How To Improve Your Google Rankings Without Getting Penalized: 5 Tips And Tricks + Infographic

If there's one word that describes black-hat SEO specialists, it would be "aggressiveness." Not only do they go against Google's guidelines, but they do it recklessly.

Back in 2010, you could add the pages you wanted links to a "backlink blaster"—a software that created spammy links automatically—and you would get hundreds of links in a few hours. It may seem far fetched, but that worked!

Those days are long gone. Google can identify pages that get an unnatural number of links from low-quality websites, leading to a penalization. This doesn't mean you can't build links aggressively as black-hat SEOs used to do; you can, but only if you build white-hat links with the right tactics, the right plan, and the right tools.

There are countless white-hat link building strategies you can use in 2020, but only a few allow for an aggressive implementation; guest posting is one of those. If you aren't sure what guest posting is all about, it's the act of publishing content in third-party sites in exchange for one or more links.

Guest posting is as old as SEO itself, but it has continued to work exceptionally well. For example, Shane Barker used guest posting to 12x his organic traffic under two years and rank for highly competitive keywords in the competitive digital marketing industry.

Here's how you can use guest posting to build links on scale:

To start, you need to develop a list of sites where you can publish your post on. To find these sites, you can use any of the following search queries:

"keyword" + "become a contributor"
"keyword" + "contribute"
"keyword" + "guest post by"
"keyword" + "guest post guidelines"
"keyword" + "submission guidelines"
"keyword" + "this guest post is from"
"keyword" + "this guest post was written"
"keyword" + "this is a guest article"
"keyword" + "this is a guest post by"
"keyword" + "write for us"
"keyword" + inurl:guest-posts
"keyword" + inurl:write-for-us

The more search queries and keywords you use, the more sites you will find.

The websites you find will result in hundreds of opportunities, many of which won't be relevant to your link building objectives. You want to verify every opportunity and see if it makes sense to pitch to them.

Visit every page you have found and manually verify their relevance by checking off the following points:

• The site openly states they accept guest posts;
  
• The site has published guest posts;
  
• The site allows for links in their guest posts;
  
• The site has high authority (more on that later on);
  
• The site publishes about topics relevant to your website's
  

Verifying the quality of the sites you found will increase the chances of pitching sites that will:

• Accept your guest post;
  
• Link to your site;
  
• Increase your Google keyword rankings.
  

After you verify the sites you want to pitch, you need to find the people you will contact—the "targets," as I call them—and their email addresses. There are several ways you can do so:

• See if their guest post guidelines page shares an email or submission form—if you find either one, your job is done;
  
• See who's the editor or content manager;
  
• See if they have a profile or "About" page where they share their email addresses.

My previous search found a website that openly states they accept guest posts; they even share an email address where I can send them my ideas:

If you can't find an email address or an editor, then you have to:

• Go to the company's LinkedIn page and manually find the editor—usually, that's the content manager;
  
• Plug in the site's address and editor's name in a tool like Hunter.

Add all the information you find on the list you created previously.

Finally, you need to write an email pitch to ask for an opportunity to write a guest post. Since you will pitch dozens of people at once, you can use a tool like GMass or Mailshake, which will automate everything for you.

When it comes to writing the email template, here's one you can use in your campaign:

Hey [NAME],

I'm [YOUR NAME], and [EXPLAIN WHAT YOU DO].

I know you like to publish in-depth articles with unique insights on [TOPICS THEY COVER]. I've come up with some ideas your audience will surely love to read:

• LIST YOUR IDEAS

What do you think? If you want me to cover other ideas, I'm happy to consider them.

Have a great day.

Best,
[YOUR NAME]

Repeat this process repeatedly, and you will get dozens of white-hat links per month and scale your link acquisition without getting penalized. If you plan to outsource your link building, make sure they follow this process to avoid any penalties.

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin invented Google's search engine algorithm, they considered links as "votes." The more links (votes) a page got, the higher it ranked in the search results. But this is no longer the case.

Take a look at the keyword "web promotion sites," which Serpstat ranks in the first position. While Serpstat's page doesn't have the most links, it has high-quality links that explain, among other factors, its first position.

Nowadays, Google puts a much higher emphasis into the authority a domain and page pass through a backlink than the number of backlinks a page receives. Think about it this way:

• Website A has high authority
  
• Website A creates a backlink on page A
  
• The backlink points to page B from website B
  
• Website A's backlink passes part of their authority to page B, something that it's known as "link equity" or "link juice"
  

The higher the equity a page receives—which can come from one or multiple pages from multiple websites—the higher the chances it will become authoritative on its own.

While the exact definition of authority hides deep in Google's ranking algorithm, you can get an approximation by using Serpstat Domain Rank backlink metric.

Instead of focusing on getting links from dozens, or even hundreds of websites, your link building efforts should be focused on acquiring links from relevant websites with high Domain Rank.

To build these links, Neal Taparia, who runs classic game site Solitaire, suggests researching overlapping topics journalists of top publications like to cover, and conducting some unique research around the topic.

His team, for example, surveyed what games like solitaire people were playing during the pandemic lockdowns because they noticed journalists often covered similar topics. They were able to use that primary research to get coverage in good publications.

Milosz Krasinski, Managing Director at web consulting company chillifruit.com, recommends a different approach:

Finally, don't ignore your internal links. According to Lukasz Zelezny, a London-based SEO consultant, internal linking is crucial to pass as much link equity to your most important pages from within your website. He recommends using WPA Auto Linker WordPress plugin, or InLinks, both of which help to propagate the right structure across a website.

