Well now that we know that the Google Panda update is no joke in the way it has affected high page rank websites and big brands, we need to be more cautious about how it can affect us. The question we need to ask ourselves now is how this new Panda algorithm will affect our linkbuilding.
Links will never be the same
Google’s Panda algorithm has uncovered shady linkbuilding methods such as JCPenney, Overstock.com, Forbes and more. It has also penalized low quality sites as well as spammy/scraper sites in their recent update. What does this mean for SEO specialists and linkbuilders?
Don’t stick to what Google deems as ‘low quality’ sites. Meaning now that they have penalized wisegeek, ezinearticles, mahalo, etcetera – don’t work yourself up anymore in trying to acquire links from those websites. For example, if you were someone who liked to go with article submission through ezinearticles for links back to your site, you have to think twice now that it has significantly dropped in ranking due to its reputation with Google as a low quality site.
Watch out for sites that are peppered with Google adsense, text links, or other advertising gimmicks.They are not really something that neither Google nor people would call ‘quality sites’. Get away from them.
Sites with little or no moderation are to be avoided as well. Especially if you can see your comment link approved immediately after you post it. Those sites are most probably the home of lots of outbound links and spam. You don’t want your link to be found anywhere near there.
How should you do your linkbuilding with the Panda update?
Well, there’s only one real authentic way to build links – create good, quality content that people love and will link to. Write your heart out. Be interested in people and in giving people the things they are interested in. Create videos that will get viral and create buzz. Linkbaiting is a great way to go and chances are, Google ain’t gonna penalize your unique content because of its value and authenticity.
Yes it’s a much slower route to take – but it’s what’s here to stay.
About Sean
Hi Sean, great post. After the Panda update many people are worried about building quality backlinks. I wanted to tell people that they also have the option of guest blogging if they want quality backlinks. For those who don’t know what guest blogging is, it is similar to article marketing but it involves submitting original content that is only published on one website, so there is no penalty from Google : )
Hey Karla,
Thanks! Yeah after the Panda update, people want to be wiser. The only way to go is being authentic/ practicing white hat methods. Perhaps you want to publish a guest post here at SEO Hacker? You can read the guidelines at the Guest Post page here.
Can any one suggest on HUBPAGES? how has google effect hubpages & is it worth to move from ezinearticle to hubpages?
Kindly suggest
Submitting the same url repeatedly to the similar site might affect the rankings of the websites and the key words due to the advance version of Google Panda implementation. This might cause huge backward in the rankings. This should be further considered during SEO work. Thank you for sharing. This post updated me on the new cautions of SEO.
My pleasure Jane. And yes, you are correct in saying so. Spamming seems more and more unlikely now as Google improves its algorithm.
You’re right on a couple of fronts Sean. #1 QUALITY content will rival those who use the massive link building approach, all day long. #2 EZA and the other so called “content farm” sites have less appeal than before. In my view, having a high quality Tier 1 Link Wheel using sites like: YouTube, Slideshare, Digg, LI etc. is a much better approach. Besides, there’s so much content out there, that people have gotten wise to such antics. So unless your site and your content offers value, your bounce rate will explode and I suspect Panda is tracking that metric as well. I find that the results Market Samurai gives me is indicative of the type of content my market wants and so I model and mirror accordingly.
Hey Neil,
Really? Is Market Samurai really that good? I tried it once. It eats up a lot of my RAM that’s why I didn’t like it that much. I heard Traffic Travis does the work Market Samurai does too. What is your take on that?
Is PR still a important factor for rank in Panda time?
Hey Ian,
I think PR would still do some good. Although it depends on the quality of the PR and the site that published the PR if it’s gonna do much good.
Well Panda sure will upset a few people. I personally used article submission sites, press releases and blog commenting. It seems Panda from your description of it will really make me have to have a serious rethink as to my backlink strategy
Are there any decent sites left out there Sean
Of course there are Chris, but what exactly do you mean by ‘decent’ ?
There are also updates on Panda happening almost every month so you have to be updated. Rankings of big websites are still going up and down even now.
So, does link building methods before Google panda update should leave? (such articles and link submission) Then what is the best methods to get deal with these update?
Does Google will give more value for content then backlinks? Since I think backlinks from another sites can be considered as popularity.
Thank you.
