11 Tips to get back links in the Penguin Era.

Even though past year and a half, the Link Building has opened up doors to other ranking factors such as "Mentions" and social networks relevance, but it is still one of the basic pillars of any SEO strategy.

What has changed is the way that we must develop the Link Building Campaigns, if before you wouldn't care much about how organic your links were, or anchor texts for a second, well Google is now keeping an eye on any suspicious M.O. that we could be engaging for these results. (That sounded so Horatio from CSI:Miami)

1. Diversity and Ease

This is not something that I put in first place by mistake, these are two factors that we must insist the most, diversity and ease, becoming key factors to achieve success in any area of online marketing and link building, it couldn't be less than that.

And with diversity i mean both link sources ( Forums, blogs, local media...) and the best way of getting this is with original content, even if it's an image, a video, an info graphic or even a whitepaper; this way we will get true organic back links.

2. Evergreen Content:

We like to call this "green sprouts", let me explain it better, this is content that does not devalues with time, even if months or years go by, it is still interesting and link-able as the day you published it.

And how do you get this? I always think of the list of strategies of Link Building from Point Blank SEO, shared over 4,000 times and with 409 domains linking to it.

Click to Enlarge Image

But what is the first thing we need to do if we want to create Evergreen content, we need to avoid writting about current news or "Trending Topics" , this kind of content works well on short term, but it disappears right away; what is best is for us to focus in a doubt or a problem, for example : "Which are the best strategies for Link Building" and give a solution, but squeezing every detail into the article to help resolve the doubt/problem.

In EConsultancy, there is a great article about 15 ways to optimise your evergreen content strategy.

3. Has to be something worth sharing

Line of light bulbs only one lit, people gathering on to lit bulb

Putting it other way I would say, it has to be something that people is interested in and it does not necessarily needs to be a post in your blog. What I don't mean to create something that will only link just beacause, but creating a video, a picture or a presentation that someone could later include in their own content, something that will be later claimed by you as a link, in case they didn't included it already.

4. Not everything has to be links

Meaning that even if it's mentioned it may not link to our brand or our business in a post, but Google will relate immediately a certain kind of content to our brand, and our brand to our page, so don't go crazy if someone does not link you properly.

5. Think Offline

Not all you do to make your online presence better, necessarily needs to be online. Any action that you do offline might result interesting people of your niche, and it could easily turn into news, as well as converting these echoes into links and mentions for you.

Let's use as an example, you have a Design agency and you're offering a free Photoshop course, with a bit effort on social networks you could spread the word about something a lot of people would be interested in, because you need to give (your followers something they can relate in real life), so you can get (the client's loyalty, share, mention and recommendation).

6. Take advantage of those who are already Linking you back

Wouldn't it be more likely that someone who has already exchanged back links with you would do it again? Help yourself with theses guys to share and promote your content, if your previous content has been interesting for then, the chances that they link you again will boost importantly. Look in your link profile with a tool like Open Site Explorer to see who has linked to you previously and contact them.

7. Invite bloggers to submit to your blog

Asides from the classic way of getting back links by guest blogging, invite other bloggers to publish in your blog, they will not only add variety to your content, it will make these bloggers give you relevance in social networks and will definitely link you in the future about they post they made for you, or even using any of your content as a link too.

8. Be Consistent

Something very important to get organic back links is being constant when it comes to publish content. If too much time goes by between posts, (like we've missed out for a few weeks, but hey what can I say is not easy to work Web Development, Guilty!) your reades will start to forget you exist (Pretty please, don't). Neither is necessary to publish every day, it is better to create quality content once a week than publishing something mediocre every day.

9. Add Value

If you will center in Link Building in forums and blog coments, the only advise we will give you is to add value to it, and don't just try to be slick and slide your link at all costs, and overall if these are links that have poor relevance to Google, relevant comments/posts will bring relevant traffic to your web.

10. Update your content

If in the past you've published something that's been very successful, why not use that too?

Go through your most successful posts and try to update them, could be with new information or a new focus. If it has worked before, it is most likely to work again.

11. Update content (from someone else)

This strategy is very effective and useful. Using this tool to find outdated content you will be able to see which content has been created for a key word, you can also compare dates, in order to see if the subject is outdated, create the same content updated and contact the websites who originally posted it and suggest them to re-post it.

The best way to find this kind of content is finding any date in which there was an important change, for example, if your niche is Formula 1, almost every year between certain dates there will be new updated FIA norms or rules, searching in these specific dates it is more likely that you find them.

Thank you so much for reading once more, and for your loving patience, we hope you've enjoyed. Any questions, suggestions please let us know! We're here to help.