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Is Link Building Dead? 3 Tips For Link Builders Post-Penguin 2.0

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 ”We’ve detected that some of the links pointing to your site are using techniques outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines….”

For enterprise SEOs, receipt of this notification is usually followed by a deep, sinking feeling in your chest.



You check your keyword head-terms in the SERPs and realize that you can’t find your website anywhere.  A lump forms in your throat as the realization sets in — you’ve been penalized by Google.

The Link Building Challenge

Google’s crackdown on unnatural links over the past few years has raised the question within SEO circles: “Is link building dead?”

The reason folks might think it’s dead is because Google’s definition of what constitutes an “unnatural” or “artificial” link seems a bit…broad:

“Any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme.”
 
Not to mention the penalty for “suspicious links” is quite severe. Whereas sports celebrities are fined or suspended from a few games for breaking the rules, businesses whose websites violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines could find themselves losing a lot more.

Some good businesses have taken major financial losses as a result of the infamous Google Penalty. Estimates suggest that costs to big box retailers and enterprise e-commerce companies could easily hit $5 million per month in lost natural search revenue.

Smaller businesses facing such penalties could end up ruined, having to close their doors.  Yes, Google can put you out of business — whether you deserve it or not.

The fear Google has instilled into the hearts of SEOs over bad links is unparalleled.  Is it any wonder that so many are asking, “Is link building a dying art?”

Link Building Lives!
The answer to the above question is an emphatic, “No!” Link building is not dead; in fact, link building is alive and well. But you do need to be careful.

While all the recent reports about Penguin 2.0 might lead conservative SEOs to advise against active link building, the vast majority of page 1 rankings are on page 1 because of their link profile.


Links are Google’s “weak link” in the search industry. Google still remains heavily reliant on links as its primary form of ranking websites within its search results pages.

So, how can enterprise SEOs navigate link building without getting penalized for building links? How can you rank organically, using good links, while avoiding penalties? Read on for the high road to link building, according to three  link experts.

1. Perform A Link Audit
This is, hands-down, your first step. Conducting a link audit will require several phases and tools; however, if you follow Chuck’s advice here, you’ll be able to get through it.

In How To Conduct a Link Audit, Chuck Price does a great job walking readers through all the steps involved in a link audit. Whether you plan to do any link building or not, I highly recommend you do a link audit now — doing so may help you avoid potential issues down the road.

Chuck explains how to “Download Latest Links” from Google Webmaster Tools and how to get a complete backlink profile. This will allow you to determine which links need to be reviewed and considered for removal/disavowal, including:
  • Links from a domain not indexed in Google
  • Links from a website containing a malware or virus warning
  • Links on the same page as spammy, unrelated links
  • Links on a page with Google PageRank that is gray bar or zero
  • Links coming from link networks
  • Sitewide links – especially blogroll and footer links
  • Paid links
2. Keep It Relevant
Your next important step is to ensure relevancy. Ken Lyons wrote an excellent article on how to build relevant links to your website.

Ken’s article, “Link Building: Get Relevant or Die Trying,” is a fantastic read. He includes Authoritative Guides, Infographics, Industry Spotlights, Group Interviews, Industry Awards, Guest Posts, and, yes…”Buying Links” as a relevant link tactic. This is a must-read for all SEOs.
Ken describes link relevancy as Google’s way to determine trust, decipher the topic or context of a target document, deliver relevant information in the right context (i.e., relevant query results) and sort out link spam.

Speaking of relevancy, Ken also provides tips on a few more relevant link tactics such as:
  • In-Depth Reviews: noteworthy products or services
  • Free Tools: prime targets for link outreach
  • Curated Content: extensive articles and weekly round ups
  • Broken Link Building: unearthing high-authority, relevant link opportunities
  • Niche Microsites: dedicated to a specific topic or niche
3. Exploit PR Strategies
Lastly, I want to recommend something not often elaborated upon: using PR to build links. Cassie Gillette, Director Online Marketing at KoMarketing, has an excellent article written recently, “5 PR Strategies You Can Use To Build Links Now.”

Cassie reviews PR-focused tools that let you find content, post pitches and seek those looking for sources — all great ways to “make connections and discover potential link opportunities.”
She points out the fact that reporters are using social media to source stories, which has given search marketers, “a huge window of opportunity for link building.” She also offers tools for creating segmented reporter lists and gathering data.