Linkbuilding methods that are ineffective after Google panda shouldn’t be practiced anymore. It takes more time and gives out less results. Linkbuilding from other authority websites through guest posting or what have you is still, of course, one of the best ways to go.
Great information for webmasters who has been impacted by the Google Panda update, thanks.
Nothing better than high quality content and useful info in it. I’ve develop blog without any backlink, just create unique content that never posted before in other site. It’s great, my blog has more unique visitor from search engine also rank better in SERP. But I has suggest for useful link building method. Site like technorati will help you improve your post content, find similar site like them. Google+ also will help so much if you can reach more + from different user. ;)
Frankly very difficult to take what steps should be taken to build quality links.
Someone suggested using blogspot, googlesite and google knol because the service is owned by google and may not be all the links in it will be judged as a bad link. How do you think Sean? Please prompts
Thank you ..
Using Google websites and tools definitely won’t hurt :) as well as any other tool – as long as you don’t abuse and cross into the black-hat threshold.
People that have been practicing white hat content marketing techniques shouldn’t fear the Panda updates, they should embrace them. The updates benefit those that have been focusing on quality over quantity. For those that have been focusing on quantity, it’s a wake up call about what’s important for your target audience. After all, the search engines will never buy a product from you- so you shouldn’t cater primarily to them anyway.
This is great information, we must known about the effect linkbuilding of the website that we build. Thanks for this article.
The latest search ranking algorithm update by Google has made SEO safe. Link Building has always been an important factor in SEO. But somewhere i heard that Google after launching this new update isn’t putting that weight on Link Building. Instead it’s now focusing on certain aspects such as bounce rates, click through rates and social media activities such as facebook likes, twitting and retwitting and social sharing. is this true ??
If back link building from article directories and web 2.0 sites such as Squidoo and Hubpages from now is obsolete, where do we now submit quality content to acquire one-way quality backlink ? Please Advice !!!
Linkbuilding will always be a factor in SEO. Don’t believe the assumptions that it will die anytime soon. Social is rising – it hasn’t taken over, and it will not take over due to the simple fact that it’s easier to manipulate than high quality links. How do you measure high quality ‘Likes’, or Retweets, or +1′s ? Social is still a long way off in becoming the biggest offsite ranking factor.
Hi Deep,
Linkbaiting will be the way to go to acquire one-way quality backlink. If you want to ‘Future-proof’ your SEO and linkbuilding, refer to this article: http://seo-hacker.com/future-proof-linkbuilding/
Thanks for your reply and your advice. You mentioned in your post that link building through article or link directory submission or any other shady link building practices is not gonna work. Can you suggest me better way of building high-quality one way back links??
Guest posting is still the best. Or you can go with broken linkbuilding.
shocking news After Google Panda 3.4 update in 24 march 2012 what will do the Link builder. Sources reported is that some SEO Company is going to remove the Linkbuilding department and increase the Off Page activity and focus more and more on article and Press release and social activities…
I use SubmitEdge .com for link building. All the websites have with them suddenly dropped off of the Google results page. I understood that they use white hat techniques. Not sure if anyone else has any experience with them or if the Algorithm change had anything to do with it? Any advise will be greatly appreciated.
Marnus – looks like it could be the update that caused your rankings to decrease. SubmitEdge.com has some many link building offerings that its hard to know which they used for your site.
“Well, there’s only one real authentic way to build links – create good, quality content that people love and will link to.”
This position is such BS I can barely stand reading it anymore. The only people that write that statement are people that are already established online and do little, if any, work for clients. How the hell does a small local company…say a property management company, for instance, produce interesting content that people continue to link – over and over again?
It’s easy for SEO’s to say it, because SEO is always changing…there’s always something to write about. But with many local companies, that’s not the case. And even still…let’s say it’s a brand spankin’ new website – how are you supposed to get the rankings up to where people actually see the so called quality content in the first place?
I’d love to hear some feedback…
Thanks for the sounding board. Peace out.
Hi Trevor,
SEO Hacker is just 2 years in the SEO industry and I’m personally following this strategy. Links just really come in when I publish great content. In your case, if you’re selling a service or product and you want instantaneous ranking – you’ll need to hire linkbuilders for that. I got really good rankings approximately 1 year after I started SEO Hacker – that’s a lot of patience.
Sean, I understand that it’s possible and it’s highly sustainable in the ever changing world of SEO. But what about the industries that have a very limited subject matter? It’s nearly impossible to continue to come up with new quality content in many niches.
