Case Study: Fixing A Website After Penguin Attacks – Part Three: Go Au Naturale

Penguins

Hello and welcome to step three of my case study on fixing a website after Penguin attacks. If you haven’t read part one and part two, you can check them out at the links below:

Case Study: Fixing A Website After Penguin Attacks – Part One

Case Study: Fixing A Website After Penguin Attacks – Part Two: Link Quality And Relevancy

Today I wanted to talk about the next step in the process, moving forward. Once you have balanced out your link profile a bit and maybe even gotten rid of a few non-relevant or spammy links, it’s time to get the site back in gear. Gone are the days where you can simply flip a switch with a piece of software like WPRobot and have valuable content coming in. If you want to rank well, you need to build for the users, and you’re a user so you know how they think.

Just think about it, would you want to visit a sit with poorly-written content? Doesn’t that waste your time? Also, if you’re interested in a specific topic, wouldn’t fresh content keep you coming back to the site?

Take a step back and ask yourself what are the top three websites you visit every single day? Mine are:

  1. Domaining.com
  2. TechCrunch.com
  3. CNN.com

If these sites didn’t have a constant stream of well-written fresh content coming in I wouldn’t read them. Oh, and if they did have a steady stream of content, but the content was all coming from people being paid $5 to write 500 word articles, I think I’d stop reading too!

The point here is that you really can’t game the system much any more, or if you want to, then just understand that gaming the system and building a real brand have really become the same thing. Now your brand doesn’t have to be some 100+ page mega site with ten articles a day and a staff of twenty. Your site should provide visitors with what they are looking for in a way that is reliable and well presented. If you want to increase how often people visit your site don’t just add fresh content, add good quality fresh content.

On Kayaking.org we have a great team of bloggers and I truly enjoy their posts, they are fun to read and well-written. We get a lot of positive feedback about our blog and it’s something that people enjoy reading. If you’re just getting started you can write the content yourself or hire a high quality writer from a reputable service. Heck, you can even get creative and find another blogger in your niche as bring them onboard.

The idea is that once you’ve fixed your link profile, it’s time to go Au Naturale and just build a great site. Stop trying to build insane link wheels or get onto the high-authority directory of your dreams. Build a great site and spend time connecting with your visitors and interacting with them through social media on platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

It certainly is a lot more work than it used to be and Google’s coveted above-the-fold space is now more and more going to reputable brands. I guess this is really how it should have been all along though right? Why would I as a consumer want to visit someone’s ten page minisite with articles that cost $5/each when it’s a topic I care about? I want quality when I search and I want the above-the-fold to consist of authority sites that I can trust.

There are more opportunities than ever for smart domain investors and affiliate marketers to rank well and build meaningful revenue streams. So get your site back on track by putting a focus on high-quality premium content and go au naturale doing what your should be doing, if you want to be in the top three.

(Photo Credit)

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton