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
-
Should I build internal links to my homepage?
Ive done a lot of internal linking before but its always been for other inner pages but now I need to do it for a websites homepage but this got me thinking if its even worth doing and should I be doing it at all? For the first question I was thinking that surely the homepage has more authority than any of my inner pages so how would internal links from inner pages help and for the second question Ive read a few posts like this Kissmetrics one here where it says you shouldnt do it. There are two types of links you should avoid using in your content: Homepage. Most sites have too many links to the homepage as it is. You would rather strengthen internal pages to boost the overall SEO of your site, rather than simply point more links at the homepage. https://blog.kissmetrics.com/commandments-of-internal-linking/ thoughts?
Link Building | | linklander0 -
Internal Linking - Post links vs Side Bar Links behaving differently
Hi, I have a question regarding the internal linking behavior. My website is www.hindimeaning.com which is approx 3 years old. I have approx 450 posts. Now i have a widget on right sidebar "Popular posts". A widget below my posts "Related Posts". And a simple html CSS menu above the posts (I removed menu around 6 month before so currently it will not show.) I crawled my site with moz crawler (same are the result from google crawler as well) and it shows menus links as internal links. While sidebar widget "Popular posts" and "Related Posts" are not showing as internal links. If we talk theoretically what i learn till now is "every link on a page behaves as internal link". Then why the widget links are not showing as internal links. Thanks, Mahesh Kumar
Link Building | | chaudhary04890 -
Link Building for relaunched & newly designed site
Hey all, Next week we are relaunching our brand spankin' new site. It's a major overhaul of our existing site from both a brand, design, and identity point of view. As part of the relaunch we will be reaching out to journalists in our niche with PR, and also doing a series of guest posts. But I'm wondering about other link building opportunities around newly redesigned websites. I have a list of about 2 dozen design + CSS galleries to submit to. Can you recommend other sources? I'm especially interested in sites that review web design, etc... Thanks. C.
Link Building | | cmoylan1 -
Internal Link Building
How important is internal link building? What is the right way of doing it, and what is the wrong way of doing it?
Link Building | | sansonj0 -
Stop Building Links During Reconsideration Request?
We had a message in webmaster tools to say our site had 'unnatural links' pointing towards it. I investigated and found a number of sites where we had uploaded articles, containing links, had been de-indexed. As such we have suffered a few drops in rankings. I have submitted a reconsideration request and I'd like to get on with recovering any lost ground. However, I am wondering whether it's best to cease any link building activity whilst the reconsideration request is processed. Please do let me know your thoughts and experiences on continuing to build links after submitting a reconsideration request.
Link Building | | RiceMedia0 -
How many nofollow links should we build to have a natural link profile
Hi guys, As with many link builders we have been building lots of dofollow links for our site, so many that mainly our incoming links are dofollow. Some pages have 99.5% dofollow external links which I know is not very natural. In your experience in terms of percentage how much should you have in terms of nofollow external links in your link profile. I noticed SEOMoz has about 12-13% nofollow external links, shall I go with this figure? Thanks guys. David
Link Building | | sssrpm0 -
Link building
What is the difference between External Followed Links and Total External Links, why are the numbers different? Should the numbers not be the same? I have a difference of 24 links can anyone explain why?
Link Building | | vendorshop0