The world of SEO is still reeling from Google’s latest Penguin update, and many are questioning Google’s new guidelines. Having a well-known worldwide brand wasn’t enough for the Salvation Army – nor was it enough for Dish!
We added on two more link building techniques Penguin 2.0 seems to penalize, for a total of 7 so far:
1. Exact match anchor text
2. Spammy links to subpages
3. Link networks / schemes
4. Links from de-indexed and banned websites, including old directories.
5. link velocity “spikes”
6. Paid Links
7. Sitewide links – especially blogroll and footer links
Google updates in June:
Even though Panda is now “rolled into the main Google algorithm”, there was some sort of refresh event last month. Google is being very tight-lipped about updates lately, and would not comment on at least one event this month that looked like an update. Some updates are being said to rollout over the “next 1-2 months”.
Blackhat SEO – where SEOs attempt to fool search engines – are surviving these updates on some level. At a recent conference, Matt Cutts(Google’s engineer in charge of combatting webspam) mentioned specific actions against sites ranking for “Payday loans” in Google UK. A few weeks later, paydayloansfrommrcutts.blog.co.uk started ranking in the top 3! We do not recommend black hat SEO for brands, companies or sites with longterm value – but these blackhats are definitely keeping google on their toes!
With Google’s upcoming (and continued) emphasis on authority links, we recommend the longterm strategies of
1. link building for business development, making connections that also build your google rankings
2. Content Marketing Link Building: Using compelling content to create brand awareness and links!