It’s safe to say that Google’s Penguin update was a turning point in the SEO world. Until April 20, 2012, links pointing to your website were not a big problem for webmasters. But now, if you have unnatural links pointing to your website, your rankings may be affected. Businesses most affected by the update were those that sold or bought links as well as sites which built spammy link profiles using the exact same anchor texts each and every time.

Last year’s Penguin 3.0 update confirmed Google’s seriousness about low-quality backlinks. The chances of your site being de-ranked for having paid or automatically-created banklinks were high. If you wanted to avoid losing your digital footprint, you had to remove them via the Disavow Tool provided by Google or contacting the webmaster of the site.

In a video, Google’s former head of search spam, Matt Cutts, stated that over time backlinks will become irrelevant. He also encouraged webmasters to stop guest blogging because the practice was dead. When webmasters and search engine marketing specialists started bombarding him with questions, he reversed his decision and stated that webmasters should refrain from investing in spammy links because it will get them blacklisted. According to him, Google was now focusing more on determining if a web page meets expectations of an expert user.

Unfortunately, there is a great deal of uncertainty when it comes to SEO. Google has not really given us definitive criteria of what they are looking for in good websites. This confusion has led many people to make assumptions, which may or may not be true. One such misconception that is floating around on the World Wide Web is Link-Building is dead.

I am here to tell you that Link Building is not dead. Anyone who is in the business of building links should proceed with caution because any poor or low-quality links can send red alert signs to Google.

Below, I explore 5 link building mistakes you should always avoid and 4 steps to properly build links:

Mistakes:

• Links to Bad Sites

Never link to sites that have garnered a bad reputation for spam, duplicate content and any other actions that are contrary to the guidelines specified in the Search Console (former Google Webmaster Tools). Such sites include link farms and article directories.

• Buy/Sell Links

The whole purpose of backlinking is to use content as bait for backlink; meaning you earn the link with your blood, sweat and tears. Search engines only love natural links and if they find any links that are contrived; they will penalize you and your website.

• Backlinks from only High PR domains

Keeping a mix of high and low page rank domains yield better results. If you build to many high PR links, it may not look authentic in the eyes of Google. There is no straight answer from Google, but to be on the safe side it is recommended to only target websites with a page rank of at least 2.

• Tons of links built in a short spam

The goal of link building is to earn the trust of websites and naturally earn a link in exchange for good content. Creating too many links in a short span of time could cause Google to remove your site from indexing. Slow and steady strategies win the race.

• Links that turn bad

You might have done all the background check of the sites. But at times, the decent site you had linked with would suddenly turn ugly, placing indecent and objectionable contents. So, do a thorough check, if the outbound links are unbroken and also where they lead to. Periodically do a link detox and monitor the bounce rate to ensure your visitors are engaged.

4 Step Process to Proper Link Building

• Research

What kind of websites do you want to discover?

To make sure they’re high quality, look for sites that are:

• Highly authoritative: Websites that are experts and are worthy of building relationships with.
• Trustworthy: Would you want to be seen on a website that was full of link and other spam? There should be a ratio of 1 link per 100 words.
• Popular with competitors: Who’s linking to your competitors? You most definitely want them to link to you too.

Tools that can help with your research

• Backlink Watch
• Backlink Explorer
• Google Analytics referral data
• Open Site Explorer

• Outreach

Use your research to grow a list of high quality websites with whom you would like to build long-term relationships with.

• Connect with website owners via social media.
• Use a CRM Software tool to not only keep track of all of your messaging and outreach efforts, but to organize all of the potential relationship’s contact information, and any other notes
• Remember the end game: a link on a great website and a relationship with the site owner.

• Organize

What do you need to know about the potential link and relationship you are pursuing?

• Date of first outreach
• Date of follow up: You never want to be too forward or needy.
• Type of link requested or acquired: Are you writing a guest post? Did you comment on a blog? Did the link happen organically?
• Website domain: Yeah, you might need that one.
• Website owner’s contact info: Can’t build a relationship if you can’t get in touch with them.
• Conversation notes: If you’re talking to a ton of people, keeping detailed notes on the conversations you’re having will save you from a world of embarrassment later. Trust me.

• Follow up

Once you’ve done your research, performed your outreach, organized all the data, hopefully you will have heard back from some site owners and will be well on your way to building great relationships with them.

How much should we rely on the accuracy of Google’s location data? This is a question that Steve Cameron of Advent Communications wants to know and is seeking your help to find out. Cameron has set up a quick survey in which participants can share their experience with Google geotargeting.

So far the results have been mixed. While some people claimed that Google was spot on, others voiced that the targeting was within a 25 mile radius of their actual location. Unfortunately, for others the identified location was thousands of miles from the actual one. More data is needed for proper analysis and Cameron’s test is still in the preliminary stages.

How to Partake in the Survey?

Go to Are You Hiding from Google? and follow the instructions specified on the website. There is an instructional video, as well. In order to complete the test you would also need access to your Google Analytics account, preferably for a low-traffic website to make it simpler to identify your own visit to the website.

If you’re hoping to make a change to how Google operates and let your voice be heard, we recommend you take this test.  We will update you once the survey results have been finalized and collected.

How is Geotargeting Done?

When a search engine tried to determine a user’s geographic location, it usually does it via the user’s IP address. In theory, an IP address should be associated with a physical location or address.

The accepted wisdom is that while the IP geolocation is not perfect, it is overtly accurate. Scholarly estimates reach anywhere between 60% and 95% in accuracy rates. The problem is that the actual accuracy of IP geotargeting is nowhere near the estimates being conjured.

Why is the data not accurate? To illustrate our point we use eCommerce sites that use geotargeting to serve different customers in multiple countries as an example. The problem is that Google crawlers crawl websites from an IP address based in California. As a result, some website that employ geotargeting serve only Googlebot content intended for customers in the United States. Content intended for customers in other countries do not get crawled and have no chance of being included in Google’s search results.

2015 Update

In January, 2015, Google announced its aim to overcome these challenges and enable more multinational sites to rank Google’s search results. The new configurations include the following.

• Geo-distributed crawling, where Googlebot would start to use IP addresses that appear to be coming from outside the U.S., in addition to the current IP addresses that appear to be from the U.S. that Googlebot currently uses.
• Language-dependent crawling, where Googlebot would start to crawl with an “Accept-Language” HTTP header in the request.

If Google’s algorithm detects that your site requires one of these new crawler configurations to more thoroughly index it, the new configurations will be deployed automatically. If Google’s efforts are not helping you, it is time to voice it

About iRISEmedia

iRISEmedia.com is a Toronto digital media agency providing Social Media Marketing, SEO, Google Local Optimization, PPC and Email Marketing services in Toronto, Ontario, the GTA and throughout Canada as well as globally.