Link Building Strategies - How to SEO after Google Panda Updates

The big news this year so far in the world of SEO has been the Google ‘Panda’ or ‘Farmer’ update which affected the US earlier this year and all English speaking countries early this week. With the intent of increasing the quality of natural search results pages by reducing the amount of low quality content displayed, Google have changed their algorithm to attach less importance to so-called ‘content farms’. With article and content-driven sites potentially being penalised, many businesses must now examine how these changes should impact on their own online marketing and link building strategies.

A variety of fascinating debates have formed as a result of these changes. Earlier this year, at California’s SMX West expo, Google’s Matt Cutts stated that low quality content on a single page could, potentially, decrease the ranking for the entire site. This puts the pressure on site owners to ensure that no single page contains low quality content because a single page could damage of the search rankings for the site as a whole. Clearly you do not want to be propagating low quality content. However, the question needs to be asked of what does Google mean by ‘low quality’ content?

The Panda update has a number of ways in which it targets sites of ‘low quality’ content and, whilst there are no exact known criteria that Google uses, some interesting indicators have been gleamed from Google’s statements:

• Shallow content (this is when there is not enough content for it to be useful to users)
• Poorly written content - it goes without saying that your content should be checked for grammar and spelling
• Duplicate content or content simply copied from other websites – why should Google show users the same content twice?
• Content that is not useful or relevant to users – to give an extreme example, if users are searching for information, then they want to find that information, not 500 words of waffle about how it is a really good question

This could potentially have a huge impact on how businesses conduct link building, especially if article marketing plays a big role in your link building activities.

Speaking at SMX West, Matt Cutts recommended businesses avoid article marketing where it is used as simply a way of building links by copying articles multiple times and posting them on hundreds of websites. So what is a good link building strategy now that the changes have come into effect for the entire English speaking world? Some important things you ought to know:

•  Links in press releases do not count towards Google Page Rank – this is not new, but is worth knowing. Press releases can, however, still be good for referral traffic so don’t discount them entirely

• However, if someone reads your press release and then links to your site, that does count (after all, this is surely a vote of confidence in your site)

• There is nothing inherently wrong with article sites – as long as they are not churning out content simply for the sake of it. Writing great content for good article sites can be an effective way to build links – but you need to think of these sites as places people go to read articles, not as places Google goes to find links. Remember the poor sap who will (hopefully) end up reading your content!

• The upshot of this is that well written, useful articles on good sites which provide useful content continue to be a useful way to build links

• However, simply copying identical content twenty times into different sites is not a good strategy! This has never really been a brilliant idea, and it was only a matter of time before Google started penalizing it. If you’re doing this, start concentrating on quality rather than quantity for your articles.

• Whilst there is no (known at least) algorithmic reason for this, it has been noticed that sites which have articles of various lengths (as opposed to a single standard length) are more likely to contain content that’s actually useful to readers. This is something worth keeping in mind as you write your articles – don’t worry if they don’t all clock in at 500 words or whatever your usual is, this is good, it means you’re treating each subject individually.

• Once again, the effect of this is that content written principally for search engines is going to be less effective than content written for human users. Don’t forget also that users are your customers, not Google, so if you’re going to be writing content associated with your brand, it may as well be good content that makes a good impression!

So, what is the general result of these changes and how should your link building change? Well, the good news is that white hat best practices for link building remain much the same, however, it is now more important than ever to make sure you are following these best practices.  The key rule to take away from this is that users are your target audience. Search engines are simply an effective way of getting users to engage with your brand. But users are, ultimately, the ones you want to impress. So let that requirement infiltrate your link building a little – don’t just build links like some dull automaton, but write high quality, interesting content that engages users (and contains a sly link for when you’ve got them hooked) and, as far as article marketing is concerned, your link building is sorted.