Top Way for Penguin Link Building

 It has been a while since the Penguin update was released by Google and there is still a lot of conversation about how to properly promote your website to stay within Google’s good graces.  Today we’ve put together an overview of 3 top link building strategies for post Penguin success.
While this piece is not meant to be an all encompassing link building how to guide, it should give you some direction on your link building campaign.  The biggest piece of advice we can give is that you need to have a link building campaign.  Links are still very very important for ranking well in Google – you just need to go about it in the right manner.



Internal Page Linking

When people build links, it is natural for them to concentrate on building links to their main page.  The home page is the landing page, that is typically where your main keyword phrases are located, and that is the easiest way to build links.  The problem is that it is not the best strategy to build all your links to your home page.

Linking to your internal pages not only gives you a more diverse looking link profile (that is a good thing), but it allows you to target long tail keywords and very low competition phrases.  These long tail keywords and low competition phrases are going to add up over time, each one bringing in some traffic.  In addition, the link juice is going to flow through to the other pages of your site, so even if you are not building links to your home page, your home page is still going to see the benefit of these links.



Social Media Links

Social media is big.  Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other sites such as Delicious, Stumbleupon and Pinterest – all these sites are social sites.  Google is taking more and more social signals into account in their rankings, and if you don’t have social signals, your site is going to suffer.  Not only is social media linking important now, but it is only going to become more important as social media continues to become ingrained in our daily life.

You should have a Facebook page for your site, and you should interact and post to that page regularly.  You should have a Twitter account for your site.  Pinterest is a good site that you can use very creatively.  Linkedin is a great site for businesses, and you can create group pages there too.  Of course we must also mention Google +, Google’s social site.  Create a presence on these sites and participate with others in your niche.  If you have good content, not only will you be building your own links, but others will begin to share your content.  That is where the real power of social media links can start to kick in.



Diverse Linking

You have to have a diverse link profile.  Social bookmarking, forum posting, articles, guest blogging, social media links, links from sites like Squidoo and Hubpages, links from related sites, even directory links and Wiki links.  Create a diverse link profile and grow it in a diverse manner rather than focusing on only one type of link.  In addition, continue your link building so you have a steady stream of activity to your site.

Not only do you need a diverse linking footprint with regards to where your links are coming from, but you also need a diverse linking footprint with regards to the keywords you are using for your anchor text.  This is incredibly important, and we have written a blog post that goes hand in hand with this post – Anchor Text Distribution for Better Rankings.  Combining proper anchor text distribution with a good mix of link sources can be a powerful combination, and is what Google seems to be looking for these days.

Good luck

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Google's disavow links tool

An online discussion on Webmasterworld.com shows the statement of Uli Lutz, who works for Google's search quality team in Germany.



A webmaster asked Uli if it was possible to accidentally hurt a friend or a good resource by including it in a disavow link report. The main statements of Uli Lutz are:

You don't have to worry about damaging other people with the disavow links.
Hurting other websites with the disavow links tool is not possible.
If you want to disavow many links from the same website, there's a site-wide disavow option.

Should you use Google's disavow links tool?

You should only use Google's disavow links tool if Google sent you a notification that your website was penalized for unnatural links. Even then, it's very likely that Google's Penguin update already disavowed all inorganic links that point to your site.

If your rankings dropped after the Penguin update, that's because the unnatural links don't count anymore. The Penguin update probably added an internal rel=nofollow to all unnatural links that point to your site.

The following will happen if you report links to your website with Google's disavow links tool:

Any links that you report with the disavow links tool will count as rel=nofollow links in your link profile, i.e. Google won't consider them at all.
As you cannot know which links Google considers spam, you might acidentally remove good links that point to your website. That can have a negative effect on your website rankings.
After using the disavow links tool, you have to ask Google for a reconsideration request. That means that you are self-reporting your website for spam.
Google will take a closer look at your website to find spam.
If you did not spam Google, there's no need to use the disavow links tool. Using the tool is a confirmation that you spammed Google in the past and that you know it.

What you can do to recover from the Penguin update

Since Google's Penguin update, automatically created low-quality links don't work anymore. Google discounted these links and there's no need to invest time in sending Googel a confirmation that they discounted the right links. Better invest your time in the following:

Try to get natural backlinks from other websites that have a higher quality than the previous backlinks.
Vary the anchor texts that are used in the links to your site. Of course, the links that point to your site still should contain words that relate to your topic. Do not use exact match anchor texts.
That's all there is to it. It's all very easy: Google doesn't want to be tricked. If you tried to cheat Google in the past with shady backlinks and shady search engine optimization methods, then it will take some time until your website recovers.

If you used white-hat SEO methods to promote your website then there's nothing to worry about. Don't fall for shady SEO services that offer quick and fully automatic solutions. If you want to get results that last, use SEO tools that play by the rules.

Google's disavow links tool Official Video

from - OneClickSeo

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More Way to Increse Website Traffic

Today we are going to look at some alternative methods of obtaining website traffic.  Of course being ranked number one for all of your search terms in the major search engines is everyone’s goal, but these days with the competition for major keyword phrases and terms that is not realistic for all website owners.  The good news, however, is that you do not need to rely on top rankings for all of your traffic.

There are many alternative methods of obtaining traffic to your website, and diversifying your traffic sources is going to do nothing but good for your site and business moving forward.  As many found out last year, relying on only one source of traffic can be devastating if that source of traffic goes away.  Instead, we recommend casting a wide net across many traffic channels.

One great source of traffic is an email list.  Regardless of the business you are in, a targeted opt in email list is going to ensure you have people reading what you have to say and visiting your website.  If you have never done any type of emailing before, now is a great time to start.  Sign up for an account at Aweber, they are the leader in email marketing.  You can create an opt in form and put it on your site very quickly.  Offering a free report or a weekly newsletter is a great incentive for people to sign up.  These people are already interested in what you have to say, and many will turn into long-term followers of your site/blog/newsletter and more.

