The Google Penguin algorithm updates have transformed the way in which many SEO providers think about the approach that they take to link building. It’s also clear, having read a number of leading forums on the subject, that there’s an enormous amount of confusion around.
These levels of confusion aren’t just associated with small business owners. It’s fair to say that many SEO analysts and consultants are struggling to come to terms with Google’s changing emphasis. What is clear, however, is that the focus simply must be on creating links from quality sources.
Create great content on your site
Having made mention of creating links, I’m almost immediately going to go off on something of a tangent and stress the importance of attracting links. That’s something that can’t possibly be achieved, unless you take good care of the content that appears on your site. It’s no longer enough for you to outsource content creation overseas, in the hope of generating a particular quantity of pages. Those days have long since disappeared.
Instead, you need to think about how every piece of content reads. Will your latest article be interesting to site visitors and prospective customers? If not, why have you decided to play it there in the first place? If you are in that habit of writing content that is intended to appeal to search engines, rather than human beings, then I’d suggest that it’s time to change your approach.
Having great content in place ensures that you have dealt with this fundamental building block. The very best link builders struggle to attract links to sites that fail to offer something that’s unique for visitors. With this in mind, it may be time to review the written content on your own site. Seek to make improvements and look to write articles that are truly engaging.
Attracting effective links
But enough, for now, about the importance of what you place on your own site. How can you go about attracting some great links? In order to achieve this, you clearly need to reach out to other website owners and members of the wider online community. There are many ways of doing this but guest blogging represents an effective means of producing results.
The great advantage of guest blogging is that it allows you to gain relevant links on authoritative websites. When examining services offered by the likes of Endurance SEO, I also note that reputable guest blogging experts seek to really engage. There’s an acknowledgement that guest blogging is about so much more than simply looking to gain a few links: the focus should be on building an audience.
Bringing about a change of approach
This is where it’s also important to change your mindset, switching from that focus on the quantity of links that you can gain to a consideration of the value of individual links. It’s also been true that a single great link is better than thousands of low quality links. Unfortunately, many link builders have struggled to identify what quality really means.
There’s no longer any scope for such confusion to be allowed. Looking at the way that updates have occurred during the course of 2013, it would be reasonable to expect that updates in 2014 will also seek to place an emphasis on the value of links that are being accrued. For those who are busy concentrating on numbers, rather than measures of quality, this will undoubtedly be bad news.