Introduction
Google’s aim is to give the search user the best
possible experience by providing them with the most relevant results for their
searched terms, hence all their algorithm updates are geared towards improving
user experience.
The best way to get a site ranking on Google is
to populate it with original, relevant content that adds value to the end user.
The game between Google and the SEO guys is
getting more interesting with the Latest Google updates released from April
last year, they are clamping down heavily on over optimization in terms of
on-page content as well as links to your website.
What they are looking for is content that adds so
much value to the end user that he shares your link with his friends and family
out of his own, although this is easier said than done, the message from Google
is that the days where you can sit the whole day and just build low quality
links from forums and business directories are over, it is not a question of
how many links you have pointing to your website, but rather how relevant the
website is which is giving you the link to your industry. Is the link answering
a question or adding value to the user that clicks the link?
Microsite Case Study
According to Microsite Masters (they are
a rank tracker with ranking stats for thousands of websites) link
over-optimization is one of the concepts that is thrown around the most in the
SEO community. To prove their point they analysed the websites that maintained
their rankings after the penguin update as well as the web sites that lost
their rankings quite significantly.
Below is a graphical representation of their findings:
It
is clear that the websites that had the majority of their anchor texts a direct
match to their money keywords were hit the hardest and websites with a more
equal spread of anchor texts weren’t really affected as it is more likely to be
natural links attained from site users.
According to them, there are
5 methods that will help you rank long term:
1) Create Microsites
Microsites
are smallish topic focused sites that provide useful content relative to your
niche and cites your main website as the source. Google wants the internet to
be filled with websites that provide the user with what they are looking for.
By creating high quality smaller sites you get to send authoritative positive
ranking signals towards your website.
2) High Quality Blog Networks
It
is no longer enough to have private networks with small amounts of content,
anchor text that is poorly placed within the context of the article, no (or
very little) accountability in the area of content quality, and other gaping
network-wide footprints and general low quality attributes.
A completely internalised
blog network that is highly relevant to your niche and provides original high
quality content is much more effective for providing your website with
sustainable rankings.
3) Diversify Anchor Text
When
building links you are faced with one of two options, spend time building links
with the anchor text of “a term I want to rank for” or “a term that appears
naturally but I’m not trying to rank for”. Although you are consciously aware
that you need a natural mix of both, when faced with that decision you will
tend to choose the first because it is no fun spending time and money building
links that will probably not help you rank.
Make
sure that 50% or more of your links contain anchor text that isn’t a keyword
that you are trying to rank for. According to their research the websites that
did not get affected by the Penguin update used the domain name and other more
generic anchor texts that did not contain keywords that they tried to rank for.
4) Play Google’s Game
Get
completely legitimate white hat links, the previous methods are ways to emulate
a natural linking profile. Meaning ways to make your site appear white hat,
despite possibly taking some shortcuts.
Write
legitimate guest posts on niche sites, find ways to get media coverage relevant
to your niche and last but certainly not least create something that goes viral
as it will not only bring lots of visitors to your site, but a ton of
legitimate link power.
5) Run your SEO Sites like a real business
One
of the things that stood out from their research was that sites which portrayed
themselves as real businesses fared a lot better than sites which viewed
themselves as a way to obtain and leverage traffic from Google in order to
monetize.
A key point here is to look
at other sources of traffic apart from Google. Not only will this make you less
reliant on Google, but those other traffic sources will almost certainly
indirectly help your site rank better on Google.
Conclusion
The sites that got hurt the most by Google’s latest Penguin
update had links with the following in common:
- Paid links using exact match anchor text
- Comment Spam
- Guest posts on questionable sites
- Article marketing sites
- Links from dangerous sites
If we want to avoid getting penalized by Google updates
going forward we will firstly have to create content that offers massive value
to users, get them to share our content and establish our brands as thought
leaders in our industries by blogging about interesting content that adds value
and answers questions of the internet user.
Are you looking for improved rankings on Google? Contact one of the top
SEO Companies in Johannesburg now on 076 592 1738 for a free quote!