Another great source of traffic is local listings.  I am not talking about only the Google local listings, but all different types of local listings.  Yelp is great.  Bing has a local listing feature.  Online yellow pages are another place to get listed.  In addition, you can do a localized search for what your business does and see what directories or local listings show up.  Get listed with those directories or local listing sites.  You will not get a huge amount of traffic from any one of these sources, but you will get a little from each.  If one goes away you lose only a tiny bit of traffic.  Even better than that is the traffic quality, this type of traffic is typically going to convert much better than general search engine traffic.

Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other social media type sites are also great places to have a presence.  You want to be found on all of the major social media type sites, but if you are doing all your marketing yourself, chances are you will not have time to maintain all of these outlets.  Choose one or two and concentrate on them.  I like Linkedin, and have joined and created many groups that send me qualified leads on a semi-regular basis.

Finally, find a few forums that are frequented by your target audience.  Take part in these forums and add a link back to your site in your signature.  You do not need to be overly promotional here, just a link so people can find your site online if they want to learn more about what you do or offer.  Be helpful, answer questions and you will get some traffic in return.  Again, this will be traffic that will convert much better than search engine traffic.

By marketing your website like a real business, you will find that you can pick up a lot of little chunks of great quality traffic from many places.  Not only is this simply good marketing, but it also helps you to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket!

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Anchor Text Distribution

 

 A while back after Google released their Penguin update we did a webinar about keywords, linking and ranking after the update.  Today we are going to revisit that data after allowing plenty of time to gather more information and come to some conclusions about the best distribution of anchor text for ranking in Google.

We all know by now that Google does not want people gaming their algorithm.  Despite this their search results are still a computer generated algorithm – there is not a person sitting there for all search phrases deciding which sites rank and which sites don’t.  Due to this basic fact there will always be ways to improve your rankings by aligning your site with what Google is looking for.

Despite what has been said, link building for better rankings is not dead.  Links are still the primary way Google decides what sites to rank where.  The difference is that today those links need to be distributed in a natural manner rather than a keyword based manner.  SEOMOZ ran an article where they looked at 10 national brand sites that rank very well in the search engines and broke down the percentages of links by anchor text.  What they came up with is a good formula for your own link building.

What was found is that about 65% of the links were exact match, phrase matching or brand matching with regards to the anchor text.  The breakdown between these three categories was 18% exact, 17% phrase and 30% brand.  The other links coming in were evenly divided between the URL as the anchor text and unrelated anchor text.

This is a great way to create your own link building strategy.  Using the ratios above, here is what a sample link building strategy might look like for your site, called “Widget World” selling Red Widgets:

For every 100 links built, you should build the following:



18 links with anchor text of “Red Widgets” – this is the exact match

17 links with anchor text containing Red Widgets, such as “Handy Red Widgets”, Waterproof Red Widgets”, etc – this is the phrase match

30 links with anchor text of “Widget World” or slight variation – this is the brand

18 links with the anchor text of “yoursitename.com” – this is the URL

17 links with random anchor text – this could be long tail phrases like “see more about Red Widgets at our site” or simple phrases like “click here” etc.



This is a simplistic breakdown, but the data backs up these general ratios as being the target.  Regardless of whether your links are built all naturally or built by you or outsourced, if you keep to this ratio you will not run afoul of Google, and you will see your rankings increase.

When building these links, you may consider obtaining higher page rank or PR links for the first line item – the exact match phrase.  This will help pump a little more juice through that phrase.  When you combine that with the varied anchor text, adhering to these ratios, you have a winning formula for better rankings.

Finding the higher PR links is not always easy, but a good solution is to work with a private link brokering type of company.  These companies work with individual website owners and contract with them to place your links.  This can be helpful, as it gives you access to low cost, high quality links that are not publicly distributed.

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How to deal with negative SEO

 

In a video on YouTube, the head of Google's anti-spam team Matt Cutts talked about negative SEO. Can other companies hurt your website rankings by spamming your site? What can you do to avoid this?



Matt Cutts' statements are somewhat contradicting. He says that negative SEO isn't a major issue for Google. On the other hand, he says that Google offers a tool that helps you to deal with negative SEO.

1. Matt Cutts says that they try to avoid negative SEO

He says that when Google designs a new anti-spam algorithm, they try to make sure that the algorithm cannot be used to hurt a competitor. He says that they try to make sure that they are resistant against that.

2. Bad backlinks can cause problems

Matt Cutts says that Google has become better in detecting private and public link networks. Links from these link networks can have a negative influence on your Google rankings. This includes automatically created backlinks from forum profile sites, blog spam and all other links that can be created in bulk with a tool.

3. Although most people don't need it, Google offers the disavow links tool to address negative SEO

According to Matt Cutts, most businesses don't have to worry about negative SEO simply because no one will use negative SEO on their websites. That statement implies that negative SEO through spam link building is possible.

The disavow link tool enables webmasters to give Google a list of backlinks that should be ignored by the ranking algorithm.

4. Time invested in negative SEO is better invested in other things

Matt Cutts says that it usually doesn't make sense to try to hurt another website with spam links. The links might help the targeted site and the owner of the linked website can always disavow the spam links.

As mentioned in one of our previous posts, it's likely that the disavow link tool won't help your website much. It's more likely that Google simply ignores the spam links. The disavow link tool helps webmasters to feel good because they can do something but this won't necessarily increase the rankings of their websites.

To increase the rankings of your website, you need more good backlinks. It's not enough to remove the bad backlinks. Actually, a few good backlinks can outweigh many bad backlinks.

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