Are gallery sites ok post Penguin?

[_JP_]

We're getting ready to re-launch a redesigned site and I was hoping to use the opportunity to get some quality links. Are some of the higher-quality web design gallery sites still ok to submit to? Did Penguin have any effect on these?

Just looking for opportunities for a little boost from our re-launch.

[_JP_]

Would the same hold true for comments on blogs?  If I'm leaving comments on relevant blogs, would it be ok to leave a link to my website in there, just as long as I'm not using exact-match keywords everywhere?

[MarieHaynes]

What Google is trying to do with Penguin is to take away (or penalize) any benefit that a website would get from self building links with anchor text.

In the past, if I wanted to rank for "green widgets" I could build a bunch of links containing the anchor text "green widgets", such as "Check out this website about green widgets!"  This type of thing would really work well.  But, Google has now caught on that this is a blatant attempt to manipulate the search results.  They don't want you to rank #1 for green widgets just because you've got good SEO skills.  Rather, they want the site that best represents green widgets to rank #1 for that term.

Sites that are getting affected by Penguin are generally ones that have overdone it with their anchor text.  Now, no one knows exactly how much is too much (although you'll read lots of theories.)  But what we do know is that a natural backlink profile has the majority of their links being their url or their brand name.

The problem is that the brand name is sometimes a tricky thing.  If your website is www.greenwidgets.com you could say that your brand name is "green widgets", but to Google, building a bunch of links using the anchor text of "green widgets" may still be anchor text manipulation.  For an example, see this post on how WPMU got hit by Penguin for having a bunch of footer links pointing back to them using the anchor text "Wordpress mu".

So, if you're building links (as opposed to earning them totally naturally), be careful not to go overboard on a keyword.  Ideally, build links using your url as an anchor.  The odd one with a keyword is ok, but until we have more data on what exactly is acceptable I would be very careful in using keywords as your anchor.

[ChristopherGlaeser]

Can you please explain what it means to "be careful about your anchor text."  Regarding anchor text, what is the difference between good and bad anchor text?

Best,
Christopher

[MarieHaynes]

Be careful about your anchor text and I really think you should be ok.  If you submitted to a pile of sites using keyword rich anchor text then you are likely to be penalized.  But if the majority of your links use your url or brand you should be ok.

Be careful with your brand though if it is something that could be interpreted as a keyword.  I've seen a couple of sites get hit by Penguin when they were targeting their brand as their brand was a competitive keyword.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Check out the Alexa ranks for the top sites you are considering submitting to and see what kind of an effect Penguin had on their rankings & traffic.

In general, if people are using the website (not just bots/spammers), then it is fine to submit to. Bonus points if it is relevant to your website.

Note: This is not meant to be a complete link building strategy. If the only links you are building come from "web design review" sites, you're gonna have a bad time ranking.