Another great source of links can be event interviews. Cassie points out how there is always someone looking to interview attendees before, during and after the show — at some conferences, they’ll even set up interviews for you!

Lastly, she suggests monitoring editorial opportunities, which can offer several outstanding methods for building high quality inbound links to your website.

Thanks to these creative professionals above (and there are many more), link building is alive and well. Everyone knows that links are the bedrock for SEO results — so I encourage you to consider these tactics.

This isn’t the end-all answer to link building by any means; however, enterprise SEOs can’t go wrong by including the above steps in their linking strategy: 1) perform your link audit, 2) keep it relevant, and 3) exploit your PR strategies.

Location: Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Matt Cutts: Google Didn't Make Panda & Penguin to Force People to Buy Ads

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Are algorithmic updates created solely to force webmasters to buy ads and increase Google's bottom line?

It's no conspiracy that Google wants to make profits, but Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts has come out swinging against an often repeated "conspiracy theory," arguing that all Google updates are designed only to improve the user experience.

In a new video, Cutts also addressed the difference between a data refresh and an algorithm update, and where he believes SEO professionals are spending too much time and energy.

Algorithm Update vs. Data Refresh

Many webmasters are confusing what is an algorithm update and what is simply a data refresh.

"When you’re changing your algorithm, the signals that you’re using and how you weight those signals are fundamentally changing," he said. "When you are doing just a data refresh then the way that you run the computer program stays the same, but you might have different incoming data, you might refresh the data that the algorithm is using. That’s something that a lot of people just don’t seem to necessarily get."

Cutts has previously explained the difference between updates and data refreshes on his blog.

Google Conspiracy Theory: More Updates = More Revenue

Cutts also tackled the persistent rumor that the reason Google does updates like Panda and Penguin isn’t to reduce spam but is to actually increase revenue. But Matt points out that if you look at Google’s quarterly statements, Panda actually caused revenue to drop.

I have seen a lot of accusations after Panda and Penguin that Google is just trying to increase its revenue, and let me just confront that head on. Panda, if you go back and look at Google’s quarterly statements, they actually mention that Panda decreased our revenue. So a lot of people have this conspiracy theory that Google is making these changes to make more money. And not only do we not think that way in the search quality team, we’re more than happy to make changes which are better for the long term loyalty of our users, the user experience, and all that sort of stuff. And if that’s a short term revenue hit, then that might be okay, right, because people are going to be coming back to Google long term.

So a lot of people, it’s a regular conspiracy theory… Google did this ranking change because they want people to buy more ads and that is certainly not the case with Panda, it’s certainly not the case with Penguin, and so it’s kind of funny to see that as a meme within the industry, and it’s just something that I wanted to debunk that misconception. Panda and Penguin we just went ahead and made those changes and we aren’t going to worry if we lose money or make money or whatever, we just want to return the best user’s results we can.


Pay Attention to Marketing & Make Something Compelling

Next, he tackled what he thought was where SEOs are spending too much time. He thinks people are spending too much time on links and perhaps not enough time on social media. He also thinks people are missing out on the user experience they could be working on instead.
A lot of people think about “How do I build more links?” and they don’t think about the grander, global picture of “How do I make something compelling, and then how do I make sure that I market it well?” You know, you get too focused on search engines, and then you, for example, would entirely miss social media and social media marketing. And that’s a great way to get out in front of people.

So specifically I would think, just like Google does, about the user experience of your site. What makes it compelling? What makes it interesting? What makes it fun? Because if you look at the history of sites that have done relatively well or businesses that are doing well now, you can take anywhere from Instagram to Path, even Twitter, there’s a cool app called YardSale, and what those guys try to do is they make design a fundamental piece of why their site is advantageous to go to. It’s a great experience. People enjoy that.

So you could not just pay attention to design you could pay attention to speed or other parts of the user experience. But if you really get that sweet spot of something compelling where the design is really good or the user experience just flows, you’d be amazed how much growth and traffic and traction you can get as a result.

He also brings up that webmasters should continue to improve, because if you do not evolve, others will come along, think about how they could do it better, and then jump in and surprise you.

Location: Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Google Penguin 2013: How to Develop the Strategy of Link Building into Real Seo

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Google has just rolled out Penguin 2.0, a large algorithmic update promising to go “deeper” than the 2012 Penguin release, which put a hurting on websites with number of manipulative links in their profile.