Similarly, Jimmy Rodriguez, COO at 3dcart.com, recommends taking the following steps:

Google uses anchor text to identify the nature of a website and the page that receives a link. SEO theory states that the closer the anchor text is to a given keyword, the higher the chances the page will rank.

For example, my Grammarly review piece received over 20 links with the anchor text "Grammarly," which explains why it ranks high for several keywords that feature "Grammarly" in it.

In the past, SEO experts used to hack Google's algorithm by using the same keyword in the anchor text repeatedly. Nowadays, Google doesn't allow that anymore; the more unnatural the anchor text is, the more suspicion it will rise from Google.

To find the right balance, optimize your anchor text by mixing:

• Branded anchor text (e.g., "Serpstat")
  
• Exact-match anchor text (e.g., "SEO tool")
  
• Phrase-match anchor text (e.g., "best SEO analysis tool")
  
• Broad-match anchor text (e.g., "tool for SEO")
  
• "Raw" anchor text (e.g., "https://serpstat.com/)

If you see that your link building isn't generating positive results, or even worse, your site is losing its rankings, it may be due to an over-reliance on exact-match anchor text.

Add your domain to an SEO tool like Serpstat and analyze all your inbound links' anchor text. Focus on your highest linked pages and their respective anchor texts.

In the example above, Nike's website shows a concentration of branded anchor text, which Google doesn't penalize. But if one post or product page with dozens or hundreds of links has two or three anchor texts, most of which look the same, then that's a warning sign you need to fix immediately.

In this case, reach out to these sites, and ask them to replace the anchor text with a phrase or broad match one. Also, make sure your link building efforts mix your anchor text, so Google doesn't penalize your site.

This may look surprising to you, but you don't need to use any illegal on-site optimization trick to be a victim of Google's hammer. Your website can be penalized simply by over-optimizing your on-site.

As you know, on-site page optimization is the process of adding the desired keyword to rank for in different parts of your pages, including:

• The title tag
  
• The URL
  
• The content
  
• The alt-tag
  
• The H1, H2, and H3 subheadings
  
• The internal links.

According to Google, "you should build a website to benefit your users, and any optimization should be geared toward making the user experience better."

In other words, you want to optimize your website for your visitors, not for Google's bots. If you add your exact-match keyword too many times—and unnaturally so—Google will know there's something off, which will cause a penalization.

If you have already done any on-site optimization to your pages, or plan on doing so, balance the use of your keywords. You can manually search for your top keyword to see how many times it gets repeated; alternatively, you can use a tool like TextOptimizer to assist you.

Let's take as an example of how this link building company optimizes their page copy towards the keyword "link building services."

Not only do they mention the exact keyword three times in their headings, but they also repeat it in the text five times—that's without counting the other phrase and broad match variations. If you read the text, it doesn't make any sense. No human would ever read those paragraphs and be convinced to work with that company.

The fact the page is on page 7 shows it worked for the company, but it won't work to get them anywhere close to the top 10.

To balance your on-site optimization, add your page into Serpstat's One Page Audit, and fix all the mistakes the tool finds.

In the case you have over-optimized your pages, here's what you can do:

• Re-optimize your content following Google's Quality Guidelines
  
• Redirect the page to a new one that's not over-optimized

Optimize your on-site by adding the keywords in each of the places mentioned before, but don't abuse it. Remember to optimize for your readers, not for Google.

For the past few years, Google has drifted the way they structure their ranking algorithm, focusing on a page's on-site elements to page speed and usability.

In 2010, Google publicly stated that page speed had become a ranking factor, albeit "focused on desktop searches" only. Eight years later, Google announced that speed also affected mobile searches.

Besides, the traditional link building and on-site optimization discussed previously, you want to make your website fast. To start, check your website speed with Google's PageSpeed Insights or Serpstat's one-page audit feature.

Thanks to the latter, I found the following problems with my website:

To fix the most common and essential speed issues, here's what you need to do:

• Enable File Compression. Compress your files with Gzip, a software application that reduces the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files over 150 bytes.
  
  
• Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. This means you remove any spaces, commas, and unnecessary characters from your code.
  
  
• Leverage Browser Caching. This allows visitors to reuse files that they have already loaded in their browser in previous visits.
  
  
• Use a CDN: CDNs, or content distribution networks, are networks of servers that allow you to distribute your files all over the world. This allows for faster upload of files.
  
  
• Optimize Your Images. Use JPEG whenever possible, as they are often smaller in size, and use lossless compression. You can use a tool like ImageOptim to do the work for you.

Some of these changes require a site-wide optimization, while others—like image optimization—require a constant optimization. As you increase the speed of your website, you can expect an improvement in your rankings.

Google doesn't like website owners who like to trick their algorithm; they want websites that create high-quality content that helps their users. The tips and tricks you saw here are a reminder that to rank your website without getting penalized by Google, you have to:

• Use scalable white-hat link building tactics like guest posting and partner-based link building.
  
  
• Build links from authoritative sites that have a high TrustRank and PageRank.
  
  
• Use natural anchor text; mix exact match with broad and phrase match.
  
  
• Don't over-optimize your pages; optimize for your visitors, not for Google.
  
  
• Optimize your website speed.

As you implement these tactics, you will start to improve your website's rankings and see an increase in your organic traffic. Better yet, you will keep your positions for years to come, and that's what makes Google an incredible traffic acquisition channel.