A friend’s band was playing at a local bar last week.To promote it, he went around different stores and asked if he could put up a poster and leave flyers on the counter. He also posted on several Facebook groups and on Twitter.

When I watched them play, I noticed that aside from regular bar patrons,and a couple of new faces, there wasn’t much of a spike in the audience.

Now imagine what would’ve happened if they focused on reaching out to people they knew or had a connection with? The bar would’ve been more crowded with our friends, their co-workers, and other friends of friends who got dragged in.

The same analogy applies when you’re building links.

If you’re just spamming the web with flyers (links), no one’s going to pay attention to you. You’ll be that annoying guy everyone hates.

Trust me, you don’t want to be that guy, especially once the big bouncers (ie. Google, Yahoo!, and Bing) start booting you out.

Link Building that Doesn’t Rely Solely on Algorithms and Search Engines

From 2012 to early 2015, websites experienced the most devastating algorithm changes from the search giant, Google. Penguin, Panda, Hummingbird, and most recently, Pigeon, deprived many sites with traffic, ranking and revenue.

Two companies even told me that they closed up shop. One relied too much on a flawed content strategy — short content, posted five times a day. The other relied too much on submitting to article directories.What they both did were mainstream practices back then.

But they weren’t building a relationship with anyone. They weren’t producing anything genuinely helpful at all, and Google knew it.

Those algorithm updates are now baked into modern SEO. The most important thing you should do now is revise your link building strategy, using techniques built to last.

Long-Term Link Building Strategies

 

1. Link to Relevant Resources from Your Own Website (Give to Get)

It seems crazy, doesn’t it? You want to get links, and I’m telling you to give them away!

Well, Neil Patel, Co-founder of CrazyEgg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics, says, “you should be shooting for 25 external links for every 1,000 words of content.” It’s not a hard and fast rule but it’s a good estimate if you’re just starting out.

Before you give out links, make sure that:

• The site alsolinks to others
• The link is relevant to your topic
• It is written by the site’s owner or a regular contributor
• You can find the author or site owner’s name and email address
• The author or influencer has a good engagement rate with followers, not just sheer numbers.
• com shows that it has some keywords driving traffic to it

 

When you publish a blog post with links, send a partially personalized email to everyone you linked to:

Try one of Patel’s email templates:

 

Or the one that I used to write this post, 50 Must-Read Personal Development Bloggers That’ll Change Your Life, with over 500 shares:

 

Don’t be afraid to ask big names for links and shares, like I was. As long as what you write would be interesting to their readers, you’re likely to get a positive response.

Don’t expect everyone you email to reply and link back to your site. Some people are naturally generous with links, while some will opt for a simple tweet. Those tweets are still useful though, because the people who see them might then link back to you.

Check out the other templates for link building and email outreach here:The Ultimate List of Copywriting, Email and Blogging Templates and Swipes

 

2. Give Testimonials and Participate in Case Studies

Businesses, big and small, love receiving testimonials from their customers. When you write that testimonial, give them more incentive to display it by praising them for a specific result, or a specific problem they solved.

Think about it from their point of view. Which of the following testimonials would you proudly display?

 

Thanks to XYZ software, I got a 25% increase in new customer purchases.

OR

“Bob and his team did a good job helping me increase sales for our new product”

The first one sounds better, right?

Of course, don’t forget to include your picture and a link to your website. Testimonials with these elements look more credible to consumers, as this gives them a chance to verify the testimonials themselves.

 

Participating in a case study is also another little-known link building strategy.

 

3. Get Links Similar to Your Competitors

One of the ways search engines judge the quality of your website is by the number of high quality links you have that are similar to your competitors.

For instance, if your target keyword is “yoga studio in Brooklyn,” your competitors are other yoga studios appearing on Google’s page 1 for that keyword.

Your competitors wouldn’t have gotten to page one if they didn’t have links from other high quality sites. In fact if you examine their link profile, you’ll see they have inbound links coming from the same websites, aka ‘common links,’ which can be anything from review sites, health blogs, or yoga certification schools.

Your goal is to find those common links and try to get some of the best ones for your site. OnceGoogle sees a similar link profile on your site, it’ll associate you with other already high-ranking sites for your keyword.  To take this to the next level, you will also need some links that the competitors don’t have.

Common link building is also a great way to differentiate low-citation links such as link farms, from high-quality search engine vetted websites. This process takes too much time when done manually, so we use the Common Backlinks Tool.

 

4. Get .Edu Links and Social Shares through Scholarships

Many businesses give out scholarships in exchange for .edu links. It doesn’t have to be a big scholarship either. A budget of $500 to $1000 will do wonders for this link building strategy.

After the budget is set aside, decide the criteria for awarding it. You can have a contest where voting is done via social media, or accept essays or blog posts on a certain topic. Put the guidelines in a dedicated ‘scholarship page’ on your website.

Once the webpage is up, look up the email address of at least 25 high school and college career centers. Shoot them an email with a short introduction and a link to your scholarship page. You can repeat this step as necessary, when you want more links later on.

 

Link Building isn’t Dead

It’s just revived in a different, albeit more complicated form. For now, avoid websites and services that promise a high-quality link for a few bucks. The same goes for packaged services guaranteeing high PR links with little content production or relationship building on your part.

The best links are ones that come from establishing your site/blog as an authority but it can help to have some specificity and detailed tactics that help you spread the word.

Since I was a kid I have been watching nature shows but penguins are now definitely on my no-fly list. I’d rather have to debate Donald Trump about real estate deals in front of 24 million people than have a truly awful Google Penguin (link penalty) come after me and my site.

