Google only likes playing with organic-looking links, so having natural links will definitely help improve your site’s ranking. Once you start building links naturally, you won’t have to worry too much about that mean old Panda or Penguin targeting and penalizing your website.
The goal for you is to replicate (as best you can) what happens naturally when it comes to link building strategies. In order to maintain this lovely ‘organic’ feel, there are rules of thumb to follow. Let’s take a walk through Google’s Panda & Penguin world…
The Land Of Anchor Text, Destination And Source Variation
The first stop on our world tour of natural link building is that your links should never use the same exact anchor text over and over again. As tempting as it is and no matter how much potential you see in certain keywords, it’s essential to vary up your anchor text terms and density.
For example, imagine five different people link back to a hardware store’s website. Each would post from their respective blogs or websites and would probably use different words or anchor text when linking to your URL. This variation is expected since each person thinks differently and will inherently use different terms and phrases to link back to the hardware store.
It would be odd if each of those people linked back to the hardware store with exactly the same anchor text, the same sources, or the same destinations, because that’s just not likely to happen in “real life”. Of your five fans, let’s say Mrs. Higgins mentions your selection of gardening materials and links to your gardening supplies page; while Mr. Brewer recommends one of your drills and links the product page for it. The old Mr. Davis complains about your lack of plywood stocks and links to prove his argument, but lovely Ms. Brighton talks up your wide assortment of acrylic paint colours for her re-decorating., You see in reality, not everyone will link to your homepage.
So, what else can you do to replicate nature?
The Territory of Follow / No-Follow Variation
Although not as important, try to change-up you follow and no-follow links. Why? For the simple reason that (again) diversity is what happens in nature. The mixture comes from fact that some websites allow do-follow links while other don’t (in order to keep the link juice to themselves).
Now, there’s one last place to visit on our excursion through Panda & Penguin world, and that’s the how appropriate the links actually are to your site…
The Kingdom Of Link Relevancy
Wouldn’t it be weird to find a link to a skateboard store on a 50-year-old crochet-loving homemaker’s blog? Yup, I thought so, too! Or say, a link to a car dealer on a cute baby animals website? As per our example above, linking back to a website in the same (or similar) industry as yours, or one that caters to interests appearing on your site is what normally happens in the real world. Google doesn’t appreciate links from clearly unrelated sources, although sometimes (as strange as it may seem), it might actually happen.
So, that concludes our tour of natural link building in Google’s Panda & Penguin world! I hope you found these link building tips helpful for your journey to build natural links to your website. If you want to make sure your site has a healthy and organic-looking link profile, feel free to call us. Let one of our SEO strategists explain how we can help you today.