Google just updated Penguin for the first time in a while, and these link building tips will help keep your brand from being hit by any potential penalties.

When it comes to boosting your rankings on Google, link building is among the most viable strategies – assuming, of course, that it’s being done properly. With Google’s latest update to Penguin 3.0, these are a few link building tips to keep in mind in order to avoid any unwanted penalties to your SERPs.

Avoid the Manipulation of Shares

Social signals have long been touted as among the strongest ways to improve your discoverability on Google. The idea of ‘viral’ is on every marketers mind. But with virality comes an organic component.

Manipulating shares through purchases or sponsorships is not the best way to boost your search rankings. One of the major changes that Google has been slowly implementing and expanding upon is the rewarding of, for lack of a better term, naturally occurring content. If a website is known for sharing sponsored articles and links for payment, Google will find out about it and your effort to build links through paid shares won’t go quite as far.

Transparency is the Best Policy

Hiding embedded links and coercing visitors to share your links is another practice you’ll want to avoid when it comes to improving your search rankings.

If people are going to be sharing your content or images, it should be clear that they will be sharing a specific link. Don’t secretly embed backlinks to your website on someone else’s infographics on Pinterest, for example. People should be willingly sharing links to your site.

Don’t Get Too Meta

Self-referencing is fine here and there, especially if you have a relevant article that might provide additional benefit to your readers. But filling your posts and your guest posts with links to your own website is a practice that should be engaged in with moderation.

Of course, when you can share links in anchor text to your website in an article you’re writing, you’ll want to do that. But filling an article with links to any and all bits of content purely for the purpose of building links isn’t going to help anyone. And Google won’t take too kindly to that either.

Conclusion

It remains to be seen what the latest update to Penguin might mean for some websites, but when it comes to link building, these are a few practices you’ll want to keep in mind. Link building is a valuable asset to any website, but only if it is done correctly. After all, these updates are put in place to ensure of just that.

What has been your most successful link building strategy? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!