For those of you who are unaware of what the Google Penguin update is all about, here is a nice blurb from Search Engine Land:

“What Is The Google Penguin Update?

Google launched the Penguin Update in April 2012 to better catch sites deemed to be spamming its search results, in particular those doing so by buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed primarily to boost Google rankings. When a new Penguin Update is released, sites that have taken action to remove bad links (such as through the Google disavow links tool or to remove spam may regain rankings. New sites not previously caught might get trapped by Penguin. “False positives,” sites that were caught by mistake, may escape.”

1. Diagnose the situation and take responsibility

Saying “I had no idea!” Is the wrong answer.

Whether or not you intentionally got bad links pointed at your website, the consequences are the same.  Google will never give you any significant traffic until you correct the problem. It may be that your previous SEO company did low quality article and directory link building, scraper sites have scooped up your content including your links and put them in bad places or it may even be that people are pointing negative links at you intentionally.

Don’t make the mistake of waiting to sort this out because it’s important that you do the repair work before the next Google Penguin refresh. More on that in a minute.

There are two main types of situations with Google Penguin penalties.

1. Google sends you a manual penalty notification through the Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools).
2. Google doesn’t tell you anything and uses its advanced algorithms to filter you out of the search results because they think you have a lot of bad links.

I am not going to go into great detail about how to do Penguin repair in this short post but will certainly cover it in more detail soon. Below are some of the basics to consider.

SEMrush  is a great tool that allows you to quickly see how many keywords are driving traffic to your website. The picture below shows a site with few keywords driving traffic and almost no search value. While the traffic amounts are often wrong with these types of tools, a traffic value of 1 shows it’s unlikely there are many unique visitors either.

This can be VERY frustrating when you used to have traffic and see something like this happen.

You will also want to look at Google Analytics to review your organic search traffic (even a glance at overall traffic can sometimes show obvious issues). Look for dips in traffic aligned with Google Penguin release dates.

The following chart may not be as dramatic as many as you have seen but is excellent to review for smaller sites with confusing penalties.

If you see drops in traffic aligned with Penguin Release dates, you have likely been hit.

Google Penguin release dates

• Penguin 1.0 on April 24, 2012 (impacting ~3.1% of queries)
• Penguin 1.1 on May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)
• Penguin 1.2 on October 5, 2012 (impacting ~0.3% of queries)
• Penguin 2.0 on May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
• Penguin 2.1 on Oct. 4, 2013 (impacting around 1% of queries)
• Penguin 3.0 on October 17, 2014 (impacting around 1% of queries)

2. Use a tool like Link Detox and your brain to decide what links are good and which should be disavowed

Tools like Link Detox, can give you a quick breakdown of the worst quality and best quality links in your profile.

Don’t rely solely on tools

None of these tools are even close to perfect, so unfortunately you are going to have to look at every one of the links that point at you by clicking on them to see if they look legitimate.

You can also use SEMrush to see if they have any keywords driving traffic and what the traffic value to their site is. If they only have a handful of keywords driving traffic and little to no traffic value, then you may not want them linking to you until they correct their own problems.

This chart shows keyword traffic history:

3. Submit your list of bad links to Google using the disavow tool

Now it’s time to submit your spreadsheet to Google, using the disavow tool to let them know which links you admit are bad.

Check out some of my team members at McDougall Interactive discussing “What is the Google Disavow tool?”.

4. Manual penalty removal

If you have a manual penalty notification in the Google Search Console, write a letter to Google explaining how the bad links happened, how you have rectified it and asked them to remove the penalty.

5. Get more good quality links to your site before the next Penguin refresh

The next step is to make sure that you get good quality links to your site to balance out the ratio of good to bad links. Removing the bad links will only make it so Google will not use those against you. This might help your ranks come back to some degree but it’s only by getting new good links and by writing regular good content that you will improve your authority and rankings.

6. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket while you’re waiting

If your website has had a significantly bad link problem, which may include a manual penalty and possibly algorithmic filtering at the same time, it may take literally years to recover.

We have seen some people recover very quickly. Like right after doing a disavow and when we are doing good content, link outreach and SEO at the same time.

We have also seen some people take years to recover and it may be that Google decides to simply spank you with a penalty like a father grounds his child. It is entirely possible that they set a date for you to recover – a couple years out – depending on how bad they think you broke their guidelines.

Sometimes it feels like there is no rhyme or reason to getting a site out of its authority injury, no matter how much content or good links to add.

This shows a site that did a lot of things right – disavow, manual penalty removal, new super high quality links and awesome content – yet having no results:

The truth is that you may have to wait through a couple of Penguin refresh cycles, which historically have been either six months or one year apart. Ouch.

Marie Haynes, writing for Search Engine Watch says: “You won’t see the benefits of your hard work until a Penguin refresh happens.”

7. Watch the news for refresh dates like a hawk

Sadly, you may have to wait a few more months for Google to rerun its algorithms for the changes you have been making to take full effect. Check out some of the latest news on when the next refresh will be and keep a close watch on when updates will be released:

Next Google Penguin Update? Jim and Ann Show

Google Says Penguin Refresh Months Away From Happening

In conclusion

If you have a lead weight dragging you down, you won’t succeed no matter what you do. Having an authoritative site that has lots of keywords driving traffic and leads is essential for any company and or thought leader.

Therefore you must make sure to try your best to fix Google penalty issues as fast as possible while potentially also blogging on other domains while you are waiting for your main site to be fixed.

Believe it or not even Google sometimes recommends getting a new domain name when you have a very bad penalty. How bad does that stink for your brand to have to change its online name?