Changing Course in the Wake of All the New Developments at Google
After the bloodbath initiated by Panda and Penguin updates several websites survived, but only survival is not sufficient. Very few of those that survived the massacre are as successful as they were before Panda and Penguin updates wrecked havoc. These sites are now looking at ways to getting back to where they were before the bloodletting began.
It is common to hear a refrain from site owners that their site once dominated all the relevant keywords, but the updates changed all that. Most didn’t receive any unnatural link warnings nor were they penalized, but that still did not stop the affect it had on them. There is a silver lining to all of this. If your website did not participate in link schemes or did not undertake unnatural link building, and you were never warned by Google, there is hope.
You will now have to overhaul your entire approach to content publicity and link building. This is not going to happen in a hurry. It will take sustained efforts. So, be patient!
The first thing you need is useful content that will act as link bait. Great content has tremendous link attraction power. If you look around you will notice several sites with great content have attracted huge number of high-value links. For example, let’s do a simple exercise. Type the phrase ‘skatepark locator’ in the search box and have a look at the results. You will be surprised to see a colossal amount of results that indicate websites, apps, and tools that are available to help you locate a skateparks. Some of the results like skatepark.com and pushwood.com are totally commerce free, while others like Thrasher Magazine are sites that sell magazine subscriptions and skateboard gear.
Now take a step back and study the volume of backlinks for top rated sites for key phrases related to skateparks you will notice that smart companies have used great content and other tools to make their presence felt on the web.
This is just one example. Brief your clients and show them some subject-specific sites to highlight the potential of high trust inbound links. Not all sites that show up on SERPs will be great sites, but this exercise is sufficient to illustrate how Google ranks what it thinks as credible URLs for particular niches.
