Internet Marketers always run for cover every time Google rolls out an algorithm update. A lot of online businesses collapsed during the last Panda and Penguin updates, and more and more businessmen are affected every time this happens. And since we can all expect the same thing to take place, again and again, it would be good to prepare for it so as to avoid its disastrous effects.
What Happens During Algorithm Updates
Websites are always penalized when there’s an algorithm update. The penalties can take the form of dropping a site’s Page Rank, or it can also have the effect of having low rankings for your chosen keywords. The worst penalty that webmasters can suffer from is when their contents are de-indexed, as this will render said contents useless.
Furthermore, if the search engines decide to de-index the site itself, you will find your website floating in limbo and nowhere to be found on the Internet.
Link Building Techniques
One of the main reasons for being affected by updates is when you employ black hat methods in building up your site’s links. Yes, backlinks are important and they can help your site rank high on the search engines. But if your backlinks are spammy and low quality, they can backfire as soon as an algorithm update is rolled out.
Too many links with the same anchor text can also make your backlinking techniques suspicious. But there’s something you can do about this. By varying your anchor texts within your posts and in your backlinking strategy, search engines won’t notice that you are trying to manipulate your incoming links.
So instead of over-optimizing on a few specific keywords that are related to your site, you can use generic keywords like click here, read more, more information, go here, etc.
Buying Links
Panda and Penguin both hate link buying. If you are going to practice this method for gaining backlinks, you should work on not making it obvious to the search engines. Otherwise, you will only be wasting money, as those links will be disregarded on the next algorithm update.
Exchanging Links
Exchanging links is never a good idea as this will only cancel out each other’s incoming links anyway. But if you are going to exchange links with another website, you can at least make sure that you are dealing with a relevant site that also covers the same topic or subject as your own.
Importance of Social Media Links
This is the time when Social Media links are deemed to be quite important since they are not affected by algorithm updates. That is if you are building links through these social networking sites naturally. By establishing a social media presence, you can raise awareness of the existence of your business and attract targeted customers too. The link juice that will be coming from social media is also powerful and natural since real people are sharing your links all over the Internet.
