Linkbuilding isn’t what it used to be – article marketing or reciprocal link deals don’t cut it. Instead, it’s all about content marketing that’s aimed at strengthening your online voice, published on your site and across the web – especially post-Penguin. Whether you’ve been hit by Penguin or not, there are some best link practices that can enhance your Penguin resistance – and I cover your eight link building resolutions for 2013 in this video.

Video Transcript: 

Linkbuilding isn’t what it used to be – article marketing or reciprocal link deals don’t cut it. Instead, it’s all about content that’s aimed at strengthening your online voice, published on your site and across the web – especially post-Penguin.

Whether you’ve been hit by Penguin or not, there are some best link practices that can enhance your Penguin resistance – and these are your eight link building resolutions for 2013.

First: build out your homepage with fresh content

Adding fresh headlines to homepages keeps crawlers coming back and encourages site visitors to link to your latest resources.

Two: Create more landing pages

This better organizes your website, builds more relevant pages that can win links on diverse anchor text and helps guide visitors, helping them get answers they want on the site.

Three: Develop a clear site map

This improves crawlability and ensures all pages are indexed. It will be easier for your pages to be found – and linked.

Four: Use varied, organic links on your site

For every two internal links on a page, use at least one external.

Five: Use diverse anchor text for internal links

Use longtail terms when linking to your landing pages from other destinations on your site, trying to use the head terms just once in every three links.

Six: Add high-quality, diverse content to the website

Create quality content that appeals to different users and publishers. Your infographic might win more links from a niche news site than a text page, and videos could garner more social shares

Seven: Enhance your social media presence

Promote your high-quality content and engaging with social fans and followers to drive more social links. Links you can trace to real users are highly algorithm resistant.

And your eighth resolution: Examine your links regularly

Staying on top of your linkscape shows you when content strategies are working, and it’s a good way to get a jump on any red flags. Not sure what to look for? Remember DRAT is actually a good thing with links.

  • Quality links come from DIVERSE domains. When a site has too many inbound links from a single domain, it looks a little spammy.
  • Inbound links must come from RELEVANT domains – it doesn’t help an Airline company to have inbound links from a plumbing site several states away.
  • When linking to internal pages, webmasters should also implement a mix of exact and partial-match ANCHOR TEXT, so articles look unique every time.
  • Lastly, links should be from TRUSTWORTHY and credible sites. 

At the end of the day, publishing unique and targeted content puts you on the path to successful white hat link building – but it’s still important to know how to recover and regain search presence if you get hit.

Ryan Durling is a content marketing strategist at Brafton.