authentic. It needs to be branded not only on the homepage, but also on other pages. These links turn out to be highly beneficial for the website and it can certainly contribute in the higher ranking of the page.

#10.  Internal Linking Mayhem

Do you know, the links within your website that you use to link your pages together (internal links) are highly beneficial? You can certainly make use of the internal links in your link building campaign and SEO. These links do matter. In the recent Penguin update we have witnessed that we are always not in favor of using the keyword anchor text. There are also other intelligent and smarter ways to follow through which do link building in the accurate manner. In case of the links that are available on your website or blog posts which leads to the authority pages are considered to be quality links. In short, it can be said that the more the number of authority pages available within the site, the more number of authority links can be developed. But, remember not to overdo it!

#11.  Directory Submission

Though, it was once considered to be an effective way of generating traffic and ensure the presence of the business in the market, but in the present time it has lost its importance. Google has penalized most of the directories and so there is no use of spending the valuable time in the process of directory submission. However, you can still come across with some directories that are prevalent (like dmoz, Yahoo! Directory, BOTW) and you can consider submitting the articles on the site that are of the niche and you can expect to get a small boost in ranking.

Now If You Are A Blogger, Here Are Some Link Building Strategies For You…

In order to build links for your blog, there are some of the important things that you can do. Though, it is fact that you might have come across with some of the strategies before, but in this case you will be able to gain some extra tips that can definitely help you earn good links to the blog.

You should remember that link building is not used in order to increase the search engine ranking or building up the Page Rank, it is more than that. In order to build links. You need to increase the traffic and also build some useful relationship and it needs to be your immediate goal.

#12.  Become A Guest Author

Guest blogging can be the effective way through which the bloggers can develop links to the website which will help you get counted in the search ranking and will also improve in the traffic. There are some of the ways through which you can find blogs to submit the guest posts.

• You can search on the Google by placing queries like “submit a guest post,” “guest author guidelines” or “guest post by” and so on.
• You can also make use of the Google Authorship. In case you know any blogger who writes numerous blog posts then search with their name and you will find them.
• You need to focus on the links on the content to include the link and should submit the original content and need to avoid posting it anywhere else.

#13.  Contribute To The Unique Content

Article directories get a lot of legitimate scrutiny while using the webmasters. You can make use of the high quality editorial contributions to maintain the highest standards. With the guest blogging you can earn huge benefits than the article networks while some bloggers may find it difficult in order to score the guest post opportunities. Your quality article will definitely help you earn good quality links.

• You should add some extra feature to your content rather than writing text. You can think of implementing of images and videos to make your content seem more attractive.
• You can make some sort of moderation that wills not anyone else to post that they want to do.
• Add featured authors on the home page and newsletters etc.

#14.  Commenting on Other Blogs

Blog commenting is taken as the strongest and the most powerful variety due to various reasons which can help in the link building process. If you leave any valuable comments you will get extra attention from the owner and the author of the blog which will help you develop the relationship and you can also gain the opportunity of building links. This will automatically help you draw more traffic to your website improving the visibility and creating a huge significance in the market.

When it comes to droping links, leave behind your blog’s URL in the website field. And don’t use any keyword, use your real name—preferably first and last name. You might use it like this “Name @ Blog” as an example “S. Saha @ Webaholic”.

Now if you are a bit more aggressive & want an extra link to your blog in your comment, then look for blogs using the CommentLuv plugin (do a Google search for your niche keywords + CommentLuv enabled to find them). They allow you to add a link to your latest blog post to your comment.

You might want to dig deeper into Google backlinking factors, so here is a segment of a infographic called “Google’s 200 Ranking Factors”. You can find the full infographic here.

You can try out some of these strategies in order to build links in the post Panda/Penguin era and gain success. With the Panda and Penguin update it is quite visible that Google will penalize heavily on the link building activities that appears to be spammy and unnatural, but this does not signify that you will not be opting for the traditional techniques of link building anymore. Some of the traditional link building strategies has lost their relevance in the Post panda era. With the recent updates in link building strategies, you can ensure the success of the business.

What’s your take on the future of link building, and what other tactics can we use to scale our visibility without jeopardizing our future? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.