The links that point to your website are one of the most important factors that influence the position of your website in Google’s search results. The better the links to your website, the higher the position of your website in Google’s results.

High rankings without good inbound links?

It is possible to get high rankings with only a few links if you want to be listed for keywords that don’t have much competition. As soon as more than one website competes with you for the same keywords, the website with the best inbound links will outrank the other websites.

If you want to get high rankings for competitive keywords, you have to go out and encourage people to link to your website. It’s not necessary to get as many links as possible. It’s necessary to get better links than your competitors.

Relatively easy: finding the right websites for link building

The Internet has plenty of websites for every category. The following websites can be good link partners:

1. Websites that are listed for the keywords that you are targeting can be good link partners. If a website has high positions for the keywords that you are targeting and if the website is not a competitor, you should contact the owner of that website.
2. Some websites have content that is related to your keyword. If these websites have no examples or references, they could link to your website.
3. There can be many websites that contain a review or a comment about your company without linking to your site. These websites will often link to your website if you ask.
4. If another website links to your website and only uses your domain name to link to your website, ask the owner of the other website to link to your website with your keyword.
5. Blogs that deal with the topic of your websites are often willing to link to your website.
6. If a website links to one of your competitors, it is likely that they will also link to your website if you offer a similar product or service.

Easy to screw up: asking for a link

Finding websites that could link to you is the easy part. The difficult part is to convince the owners of the other websites that they should link to your site.

Contact the right person and use a personal salutation. Be polite and professional in your email message. Use a non-freemail email address and include your full contact information in the email message.

Focus on the benefits of the recipient (for example, that the webmaster will offer his website visitors a good resource if he links to your site and explain why).

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Getting high rankings on Google is so important for the success of a website that some webmasters try anything to get on Google’s first result page.

Unfortunately, many of the methods that promise high search engine rankings are basically spam. Google doesn’t like spam at all and if Google finds out that your website contains spam elements, your website will be penalized.

Which web page elements are cosidered spam by Google?

Google considers quite a few things as spam. The most popular ones are automatically generated doorway pages, cloaking and false redirects, keyword stuffing, hidden text or hidden links, paid links and automated linking systems.

What does Google do to penalize websites?

When Google penalizes a website, the website will either be removed completely from the index or the positions of a website in the search results will be lowered.

Does Google ever forgive a penalized website?

In a discussion in an online forum, webmasters shared their experience with re-inclusion requests on Google. One webmaster reported that it took over one year until a website had its old rankings back:

“One of my clients was completely banned from Google for a spammy link exchange program; we cleaned ‘em all up and filed a reinclusion request, and they are currently #1-3 for just about every relevant search phrase you could think of.

They’re ranking higher now than they ever did before the penalty – but it did take about a year to work their way up to that point.”

Another webmaster confirmed that it takes long until Google re-gains trust in a website:

“That’s what I’ve seen, too. A long, slow release from ‘probation’ as trust builds.

I do think Google always has a record of the past penalty somewhere, and any future infractions might be dealt with quite harshly. But you definitely can see a site get completely released from the ranking effects of a penalty.”

It’s very likely that Google keeps a record of all previous penalties that have been applied to a website.

What does this mean for your website?

You should avoid shady SEO methods at all costs. Do not participate in automated linking schemes. If someone promises you a quick and easy solution that requires no or little work then it is very likely that it’s spam.

If your website has been penalized, remove all spam elements from your website and file a re-inclusion request on Google.

It seems that Google does forgive penalized websites but it takes a long time until a penalized site has its rankings back. During that time, you’ll lose a lot of visitors and sales.

If you want to be on the safe side, only use ethical search engine optimization methods to promote your website. These methods might not sound as impressive as some of the promises that you can read on the Internet but they make sure that your website will get lasting results on Google’s first result page.

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