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As you probably already know Google did a massive update a few months back called their “panda” update.

The gist of the update was to get rid of junk websites that were ranking well in Google’s search results. (which in my opinion was a good thing anyway)

A lot of, let’s just call them “drama queens or kings”, have been posting all of the Internet that the “day’s of the small businesses doing SEO are over”.

Just in case you’ve heard that hype and are possibly buying into let me just tell you that’s BS.

All of my businesses and my clients businesses that I do SEO for are considered to be in this category and we have been thriving in this “newer and cleaner” Google.

Now that Google has cleaned out the spammers it’s become even easier for us to rank our websites if you are using proper SEO/Link Building Techniques.

So really quick I wanted to review which SEO Techniques you should still be using even after this Panda Update.

Before I jump into that though, I will be the first to admit that some of the methods used in the past are not considered as important as they once were but they are still good. Don’t worry though, I’ll outline that below.

In my opinion the real “panic” that you hear from people online about this latest update is coming from the group of spammers that were able to capitalize from “spamming Google”.

My philosophy has always been to provide good solid content and you don’t ever have to worry about this type of thing. It’s the difference between following good, sound principles in marketing versus following the latest and greatest “algorithm” or “trick”.

Link Building Rules Following The Google Panda Update

The key to a good link building strategy has always been and will always be that it needs to appear to be “natural”.

So what does that mean? Well here’s a few Characteristics of a “natural” link building campaign: (we’ll talk about each of these bullet points below)

1. Links are built methodically over time not spammed for a brand new website

Google has been around a long time and seen pretty much every trick in the book. So when they see a brand new website generating thousands of links each month they know that these links aren’t natural. Our job is to make our link building appear natural and consistent.

Now, having said that, you have to understand that is the rule, not the exception. There are instances when a brand new website starts and get mentioned by a celebrity or something and then the links come pouring in and obviously Google will not penalize that website. So the “Rule” is kinda fuzzy b/c the answer will always be “it depends on the circumstances”. As a general rule we want it to seem natural, if you have no traffic but thousands of links then that’s unnatural.

2. You need to have a good mix of links

The second rule is to have a good mix of links coming into your website. Again the purpose is to appear natural and we can do that by having a good mix of links. An example of a “good mix” would be Links coming in the following ways: Bookmarks, Social “likes” or “+’s”, articles, blog comments, social profiles, etc.

3. You need to be consistent with your link building

The last rule (there are others but these are the main rules) would be to be consistent. I see this happen all the time. I see businesses work really hard on link building for 3 months and then stop, either b/c they haven’t gotten the Google placement they wanted or they have gotten the placement and they think they can “rest”. Unfortunately you can’t really ever “rest” b/c there’s always someone right behind you who is working on out ranking you and the moment you stop you’ll start to slide. That’s why we really can’t ever stop building links.

What Link Building Techniques are still working

So these techniques are the techniques that we’re still using to rank our sites on the first page in Google. Keep in mind I’ve posted “how-to’s” on some of these techniques while others I haven’t. (I’ll link to the ones I’ve already posted about)

1. Link Wheels (still the king of link building if done right) (see the post on link wheels)
2. Blog Commenting
3. Social Profile Linking
4. Live Directories (not as effective as before so you’ll want to only submit to high PR directories)
5. Vertical Portals
6. Social Bookmarking (see the post on automating social bookmarking)
7. Social “Likes”

By doing each of these link building strategies you will meet all the rules listed above and ensure that even after this Google Panda Update that you’ll continue to garner first page results from Google.

Related posts:

1. High PR Backlink from Google
2. What’s Your Google Page Rank?
3. Setting up Google Analytics