5 Link Building Takeaways for 2012

By Steve Hutton on 18 January 2012 @ 12:44 PM.

Tags: link building, seo, nofollow, google panda, social signals.

Some people say that a month in the digital marketing world is comparable to over a year in traditional, and if this is true it is important to keep up to date with the world of digital. Search marketing is no different and SEOAn acronym for 'search engine optimisation', the series of processes used to improve your ranking in search engines and drive more web traffic to your website organically.

Learn more about SEO has well and truly become part of the ‘mix’ of a robust and diverse marketing campaign.

What did 2011 teach us? What takeaways are there from Google updates and trends? Well in our opinion there are 5 major ones which will influence how we go about building links in 2012. We have to remember that link building still plays a crucial role in ranking a site (especially deeper pages) when it comes to asserting relevance to a page’s content. Here are 5 tips for your link building in 2012:

Use partial anchor text match

Overcooking the same anchor texts for the page can result in a narrow and ‘obvious’ backlink profile. Use a tool such as Open Site Explorer to look at what anchors are pointing at your main landing pages. If there isn’t much brand mention then it’s time to get to work. Mix up the links you get with partial match. For example don’t just target ‘Indian food’, target ‘order Indian food online’ or ‘Indian food online delivery’. This will diversify your profile so it looks a lot more natural and Google will still be able to ascertain relevance to the main target keywords you are building to.

Don’t rely on one source

Never rely on one link building method, as if Google takes away power from those links you will lose a lot in the rankings. It is important to think about gaining links from a diverse range of IP addresses and methods. Use snippet submission alongside directory submission, profile links, forum and blog comments, guest posts and social bookmarks. Also, shy away from obvious paid links because there could well be an up rise against this meaning severe penalties for your website.

Don’t ignore no follow links

No follow links are still links all the same. Even if no juice is passed through, Google will still count this link and it is a strong belief that having another link going to your site is a good thing, regardless of do follow or no follow. It also looks a lot more natural because you are never going to solely pick up just do follow links.

Think quality, not quantity

If we have learnt anything from Panda in 2011, it is not to chase so many spammy and low value links. It is better to devote your time getting a few good links then loads of bad ones. If you think a competitor could easily get a link on the same site or source as you, then it might not be worth chasing it. There is a general industry impression that this could continue with low value links being disregarded all together at some point.

Consider social signals

Google is really pushing its social network; Google plus. They are incorporating it into search results and you’ll be able to see which of your friends have ‘liked’ a certain result on the page. This is all powerful stuff and should it really take off you need to make sure you are on top of it. Make sure you have a blog bringing the site plenty of long-tail traffic and make sure people are interacting on it, tweeting your posts, sharing them and all things social. This will also encourage the bots to index your site more frequently and may even raise your trust rank.

About the Author

Steve works in SEO, but also loves to eat! He loves curry and orders Indian takeaway from Just-Eat when hungry after a day’s link building.

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