13 Steps to Defensible Link Building After Penguin Update

After the Penguin update, link building strategies had to evolve to avoid penalties.

The Penguin update targeted manipulative link building tactics, such as buying links or participating in link schemes.

To build defensible links, focus on creating high-quality content that naturally attracts links.

This approach is more sustainable and less likely to attract penalties.

Building relationships with influencers in your niche can help you secure links from authoritative sites.

According to the article, building relationships with influencers can lead to 50% more links than buying them.

Link building strategies after Penguin require a focus on quality over quantity. A natural link profile includes a mixture of dofollow and nofollow links, and you should aim for a balance between the two.

To avoid penalties, build links on a wide range of sites and use different link building strategies. Combine guest posting with digital PR and forum link building to create a diverse link profile.

You should also focus on building links gradually, rather than trying to acquire a large number of links quickly. Sudden spikes in link growth can raise red flags with search engines.

Build Tier 1 and Tier 2 links on high-authority sites, and Tier 3 links on lower-authority sites. Make sure your links are contextually relevant and fit the context in which they're placed.

A good rule of thumb is to aim for an anchor text distribution (ATD%) between 0.05% and 0.1% for your most important keywords. This will help you avoid unnatural anchor text and ensure that your link profile looks natural to search engines.

Here are some key differences in link building strategies after Penguin:

In terms of anchor text diversity, it's essential to use a wide range of keywords as anchor text, rather than relying on a single keyword or phrase. This will help you avoid unnatural anchor text and ensure that your link profile looks natural to search engines.

By following these link building strategies after Penguin, you can create a strong and natural link profile that will help your website rank higher in search engine results.

Guest posting is a great way to get quality links going to your existing backlinks. You can do this by regularly reaching out to websites that align with your niche and offering to write a guest post.

The easiest way to get started is to use a guest post outreach service or do it yourself. Guest post outreach may be easier since you're not asking for a link to your own site, but rather a regular external link.

You can pass off a link to your own site as a regular external link, and you don't even need to do a separate campaign. If your outreach emails are open-ended, you can pick and choose which prospects will get a guest post to your main site and which ones will get a tiered link.

Cross-guest posting is another strategy that works by building links from a new guest post to an old guest post. This means adding links to external pages, like existing guest posts, to make the article more legitimate.

You can safely do this every once in a while, especially if it's on a very high authority website, but be aware that creating a closed loop with most of your backlinks also linking to your other backlinks can be a footprint.

To build a strong link building strategy after Penguin, you'll want to use the right tools to speed up and optimize the process. Ahrefs or Semrush can help you identify the right keywords and additional link building opportunities.

To facilitate and automate email outreach, consider using blogger outreach tools like Respona or BuzzStream. These tools can make a big difference in your productivity and efficiency.

Specialized link building tools like Majestic and Linkody are also essential for link management, analysis, and monitoring. They can help you stay on top of your link building efforts and make data-driven decisions.

Here are some recommended tools to use for tiered link building:

To succeed in link building after Penguin, you need to focus on creating high-quality content that provides value to the end user. This means shifting your mindset from thinking like a link builder to thinking like a Google engineer or a customer.

Forget about outdated SEO metrics like PageRank or Domain Authority, and instead focus on metrics that matter, such as traffic potential, RSS subscribers, bounce rate, social shares, and comments. These are the signals that Google now uses to determine link quality.

To get started, take an Excel dump of all your links, using tools like Majestic to analyze their profile. For example, Match.com's online dating market profile shows significant changes in the last 6-12 months, with Google becoming better at reading human engagement and audience signals.

Here are some key content types to focus on:

Remember, focus on quality over quantity, and aim to create one outstanding content initiative that can naturally acquire high-quality, targeted links.

To gain traffic, you need to have content that people want to read. A good SEO consultancy will tell you that the best way to gain traffic is to have content that people want to link to without being prompted.

Google hates old-school link building, so if you're thinking about what would Google think first, you're still not really getting away from the problem. Instead, think about the important link metrics, such as traffic potential, RSS subscribers of target audience, bounce rate of your content, and average number of social shares or comments your blog generates per post.

To shift your mindset, take an Excel dump of all of your links and analyze them. For example, you can use Majestic to analyze the online dating market and see what the profile looks like for the number-one site in the sector, Match.com.

One of the most significant changes over the last 6-12 months is that Google has become much better at reading human engagement and audience signals behind content. This means you can spot common trends across the market and if something looks like it shouldn’t be there, it probably shouldn’t.

To add value with your content, consider creating an online buzz and building a natural link profile. Focus on high-quality content production and outreach to strengthen your brand’s reputation and audience – and with that, comes links.

Here are some examples of high-quality content that can help you add value:

By focusing on link quality over quantity, you can ensure that your content is valuable and relevant to your target audience. Remember, a big mistake that many website owners make is that they are stuck in the mentality that building as many links from as many sources as possible is still a good way to go. Sadly, this is not true, and link quality is now much more important than link quantity.

Having more discoverable pages on your website is crucial for search engine spiders to crawl and index your content efficiently. This is where tiered link building comes into play.

More backlinks from various sources lead to higher discoverability, faster indexing, and higher rankings. By creating a network of interconnected pages, you're essentially building a map for search engines to follow.

Here's how tiered link building works:

The more opportunities search engines have to land on your website and specific pages, the better. This increases the chances of your content being crawled, indexed, and ultimately, ranked higher in search engine results.

Boosting your online visibility is crucial in today's digital age, and tiered link building can be a game-changer. Social media shares can boost your rankings, and Google now evaluates social shares across major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

To get the most out of social media, focus on interacting with your followers and encouraging them to share your content. This can lead to a significant increase in traffic and higher rankings, which in turn can result in more revenue.

Tiered link building can also increase your domain authority, making it harder for competitors to outrank you. As your domain authority grows, you'll reach a tipping point where your website becomes an authority in its niche, and growth accelerates.

While many website owners focus on building as many links as possible, it's now more important to focus on link quality over quantity. High-quality backlinks from authoritative websites can make a much bigger impact than a large number of low-quality links.