Post Penguin: Why a Simple Link Building Strategy Works Best

Why Keep the Strategy Simple?

Since the new penguin update, Google is now more focused than ever on penalizing websites that use poor link building techniques. Websites that have used any type of “black hat” techniques or have spammed their link to low quality sites are now being horribly penalized and will continue to be ranked lower than a website that has fewer, high quality links.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of webmasters that still don’t comprehend the changes and are still up to their old tricks, but will continue to hit a brick wall when trying to rank. So it’s best to keep your strategy simple and efficient so when Google reviews your link profile, they see that you are using approved techniques.

What You Should Implement in Your Strategy

There are a few main aspects you will want to review before considering putting your link on a site. First, their rank and authority. A website that has a higher authority with Google will provide you with a much more effective link than a website that is poorly ranked. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t post on a decent website that isn’t ranked extremely high, but you want to stay away from the bottom and aim as high as possible.

The next thing you need to check is how relevant the website is to your own. Google knows when you’re just trying to increase your link profile and will penalize you for putting your link where it doesn’t belong. If your website contains information regarding cooking, then your link shouldn’t be appearing on websites about business. Not only does Google frown upon this, but so will the audience that you posted the content to. They don’t care about cooking, they are at that website for business related topics.

Another aspect is ensuring that the website doesn’t let just anyone post to it. Generally, websites that don’t have any requirements for guest posts are ranked low, but sometimes you will find one that hasn’t been penalized yet. Posting on these sites is basically setting yourself up for failure because most of the content is irrelevant, filled with grammatical errors, and doesn’t even have a big audience.

The websites that you want linking to you are those that ensure their content is relevant, has no errors, and provides something that their audience would actually want to read. These websites want to maintain their authority and actually care about what their visitors think.

The last thing you should always check is how user-friendly the website is and if it can be considered a high quality site. If you visit the site only to find that it is hard to find the content you want to see or that there are some major flaws in their design, then you will most likely want to stay away from the site. Sites that are not user-friendly tend to do worse and worse as time goes on and will eventually risk your link.

If you go through this check list each time you are about to place a link, then you should be fine. It may be a little hard to get used to, finding quality sites that meet all the requirements, but in the end, you’ll be glad you did. You’ll also notice that high quality sites tend to do business with other high quality sites, so you can start to get recommendations or ideas of who to try and post your link to next.

The Penguin update might seem like it is trying to hurt you, but in reality, it’s just making the internet a better place where people don’t use black hat techniques to get on top.