Been long I’ve written a post and when things have already settling down with Penguin 1.1, I’m trying to sum up few thoughts I have tested and experienced in the past 2 months. You might have read some of these myths and findings at many places but people tend to forget the most basic but important things and chase the specific reasons.

 Like other SEO and online marketers I have been receiving many questions from clients and non-clients about future of SEO, new link building strategies that may work and how to recover from Penguin.

 Myth no. 1 – Remove Backlinks and clean up your link profile

Removing bad backlinks sound sensible but removing all links made over months and years sounds crazy (rather unrealistic). You’re not cleaning up your link profile but messing it up more with a huge pile of DEAD LINKS. Dori Friend has written a great post on this issue (in fact the whole issue).

What should be done

How do you know which link is the bad one? I personally found using OSE and ahrefs tool good enough to take an idea from the domain authority and page authority where the link is coming from and if your website isn’t hit because of over anchor text optimization. You can check if the content of the page or site relates to your industry or not (fairly or closely). If it doesn’t meet the above standards, you may go ahead to link removal, else try only changing the anchor.

Second, age of a link is equally important. If you have a link coming from a page that’s placed long ago, it could have contributed to your rankings. Think twice before you remove an old link.

If you really had bad links, the removing them would not give your ranks back. Because you were ranking (somehow) because of those links, and now you have no to low link profile.

It’s simple; only removal doesn’t help. Replacement with a relevant and quality link profile will start moving your website higher in ranks where it deserves to be.

Moreover, it’s recommended to update the anchors to brand anchors, some generic natural text or your website URL or related long tail phrases instead of removing the links altogether (if they’re relevant to your niche, wear quality and a natural connection). This will save you from anchor text over optimization as well as keep away from dead links.

 Myth no. 2 – Blog networks killed my website and rankings

Wrong! Blog networks didn’t kill, BAD blog networks did. There are many blog networks that are still passing link juice as well as influencing rankings positively. These networks are of decent and acceptable quality, not made up of repurposed domains (or if they do, they’ve achieved enough trust and authority over time), and most importantly, not accessible to everyone for spamming at their own comfort for pennies.

What should be done

Blogs are still doing great. Be careful choosing your blogging and guest posting provider. Hire a professional SEO Company open that uses only trusted and unique content rich sites for blogposts. Keep the link building slow and ongoing keeping an appropriate anchor text variation.

Webmasters and site owners are already cautious not to fall prey to cheap crazy offers, however, stay back if you still get something lucrative. Your competitors have got a report form from Google that can get you in trouble if you’ve been safe in all updates so far.

 Myth no. 3 – Only high authority Guest blogging is working

Though it is already debatable and many website owners who did best of the guest blogging are hit, too.

 What should be done

The issue is actually not with guest blogging, it is about using a single method for building links that can get you into trouble. Use diverse methods to acquire backlinks with good editorial grant. Any backlinks that come with auto or instant approval may invite a quick penalty to your website. Profile links and blog comments have been a part of latest web spam. Make an attempt to make your own website a great link prospect so people love to share and link to, naturally.

Myth no. 4 - Unique content can save me

Unique content can NOT but conceptually unique and exclusive content WILL. Why would users or Google (or any search engine) favour a website content that can be found elsewhere or has been old news already?

What should be done

Write content that belongs to your website only and found nowhere. Write exclusive topics that have a unique concept. This is definitely a challenge for very generic niches like local plumbers, electricians, real estate etc. But there are other ways in those cases like local rankings, reviews that have their own merits of getting authority listings and links at local yellow pages.

Quick tip: Google reacts (favours) on social activity. If it finds the average user staying on your website pages for around 2 minutes and reacting naturally to related terms, LSI keywords you used, your page has potential and higher chances to compete with other webpages. The comments, response time, duration of visit and resource of traffic counts to decide your rankings and stability.

Myth no. 5 – Get lots of likes, followers and +es for a balance

Ouch! That would hurt many but getting tons of likes and followers won’t help really. What help is real user engagement and social activity, how many people are talking about you and how many mentions your brand gets. It’s way too easier to get likes and views overnight but it’s far tougher to get people talking about you.

 What should be done

Make your website pleasing and valuable to your end users so they’re naturally prompted to share and talk about you. Share/post fresh ideas to keep your loyal visitors coming for more. Respond comments and be interactive on social channels. Clear the questions and doubts people have about your products or services that are similar to yours. It gives you a chance to beat your competitors with the power of social media. Look legible and create a complete and professional social profile. Make sure your website social share buttons are working properly.

 Ultimate suggestion on site SEO and link building

If you website has 50 pages and you are trying to get only your homepage or a few internal pages to the rankings, you already made your website vulnerable for not working on the rest of the pages. It’d leave your website under impression of manipulating ranks by building links only to your homepage or couple of inner pages only.

Are the other 30-40 pages fluff or of no use? At least search engine would assume so. User behavior, visit duration and frequency of a page count. Make sure each of your website page get at least a little traffic to show some life and value of the page (s). Interlink those old pages/post to the new ones if they relate in some manner. That’s something you see often when reading reputed blogs and sites when they refer some of their old posts. Send some link juice to these pages so they contribute to your overall website link profile and popularity.

Value each page of your website if you want search engines value you and rank higher.

 Why Panic?

Ups and downs are part of every business. One should move on to find the solutions that mutually beneficial to us as well as end user. There are websites that have come back already and some that are fixed and waiting to be in Google’s good list when there’s a next update.Been long I’ve written a post and when things have already settling down with Penguin 1.1, I’m trying to sum up few thoughts I have tested and experienced in the past 2 months. You might have read some of these myths and findings at many places but people tend to forget the most basic but important things and chase the specific reasons. 

 

Like other SEO and online marketers I have been receiving many questions from clients and non-clients about future of SEO, new link building strategies that may work and how to recover from Penguin.