As an SEO, you likely spend a fair amount of time managing and building links. Link building is key to driving traffic and ranking higher in search results.
There are many ways to build links through guest posting services and it’s important to have a solid understanding of how link building works, as well as the risks involved in order to minimise harm and maximise your efforts. There are plenty of examples of link builders who’ve built links that ended up harming their site or received penalties from Google. Link building is not easy, but it’s also not rocket science. There are a few common-sense rules that can make it go much more smoothly and produce better results. Here are 9 of the biggest mistakes people make in this area:
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1. Not knowing what you want and how to get it
Building links is often just a matter of asking nicely. But in order to be successful, you have to know what you’re asking for. That requires understanding which links will be valuable to your site, and why.
Once you identify the goal of your link building efforts and the type of links that will help you achieve it, it’s time to consider your approach. Will you ask webmasters to link directly to your site? Will you create content that they’ll find valuable so they’ll link to it? What kind of outreach will be required through Link Building services? If a campaign is going to succeed, all these questions need to be answered before work begins.
2. Not doing enough research
Link building is all about relationships — with other websites, with people who can influence those sites and with the algorithms controlling search engines. And like any relationship, you don’t want to jump into it without getting to know your partner first.
3. Not having a link building strategy
The first thing you need to do before starting a link building campaign is to create a strategy. You need to understand which links your website needs, how and why your target audience needs them and what type of content you are going to create to attract those links. Without a solid strategy, your efforts will not bring long-term results.
4. Focusing on quantity over quality
When building links, focus on getting relevant and high-authority websites linking back to your site instead of just trying to hit some numerical goal (e.g., getting 100 new links per month). A few high-quality links will have more impact than many low-quality ones.
5. Anchor Text Overuse
If every link going to your website has the exact same anchor text, it will look suspicious to Google. The keywords you’re trying to rank for should be used sparingly, and there should be plenty of links with different text that describes what’s on the linked page.
6. Not Building Links at All!
This is one of the first mistakes that newbie SEOs make. They try to rank their websites without building backlinks. Unless you have a brand-new site (few days old) or targeting low competition keywords, you need links to rank on first page of Google.
7. Building Backlinks Too Fast
Another common mistake is to build backlinks too fast. Many people use automated tools and spam techniques to build links quickly. This can cause a massive damage to your site if done wrong way. If you are building links manually then don’t build more than 10-20 links per day and if you are using software or any other method then don’t build more than a couple of links per day.
8. Not making connections
The best way to build links is through networking and making connections with other bloggers or webmasters who like your content and want to share it on their own websites or social media platforms. You will have to reach out to them and communicate with them. This process will take time and effort, but it’s worth it because the links that you gain from this will be of higher quality than others.
9. Creating low-quality content
If you’re trying to build links by creating low-quality content that’s full of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, people aren’t going to want to link back to your website. They won’t even want to read the content in the first place, since they’ll think your business is unprofessional and unreliable.