Link Building - Post Penguin
-
Hi,
We have an eCommerce site that has recently been hit for some unnatural linking, resulting in a warning in our Google Webmaster Tools account. We weren't doing anything particularly underhand (and indeed before Penguin there wasn't a cause for concern) but nevertheless Google has picked up and penalised us.
We've instantly removed the worst offending links and requested a resubmission. If this doesn't result in positive action from Google we're planning on employing the services of an Oracle member on SEOmoz who was kind enough to give us some fantastic free advice in order to go through and remove any further links that may be seen as questionable.
Moving forward however I'm a little bit overwhelmed as to exactly what we should be doing in order to create a positive, natural link portfolio. I understand the emphasis is on ‘natural’ linking but we’ve been online for 8 years and I think it’s fairly safe to say that the number of links we have now is probably representative of about our ‘lot’ when it comes to 100% natural links. It would be nice to give our portfolio a nice gentle push in the right direction.
I’ve checked through SEOmoz and the most up to date link building article they have appears to be http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links - This guide however does seem to suggest some things that are potentially frowned upon now (for example, highly optimised anchor text I understand is now a no-no).
Obviously, in days gone by I could look at Open Site Explorer to try to emulate my competitors but, to be honest, most of them have what I would describe as a fairly poor link profile and if I'm going to invest real time in to this I want to make sure I'm heading off in the right direction.
Does anybody on here know of a really high quality post penguin link building guide, either on SEOmoz or elsewhere that I can use as some bedtime reading? Our website is eCommerce in nature so an article tailored towards online selling would be ideal.
Thanks for reading!
Chris
-
That's great, many thanks for your help Donnie. Have a good day
-
If you go thru the SEOmoz blog you will find that as long as your are giving value to users on the web you are doing the right thing.
However...
Build it it and they will come does not work. in order to win results you will need your content to reach relevant/interested/entertained people on the web. This is done via social networks. If you find some authoritative people in your niche ask them if they want to add a quote to your article, or maybe mention them and let them know that you are mentioning them. Get them involved and then after you publish your article they are more likely to share it.
Here is a good read on how to reach people: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/binbound-marketing-how-to-stop-your-outreach-getting-trashed
-
Hi Donnie,
Thanks for getting back to me.
I think my desire to have some kind of all-encompassing guide (such as the one that SEOmoz produced prior to Penguin) was driven by hopefully being able to potentially avoid spending time pursuing a potentially flawed strategy.
For instance, I was speaking to one SEO who said that article writing was dead but it's my impression is that article writing is still good as long as the article is relevant, unique, well written, is only posted on a relevant site and contains only one link in the by-line of the article. Would be nice to have something in black and write from a recognised source such as SEOmoz confirming exactly what I should, and should not, be doing
I think being penalised is just making me a touch jumpy!
Thanks for your help again, it’s appreciated.
-
The key is a natural linking portfolio. Now that you know how to determine a good site (authoritative) from a bad site (spammy or unnatural) you can start building quality links.
How to make it look natural?
Link to your URL and your brand rather than your exact keyword 70% of the time. 20% long tail linking and 10% Exact linking. This is a safe profile that will help your site look natural.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the process of link earning to avoid link building?
Hi All, I want process to earning links for new SEO 2014. Can anybody explain? Thanks, Akhilesh
Link Building | | dotlineseo0 -
Link building for big webite. 2500+ posts.
We run a big kids website: http://mocomi.com/ and have over 2500+ posts. Its about 2 years old now. No SEO was done on this site until the last two months when I was hired for SEO. I divided the SEO into 2 parts - on-page and off-page SEO. For the last 1.5 months I did the on-page fixing - correcting URLs, optimizing posts with best keywords, adding meta titles and descriptions to each post, 301 redirects etc. Now that on-page optimization is over, I have to do the off-page thing - build links. But with so much content I'm confused on how should I go forward. Among the 2500 posts I have listed down 700 posts that have real traffic potential so I'm planning to build links to these. But 700 is a huge number which includes our home page, 50+ category pages and rest are posts. So the question is how should I build links to these? Should I pick up each page and build links to it and move to next or as some people suggested, build most links to home page and category pages and that'll pass pagerank to my posts and help them rank. What link building plan would you suggest? Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | Mocomi0 -
Using Online Communities for link building..
Hello. All I have a question in regards to online communities. Is joining an online community( i.e. Industry related forums, commenting on industry related news sites, responding to blog post) a good way to do link building? I don't mean in the sense of spamming but actually being an active part of a online community and adding valuable to the conversation. I have tried posting blog post on a industry related online community: biggerpockets.com but this site does not show up as a link when I pull an open site explorer for my website. Any suggestions ?
