How do you ensure your link building efforts comply with search engine guidelines and avoid penalties? Share one important consideration.

Question

Search engine penalties can derail even the most carefully planned SEO strategy. This article presents expert-backed tips to help you steer clear of backlink-related pitfalls that could harm your website's ranking. From diversifying anchor text to creating newsworthy content, these strategies will guide you towards building a robust and penalty-resistant backlink profile.

Owen Barton · Answer

When building your backlink profile, it's important to ensure that it is diverse and appears as natural as possible to Google. It's common advice for SEOs to build links of varying authority and not just from one type of site. However, something that is often overlooked is the anchor text of backlinks, which is an aspect that our SEO team has been auditing and optimizing this year.
Major SEO organizations and experts have spent years analyzing millions of backlinks and hundreds of thousands of profiles to determine what a healthy backlink anchor text profile looks like, and how much of each anchor text type a profile should have. We've audited a couple of our sites so far, and there are areas where we have fallen short or exceeded the guidelines.
For example, it is recommended that generic anchor text backlinks, which include text like "click here" or "visit site", should only make up 10-20% of your backlink profile. One of our sites had significantly exceeded this, which is problematic, as too many generic anchor backlinks make it harder for Google to find context and associate a brand with its relevant topics. We're currently contacting the owners of these websites that are linking to us and working with them to improve the anchor text of these links or make them branded.
On the other hand, only 2% of our backlinks had exact match anchor links, which are links where the anchor text exactly matches the focus keyword of the target page. It's recommended that exact match links comprise no more than 5% of a profile, since they are the most sensitive to scrutiny from Google. Too many exact match links appear unnatural to Google and give the impression of paid link building and an attempt to manipulate the search engine. This is against Google's guidelines on link schemes and is one of the main reasons for the Penguin Algorithm update in 2012.
Google doesn't penalize individual bad backlinks, but rather a bad overall link and anchor text profile, so at 2%, we still had some room to add more exact match anchor links to our profile. Exact match anchors are important, as they are the most powerful type of anchor that a backlink can have. In the coming months, we are going to work on building a small set of exact match anchor links with some reputable sites in our industry, and we will continue to monitor the percentage of exact match anchors in our link profile to ensure it stays within the recommended guidelines.

Charlotte Howard · Answer

As an SEO specialist with 20+ years of experience, I've learned that pacing your link acquisition is absolutely critical for avoiding penalties. When I work with clients, I emphasize what I call "natural velocity" - never adding backlinks too quickly or in large batches, which immediately raises red flags with Google's algorithm.
One client in the wellness space was aggressively building 20+ links monthly until they saw ranking drops. We adjusted to a more natural pattern of 3-5 quality links per month, focusing on relevance rather than quantity. Within three months, their organic traffic increased by 32% as Google began to trust their link profile again.
I also prioritize link diversity across referring domains. In my experience, ten links from ten different relevant websites provide substantially more SEO value than twenty links from just two domains. This approach mimics natural linking patterns that search engines reward rather than penalize.
For effective outreach that complies with guidelines, I personalize every email rather than using templates. My guest blogging success rate jumped from 8% to 27% when I started researching each prospect site thoroughly and referencing specific content they'd published in my outreach messages.

Dan Lacey · Answer

Try to build links as naturally as possible and link to helpful, relevant content. If you stick to this principle, you generally won't go too far wrong in terms of adhering to search engine guidelines. Problems arise when people try to "game the system" and find loopholes in the guidelines, which could include efforts like link farms or spamming AI content. Once upon a time, these tactics both worked great, but only for a short period until search engines changed the rules. Consequently, websites that employed these tactics came crashing back to earth. It's always better to stick to natural and helpful long-term strategies that will keep you on top consistently, not just for a short burst.

Yasmin Parveen · Answer

The most important consideration is that it needs to make sense. If you are link building you need to ensure that the sites linking back to you are relevant. That there is a justified reason for the mention back to your services. This is what helps stick within the guidelines and avoid penalties. You begin to face issues if you start to scale up link building but without a consideration towards relevancy. Relevancy does not always have to be at the domain level i.e. fishing.com does not have to link to fishing gear. You may have a travel site discussing fishing spots in their article where it is suitable to mention fishing gear. You have to strike a balance and the best way to do this is to simply make sure that it makes sense. Try to be impartial when reading content that is linking back to you, would you expect a link there directing users to your services? Does the page that you're wanting a link support the users journey? If yes, then you should go ahead. If no, then it might be time to reconsider your efforts to ensure that your benefiting the user which is one of the best ways to comply with guidelines.

Sheila Eugenio · Answer

Think like a journalist, not a link builder.
Instead of chasing backlinks, create something truly newsworthy--a compelling story, unique data, or an expert opinion that people want to cite. Google rewards natural links that add value, not forced placements.
Example: Run a small industry survey, publish insights, and pitch them to relevant blogs and news sites.Avoid: Buying links, stuffing guest posts with keywords, or spamming directories.
If your link wouldn't make sense in a news article or an organic conversation, it's probably a bad link.

Alina Tytarenko · Answer

At SE Ranking, we are keen on making our link-building efforts appear organic, which helps to avoid being penalized by search engines and complies with their requirements. One of the best ways to gain organic links is to publish research and unique statistics in your field of expertise on your blog. Once such articles reach the top of search engine results for relevant search queries, they start to be referenced by journalists and content writers who rely on that research or statistics to write their own blog articles.
Of course, we use other link-building methods as well, but we don't focus solely on links. First and foremost, our team tries to provide valuable and useful material that readers want to finish reading. We also take a careful approach to the selection of referring sites, and therefore we are selective about which resources we choose to publish articles with our links.

Danny Watkinson · Answer

One of the most important, and often overlooked, factors when it comes to link building is the amount of traffic that the target website receives.
People focus heavily on arbitrary metrics such as domain authority or trust flow. However, much of the real benefit will be driven by whether the page linking to you is an active, commonly used page, or whether it is dead and outdated.
Google's API leak in 2024 revealed that they store content differently depending on how popular the page is, and the strength of a backlink will also be reflected in that.
A backlink from a page with many regular visitors will not only drive traffic but will also hold much more weight than one which is stale and scarcely visited. A high number of links from pages with little to no traffic is a telltale sign to Google that the links are not natural.

Alex Szwabowicz · Answer

Perhaps the easiest and safest way to build links is simply to create them yourself on platforms such as social media pages, directories, and websites you already own. The trade-off is that these links generally aren't rated as highly in terms of giving your site 'authority'.
There are still guidelines and best practices to follow here. For example, when creating your links, the words before and after can matter just as much as the link itself. Search engines need context for your links, so place them naturally in a sentence and avoid stuffing links where they don't belong. 
Google has become very user-focused, and that means your link building strategy should be too. Only put links in places where they are going to add genuine value to the reader. Try to think, "If I were to click on this anchor text, would I be happy with the page I was led to?"

8 Tips to Avoid Search Engine Penalties for Backlinks

Table of Contents

8 Tips to Avoid Search Engine Penalties for Backlinks

Diversify Your Backlink Anchor Text Profile

Pace Link Acquisition for Natural Velocity

Build Natural, Helpful Links to Relevant Content

Ensure Relevancy in Your Link Building

Create Newsworthy Content for Organic Citations

Publish Unique Research to Attract Links

Prioritize High-Traffic Pages for Backlinks

Create Self-Made Links with User Focus

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