The Natural Way to Build Backlinks

May 14^th 2013 Sally Ormond getting over the Penguin, how to link build, Link building naturally, recovering from Google's Penguin

How do you get backlinks?

Is your strategy to identify websites with high page rank and then set about trying to get them to link to you, regardless of their sector?

Oh dear, if that is what you’re doing you could be in trouble with the Penguin.

Wikipedia‘s definition of Google’s Penguin update is:

“… The update is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using black-hat SEO techniques, such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, participating in link schemes, deliberate creation of duplicate content and others.”

Basically, Penguin doesn’t like low quality links, over optimised content and keyword stuffing.

Natural linking

The humble link is one of the factors used by Google to determine a website’s relevance to a particular search term. But not only that, they are the invisible strings that hold the entire Internet together, linking sites and allowing us to navigate our way through tonnes of information.

That’s why it’s not only important to write for your reader, but also link for your reader.

So, before adding a link to your web page think carefully about why you’re doing it and want you want to achieve by using it.

The whole point behind links is to improve your reader’s experience, which is why it should fit the context of the copy it is in using anchor text that makes sense. In other words, the link you use must explain to the reader why they should follow it.

What to do if you’ve been bitten by the Penguin

Many website owners woke up after the Penguin struck to find their website rankings had tumbled.

Getting over something like that is difficult and tine consuming - there are no quick fixes, but it’s not hopeless.

After researching Penguin I stumbled across a post on seomoz.org where a guy explains what happened to one of his websites (post Penguin) and what he did to recover from it.

If you’ve been hit by the Penguin and are still struggling to get your rankings back, this could be just what you’ve been looking for.

Pop over there now and discover how Jimmy recovered from the Penguin.