Link Building | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
Link building for a product review site
I'm doing SEO for a product review website, and I'm curious what link building opportunities are best for this category. Assume only the following: The website is basically a blog Most of the articles are reviews on cosmetic products, though there are also articles regarding news, product roundups, tips&tricks and similar content The website is in a local, non-english language Disregarding low-value opportunities such as directories, what kind of websites should I aim for outreach purposes? So far, I'm thinking the following: Product manufacturers (very low success chance, as the review site is fairly new and in a localized language) E-commerce sites selling the products (average to low success chance, since a lot of them use CMSes that might not allow integration of a review) Other cosmetic blogs, particularly for guest blogging (average to low success chance, since the website is fairly new) Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks!
Link Building | | mihaiaperghis0 -
Lost inbound link from Huffington Post???
My website was featured on HuffPost's "7 Sites You Should Be Wasting Your Time On" in September of 2011 and somewhere along the way it no longer gets recognized as a linking domain? The site/page itself ('7 Sites' from Sept 2011) still exists through direct linking, and my site's link is still on there. I am looking at it right now (still knew the URL because I put it as a link in the 'About' section of my site). Any theories as to how/why this happened and if it is due to something on my end? Any way to get it back?
Link Building | | Pace0 -
How do you use anchor text post Penguin?
I have a client with several businesses within the same industry - Each of these businesses have their own websites. So, I have a few questions with this in mnd: **When using anchor text (exact keyword phrases) on his website pages, how many links are safe to use per page? And if I want to interlink between his businesses, is it better to use exact keyword phrases to link or just a straight URL link for those other businesses? **When guest blogging or using an external blog of our creation, is it best to use exact keyword phrases (and how many) or URL links? I want to make sure I am not over linking - help? thanks a lot
Link Building | | BenjaminDonley0 -
Link Building by Guest Posting.... But How many posts?
Hello I am a small Computer/Tech Blogger (part time) from India and following are my Domain stats: PR: 4 Alexa Rank: 65K *** Open Site Explorer Page Authority: 46/100** *** Open Site Explorer Domain Authority: 35/100** *** Open Site Explorer Linking Root Domain: 98** *** Open Site Explorer Total Links: 1196** *** mR: 4.83** *** mT: 5.81** Domain Age: 3 Years and 4 Months Blog Posts I made: around 580 I never spent ANY time in Link Building, only wrote content for my blog. I only attached my Blog URL in some BIG forums as a signature (never meant for link building, but later found that the signature section of some forums are DOFOLLOW) and very few sites linked/links to me/my articles. Reasons why I am asking question here: Majority of my blog posts ranks very well (top 10) on Google.co.in, but on Google.com, most of them are present from Page 2 - Page 10 - I want to rank my posts well on Google.com, Google.co.uk etc. SERP of Big sites remains static, but my position shuffles a lot. Sometimes any particular blog post of mine is on first page (on a particular Google Domain) and after some days/months, it shifts to 2nd or 3rd page! This happens a lot! As soon as Google Updates pagerank, many recent articles of mine will get atleast PageRank 2 or 3, but when pagerank in updated again, the pagerank of these very same articles drops! Very few articles of mine have static pagerank I am not a master in Computers/Tech and am not the first one on the internet to discover and write something UNIQUE/NEW, but I try to write detailed and good quality tutorials. If main keywords of my posts matches with the keywords of BIG domains, I never rank on first page, no matter I have written more detailed content compared to the content of these BIG sites! Google sends me traffic to majority of my blog posts by means of random keywords! I have decided to do Guest Posting on some blogs of similar niche and with Open Site Explorer Domain Authority ranging from 60 to 80. I will try my level best to write good content for them and they also allows Author Bio with a backlink to my Blog Homepage (in my case, the anchor text for this link will be my Blog Name) I want to ask following questions: Is one guest post with a backlink to my Homepage is enough? or I have to write more content for same domain? I have heard that, if you link to a website/blog which is linking to you, Google don't pass any juice to either of them because of reciprocal linking! - Is this true? The websites on which I am planning to do guest posts are very well established and trusted websites. Some of them have Open Site Explorer Domain Authority of 80+. Also, I never linked to them nor I am planning to do so! I request SEO Gurus here to please help me and I apologize in advance if I am wrong at any point. MY SEO concepts are not much clear and I am a newbie 🙂 Thanks and Regards
Link Building | | technotech0 -
What are some of your best tips, strategies or resources for link building?
I currently work for a contract manufacturing company so when I think about building links it seems as if it's going to be a daunting task. Mainly because any kind of content that you can come up with is rather dry. When I go about searching for links I usually run into a lot of directories that charge anywhere between $25-$50 for a listing. I've had a hard time convincing marketing that we should start a blog which may be a good way to build some links if we come up with quality posts but those posts may be few and far inbetween. Does anybody have any recommendations for building links for this type of company or subject matter? Also, and I'm sure we have all heard this. When I mentioned the fact that we should be building some quality links to the site marketing first asked why and then commented "Well that shouldn't take you too long". Why is it so difficult to get management to accept the fact that managing a website is an ongoing and constantly changing process that involves research and experimentation?
Link Building | | TRICORSystems0