SEO Philippines: Link Building Best Practices 2013

Search engines are continuously updating their algorithm for better search results and ranking of websites. For search users, these updates may pose more positive effects. For the SEOs’ side, however , after Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, optimization has become even more complicated. One of the SEO strategies affected by the Penguin update is link building. This specific update aimed at decreasing the ranking of websites that use blackhat SEO techniques such as cloaking, keyword stuffing, content duplication, unnatural backlinks and others.

Black hat SEO techniques, while giving quick-results for short-term goals, can harm your website in the long-term.The backlinks used will become devalued and website ranking will drop. Majority of sites that practice black-hat SEO techniques are now adjusting to the changes and removing all unnatural links to their website, or continue to suffer zero visibility to customers SEO experts continue to find new link building techniques; and here are some trends / observations to take into consideration in 2013: Press Releases for Link Building

 1.)  Press Releases for Link Building

According to Matt Cutts in this forum, press releases are not that effective as backlinks as before. However, based on a test done by Search Engine Roundtable, Matt Cutts’ blog ranked for the keyword “sreppleasers” – the group experimented on the claim by putting a link redirecting to Matt’s blog in a press release. Though it is not yet clear whether Matt Cutts was pertaining to competitive keywords in his specified scenario, there’s still a possibility that press releases are still effective based on the test results. In any case, I recommend a well-written, accurate, and newsworthy press release to share to your audience.

2.)  Analysis of Competitor’s Backlinks 

Every website has its own different SEO techniques and tactics. Researching and analyzing your competitor’s backlinks is a good start linkbuilding; to help gain competitive advantage in SEO. You can use backlink tools such as Open Site Explorer or Majestic when doing this activity. Also, when reviewing at your competitors’ backlinks, observe what top backlinks they use, how they are obtaining links from these sites, and whether they are contributing guest posts, and if the site contributing to the backlink is their clients. These will help you get ideas on the SEO tactics they are doing.

3.)  Start Blogging 

One of the known effective strategies in link building is the link bait. Link bait is the practice of creating blog posts to attract visitors. As more and more people search for information using search engines, SEOs are taking advantage of blogs as link bait to gain more traffic.  Some SEO experts’ blogs use infographics, famous names, newest gadgets, and other attention-grabbing content to get virality from readers. To make sure that your link bait will be effective, write on topics that will entertain your readers, or those that will provide relevant and comprehensive information to your target market.