How to create a natural-looking backlink profile after the Google Penguin update? Google has changed the game again in the SEO industry. The penguin update was intended to fight web spammers who use shady techniques to rank websites.
Google Penguin Update
April was a big month in terms of algorithmic updates for Google. First, they adjusted their algorithm again in early April, targeting sites with excessive on-page optimization (high keyword density, keyword stuffing, etc). Just a few days later, a new algorithm tweak went live targeting offsite factors (backlinks, social indicators, etc.) which meant a lot of sites were either deindex or penalized.
This new tweak, code-named Penguin has generated a huge buzz among SEOs and bloggers because a lot of legit websites were affected. Even quality sites were punished by Google Penguin update, and a lot of webmasters have complained about the inconsistency of the latest algorithmic adjustment. If you were affected, and you feel you shouldn’t have, Google has opened a web form where you can request a manual check of your website.
Create a natural-looking backlink profile
Here are some steps to create a natural-looking backlink profile …
1. Create quality content.
If you start building links but your content can’t back up your strategy, you’re likely going blind in terms of SEO. Think of your websites as a long term business and deliver good and useful content for your visitors. If your content provides value, you’ll gain natural links from other sites and no algorithm can beat that. It takes time and effort, but it’s well worth it.
2. Use varied anchor text in your links.
A natural link profile contains backlinks from other persons who think your content is share-worthy. Many of those persons are not webmasters, so probably they don’t even know what an anchor text is. People tend to link other websites using the URL itself. Try to build links with anchors like mysite.com, www.mysite.com, MY SITE.com, visit my site. com, HTTP SITE.COM, etc.
3. Use long-tails as anchor text.
A natural-looking links profile have variations of the main keyword. For instance, if your site is about dogs use more specific anchors, for example dog news, dog pics online, great dog training website, dog-friendly blog. Remember: people will link to your site because of your content and that’s why you’ll have to use long-tails as anchor text.
4. Not all links are text links.
You can use an image as a link too, and any SEOs overlook this. If you want to increase the relevancy of your image links, use a keyword-rich alt tag. For example: <a href="mysite.com" title="my keyword"><img src="mykeyword.gif" alt="my keyword" width="100" height="100" />
5. Mix dofollow and nofollow links.
I’ve read countless times how people disregard link building opportunities just because those links are nofollow and thus (according to their theories), that link is not worth buying. PageRank is not all you need. Relevancy, authority and quality are things I look for and PageRank is not that important for me. I’d rather get a Wikipedia link, which is no follow, and not a dofollow crap profile from an untrusted website.
Be part of the winners
We can go on trying to find patterns in natural looking backlink profiles but Google’s algorithm is too complex; instead, try to emulate what the winners are doing in your niche. Use tools like Majestic SEO or ahrefs and analyze the anchor distribution of the top sites. Analyze how many links they are building, what anchors are they using, etc.
I hope you can get some ideas from this post; build a natural backlinks profile, and remember this: nothing can beat the experience. If you really want to learn what works and what doesn’t, test and make your own conclusions.
This is a guest post by Alan Medina, the owner of BitsEverywhere.com, a tech blog where he writes about tech news, SEO, blogging and Windows Tips. He has been a blogger for 7 years and this is his passion. Follow him on @bitseverywhere.