Two weeks ago, Google punished lyrics site Rap Genius for its spammy approach to SEO, or search engine optimization. Rap Genius had been caught in the act of encouraging bloggers to insert RG inbound links in their posts, which RG would then promote to their followers. The site made headlines when Google noticed and subsequently removed the site from search results.

This week, Google shows that it cares more about delivering results to users, than about endlessly punishing spammers, because Rap Genius is back in search results. Not without having done the necessary work, though. Over the past two weeks, Rap Genius has had to remove thousands of spammy links that directed back to their website.

You don’t want to spend time removing thousands of bad links in order to nullify a Google “manual action” to your site. So how can you avoid bad links, while still getting your site to rise to the top of search results relatively quickly?
Here are three SEO tips.

1. Guest Posting

One of the easiest ways to get strong inbound links, and clicks to your website besides, is through guest posting on other websites. If you are knowledgeable about your subject, there are likely many websites out there looking for a voice like your own to feature. Look for websites that focus on, and are knowledgeable regarding, your industry. This will ensure that they are a high quality site to host your links. Submit content to them, and make sure they allow links back to your own site.

2. Working With SEO Companies to Create Content

Another option, that is ideal for businesses that lack the time to write up relevant articles, is to pay an SEO company to do it for you. These SEO companies will create interesting posts that organically incorporate your relevant keywords, and contain inbound links to your website. They then place the content on a website that contains other relevant content. SEO services are useful because they cover multiple avenues of business — they can handle everything from SEO to promoting the content created for you on social media.

3. Blogging on Your Own Site

Did you know that 80% of businesses say that their blogs are important assets for their company? Many businesses owners don’t realize how beneficial blogs can be for their website. Content helps boost sites up in Google rankings. Think about it. If all other factors are equal, what’s more likely to hold relevant content for searchers — a website with one page, or 15? Google would usually guess the website with 15 pages. Blogging, in other words, increases the pages you have for search indexing.

Have you ever worked with SEO companies? Let us know in the comments. This is a great source for more.