Link Building after Google Penguin Update
Google Penguin is the name for an algorithm that seeks to correct the ranking of websites
using methods which violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Penguin was released on 24th of April 2012 and was all about ensuring that websites returned by searches were of high quality, and correcting rankings by discounting patterns of behaviour it considers to be link spam (widely used tactics implemented by 'black hat SEOs'). According to Google’s estimates,Penguin affected around 3.1% of search queries in English, about 3% of queries in German, Chinese, and Arabic, and an even bigger percentage of "highly-spammed" languages (with around 5% of search queries in my native Polish language -brr!).
So how should you go about link building after Google Penguin?
The key thing is to forget about getting poor quality links, and adding them all in one go. Aim to get links from authoritative, popular domains in your niche. Evaluate your link profile regularly, and aim to remove poor quality links.
Increase quality links to counter the bad ones it may prove difficult to get removed. Make sure your link profile is as diverse as it only could be, so it does contain dofollow and nofollow links, various anchor texts, and that you have many links from various linking C-blocks.
You can help yourself with link building using various great link building tools such as Analytics SEO. This tool will provide you with information such as the date of link acquired by your competitors or the number of unique C-class IPs linking to your website (Google, Bing or Yahoo may down-weight too many links from the same IP address, since it might imply common ownership of websites).
Build a strong social influence (social media researches prove that high number of Twitter shares helps with rankings improvements), and focus on good quality, sharable content (hire good content writers). Link building without domain knowledge may be dying out. Aim to get links from trusted domains. When judging the websites authority check the websites MozRank (do not rely solely on PR because Google updates PR less frequently then SEOmoz guys update their MozRank). Look for active communities and busy visitor traffic.
Post comments on popular blogs, utilise websites such us My Guest Blogging which is a free community that connects guest bloggers to blog owners.
Post quality, unique articles, and participate in active forums. Post content to sharing sites such as Slideshare. Try and ensure your links are based on diverse anchor text phrases (mix in brand variation for good measure) and make sure links are surrounded by related text.
The fact is that link-building activities are still valid after Penguin, but the emphasis is now more than ever on link building. Matt Cutts, who heads the Search Quality team at Google says, “There’s a perception that everything will go social and links will be obsolete, but I wouldn’t write the epitaph just yet.”
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