Targeting vertical topics is what we usually do when our client is in a thin niche. If your company is all about manufacturing the bottle cap of bottled waters (which is a thin niche), you can write about where you get fresh water or why saltwater just doesn’t cut it as of yet. Just my 2 cents.
Trevor – you could also consider varying up the types of media that you use for your site. Create info graphics, create interesting videos, create memes. That alone provides 3 extra channels to be able to create and distribute content that is link worthy. Hosting that content, and distributing it to video sharing sites, social sites like Pinterest, FB, Twitter, sending it to large blog owners, can all be great ways of getting links to your site, increasing the traffic to your site and improving your sites rankings within the search engines.
Hi Trev,
I understand your frustration mate.
The whole SEO thing is a bit of a joke really. I mean Google are supposedly giving us the best results to our search queries……. yet at the top of every search results page are a number of websites which are simply there because they are paying google for the clicks.
So apart from the websites that are on page 1 because they are in an adwords campaign you will then find the highest ranking results which google has determined ought to be there as a result of the Google algorithm.
The question therefore is “HOW DO WE GET OUR WEBSITES TO PAGE ONE” ????.
Being a bit of a “NOVICE” myself l am trying to learn by reading blogs and articles (such as SEO Hacker) The information on this site is very helpful and l believe it is also very accurate, but the problem l have is the information we get today may be all irrelevant tomorrow…… which leaves us where ??? Answer : In the poo again !!
Ok l know l am rambling on, but the point l am trying to make is that we are all following what ever GOOGLE tells us to do (so to speak) but eventually it will get to a point where GOOGLE spits us all out like a used tampon and only ranks sites that are paying google to be there.
Like most BIG BUSINESSES they treat us well for a while, but when they think they have full control they turn the screws and give it to us all up the backside.
What about article submission and blog directories ?
Article submission and blog directories have already been hit by Google Panda. I simply discourage it.
I would stay well clear of blog directories \ blog networks. BMR, ALN and other well known networks have all been taken down recently and anyone who used them received the Unnatural links message from Google in the Google Webmasters tools. The majority of these sites have subsequently received penalties and dropped their rankings significantly.
before i always go link building. now what to do link building or only content writing?
You do both as you always did. Good content begs to be linked too, so start with good \ great content.
Informative article about Google panda and seo after Panda but I think it is little old post because of one year old already. And what about Google penguin? Penguin targets to rid off spammers including who did over SEO and spam back links.
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hey there,
there are plenty of posts that Sean and his team have written about the Penguin update already, and im expecting more may be in the pipeline… Check out some of these:
http://seo-hacker.com/recover-optimization/
http://seo-hacker.com/detecting-penalties-rankpanel/
http://seo-hacker.com/over-optimization-penalty/
that should give you some good information.
Great content Sean. Its really gonna help me out in doing my site seo in the best way. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Content is always king and this is the most natural way to attract organic visitors to your site. That’s why I always do my best to create informative and fun posts – articles that readers will want to remember and get back to anytime.
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I did check out Febry’s -http://www.interiorfans.com/ on Alexa and the site seems to be doing extremely well. Febry says that he does not do any link building he just writes or gets articles and the site ends up doing very well.
When you look at his site you realize that there are many guest writers. These add a lot of original content. This is what people link to freely after finding these topics interesting.
One other thing is that (opinion) he chose a topic that women love a great deal (interior design), with unique content this is something that they will link to with an open heart.
May be food for thought.
No doubt that Google Panda was rushed to the website involved in duplicate and spam-my content.
It kind of funny, Google still sell advertising to many spammy and cheap backlink building services. Whats up with that?
“Meaning now that they have penalized wisegeek, ezinearticles, mahalo, etcetera” that’s not exactly correct, they haven’t been penalised at all they are just not valued as highly any more.
Good post all the same
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@ samuel J – this is correct. We’ve found that these links have either no effect or a slight positive one. We’ve also seen many competitors in our space reaping serious SERP rewards for backlink profiles built with pretty much all web 2.0 links. It appears google still likes to see links from Squidoo too which is somewhat surprising.
Very nice and detailed post. Yes, Google is trying to push PPC to reach their target revenue of 4.5 billion by 2013. But isn’t it bad on their part? They claim to show relevant results, but how can they do that at the cost of advertiser’s money!!