7 Link Building Best Practices in a Post-Penguin World

• With Google sending out "Unnatural Links Notices" right-and-left and kicking sites to the bottom of the rankings with Penguin and Panda it's a hard time to be a link builder. Can you tell us where to concentrate our efforts in this new world? Are there some best practices we can implement and where should we concentrating our link building efforts in 2012 and beyond?

Answer: Since Penguin "waddled" onto the search engine stage, SEOs the world over have been forced to confront the realization that white hat and some gray hat link building practices that used to work for them can now actually get their clients penalized. What's changed?

All of the below link building techniques have either been completely discredited and will lead to a penalty or provide so little value, they aren't worth your time post-Penguin:

• Article Marketing
  
• Link and Resources Pages
  
• Affiliate or Network Links
  
• Blog and Content Networks
  
• Sponsor Links
  
• Footer Links
  
• Directories
  
• Blog Commenting (the "auto-commenting" variety)
  
• Forum Signatures
  

As we mentioned during this month's Penguin Site Audit Tips article, we've documented a lot of similarities between affected sites. This has led us to some link building best practices that we STRONGLY urge all of you to implement immediately both with your own sites and those of your clients. These Top 7 Post-Penguin Link Building Practices include the following:

• 1. Stop Cross-Linking Between Sites: It's not a coincidence that the majority of the sites that...