This prospect creates fear for many small businesses who depend on search engine optimization (SEO) for their livelihoods. But there is also a sense of confusion as the line often shifts and the message from Google contradictory.


Sorting out Panda, Penguin, and Manual Actions

Google's Panda update is a different release than Penguin. Panda is geared toward duplicative, thin, or spun content on websites.

Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts recently stated that Google is actually pulling back on Panda because of too many false positives. This is good for news aggregators and other sites that reuse content appropriately and have been hit hard by the Panda filter.

Penguin is much harder to understand, focusing on backlink patterns, anchor text, and manipulative linking tactics that provide little value to end users. To make matters worse, Google likes to take large manual actions just prior to major algorithm updates. In 2012 we saw the removal of Build MyRank from the index just prior to Penguin.

Earlier this year we saw major manual action taken against advertorials. Last week Google announced the removal of thousands of link selling websites and we are hearing of a manual spam penalty against Sprint this week.

The proximity of these manual actions with major algorithmic updates is brilliant PR as it associates them together in our memories, discussions and debates - but they are very different things.

Is SEO Enough?
As small business owners move through the here we go again feelings to actually decide what to do in response to Penguin 2013, sorting out the truth is paramount. Google is clearly beating the familiar drum with the same core messages:
  1. Build a great website.
  2. Make awesome content with high end-user value.
  3. Visitors will magically appear.
But the reality is that visitors don’t magically come, at least on any reasonable scale, without organized promotional activities. Many excellent websites have died a slow death due to lack of promotion. And this is where the contradictions emerge in SEO, which has demonstrated extremely high ROI compared to other marketing channels.

Long Live Online Marketing
While discussed many times, webmasters still struggle with shifting their link building activities to real SEO strategy. They fail to see that SEO in 2013 is now integral to online marketing and no longer a standalone activity.

Whereas SEO used to be about tuning a website for optimal consumption by spiders, today’s SEO is about earning recognition, social spread, and backlinks through excellent content marketing. This means SEO is now ongoing, integrated, and strategic – whereas it used to be one-time, isolated, and technical.

Real SEO
Real SEO is the prescription for those who fear Penguin 2013. Here are practical activities that need to be done every month to achieve real SEO:
  • Continually Identify Audience Demand: Your SEO won't be successful if it isn't useful. To serve a need, webmasters must understand what the audience is seeking. Keyword research, as always, is critical. While doing keyword research don’t over-emphasize head terms or money keywords. Focusing on long-tail keywords renders more immediate results, increases the breadth of a website (remember Panda), and builds authority that will ultimately help the head term.
 
  • Content marketing: In my opinion, content marketing is the new link building. Earn recognition, social spread, and backlinks by giving away valuable information for free. Excellent content has high audience value and points readers to other resources via cocitation. Video is an excellent form of content marketing that is still under-utilized by small businesses. And newsjacking is an emerging form of content marketing that specifically targets hot news topics for viral spread.
 
  • Work on the brand: There is increasing evidence that branded mentions are an important legitimacy signal to Google. Promoting the brand has traditional marketing benefits and also now helps SEO. But be careful not to turn SEO content marketing into an endorsement, as this crosses the line. Find traditional marketing tactics, such as press releases, to drive branding while announcing news-worthy events.
 
  • Syndicate: The "build it and they will come" philosophy doesn't work on an Internet with more than 500 million active domain names. This is why even excellent content needs to be promoted. Email marketing, social media, community engagement in forums, and guest blog posting are efficient mechanisms for spreading the word about engaging content. Interviews, PPC ads, and local event sponsorship will also get your name and content noticed. Any activity that broadcasts your message, your brand, and builds real community discussion will ultimately support SEO, and should be considered part of the SEO process.
 
Conclusions
The arrival of Penguin 2013 has many small business owners scared and confused. But SEO remains one of the best online marketing channels.

Real SEO is the path forward for those who wish to make a long-term investment in online marketing. Forward-looking webmasters can prepare their sites for Penguin 2014, 2015, and beyond with well-researched, end-user focused content marketing that provides strong audience value.

Using modern syndication tactics, they can broadcast their message, gain audience mind-share and earn recognition. By spreading valuable content, small business can build their brands and earn bulletproof backlinks.

Location: Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India
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