Build up quality links with quality content
It’s interesting that new blog posts are still referring to Google’s Panda update from early 2011 and mentioning that they are getting tough with websites that have links from poor-quality sites. It’s now 2012 and there’s still little evidence that this tactic has hit too many sites really hard. Certainly there were some high profile issues with falling rankings but, in fact, a recent post in SEOMoz suggests that a test using dodgy links actually led to dramatic increases in search engine ranking positions. That suggests Google are specifically targeting sites they know to be using dodgy methods rather than a wide-ranging algorithm change that’s affecting everyone.
Maybe 2012 will be the year when Google finally do penalise sites with masses of poor-quality links but I’m not holding my breath…
Instead I’m just doing what I always do – steadily and consistently building high-quality links for my clients – putting in the effort to write really good and useful content and seeking out opportunities for guest writing. I firmly believe that this is the best long-term strategy and with some additional focus this year on a variety of content type: videos, podcasts and more images (of course, with their alt tags properly optimised) and focussing on partial keyword matches in my anchor text I expect to continue the great ranking improvements we have all seen over the past year.
I even plan to start doing some of my own videos and getting my own website up to scratch, but don’t hold your breath for that…