Think before you link – here are 10 common link building mistakes.
Creating an effective link building strategy should be an important part of any online marketing plan but it can quickly go awry if it is not done within Search Engines specifications. Companies who use black SEO strategies to artificially boost their Search Engine results can even be penalised or banned from Google – here are some common link building mistakes you should avoid.
1. Building link profiles too quickly
Natural and organic link profiles build over time – slow and steady should always be your SEO mantra. Healthy link portfolios will have a balance of links to your homepage and deep pages, backlinks from a variety of relevant and quality sites, a good ratio of external and internal links and a variance of anchor text (see below). Search Engines may become suspicious if you have 1000s of backlinks just after launching your website.
2. Using link farms
Some time ago, a site with the ‘most links’ would have high Search Engine visibility and some unethical companies used what are commonly called ‘link farms’ to manipulate Search Engine results. A link farm is a website offering thousands of links, linking to everyone and anyone, without restrictions This is known as a black hat SEO strategy and can get your website penalised or even banned from Google.
3. Only targeting one keyword
Just like you optimise your landing pages for different keywords, your link building strategy must use varied keywords as anchor text. Use the most important keyword in your first link and then a mix of synonyms throughout the page. If you keep on using the same anchor text each and every time, it may suggest to Search Engines that you are trying to spam them through black hat SEO.
4. Linking to your homepage only
When users are searching for information your website offers, they will more than often land on a deep-page meaning it makes sense those have to be optimised as well – and linked to appropriately. A quality link building campaign should not only focus on linking to your homepage but also deep-linking to landing pages that are optimised for relevant keywords important to your business. Deep linking tells Search Engines what those pages are about and helps to get a broader range of pages appearing for various keyword phrases.
5. Getting an image link
An image linked back to your website may look great and encourage more people to click-through to your website but in terms of link juice, it is not as nearly as powerful as anchor text. If you have no choice but to receive an image link, don’t discount it altogether but at least ask the webmaster to include your keywords in the ALT text. The relevance and trust value of the web page the image is on is still a factor.
6. No link building consistency
It is also important when building a link profile with Search Engines to be consistent with your linking strategies and decide on whether you are using sitename.com or www.sitename.com as a destination URL, for example. Having a uniformed link profile keeps link juice focussed – linking to different types of URLs spreads out link goodness. Even if you have a non-www to www redirect, being consistent with link building URLs is important.
7. Caring more about quantity over quality
When it comes to link building, quality always wins over quantity. It is far better to have a few backlinks from relevant websites that can help drive targeted traffic to your website than thousands of links from off-topic sites that have little relevance. Backlinks should ideally come from relevant, trustworthy, credible websites with high authority. A link is also more valuable, if it comes from a page, which doesn’t have many external links.
8. Focusing on links that are not crawled
In the land of link building, there are two types of links; a no follow link bears the rel=”nofollow” attribute, carry little to no weight, and doesn’t count towards your overall link equity. While these links may drive traffic to your website, they have no effect on your rankings. Thus while developing your link portfolio, make sure that only a small percentage of your backlinks are ‘nofollowed’.
9. Neglecting internal link building
Quality internal links is also important with link building campaigns. The purpose of those links is to help users navigate your website and obtain further information; but Search Engines also crawl your website by following internal links. Moreover, linking to internal pages helps to more evenly distribute link juice throughout your site and helps raise the trust factor of all the web pages on your site.
10. No ongoing link maintenance
Like all SEO techniques, link building is not a ‘set and forget it’ strategy. Link building requires maintenance to keep on expanding your virtual network of backlinks. All things being equal, when two websites have a similar structure and content, the site with the best links will be served up first. As Search Engine ranking can change position from day to day, one way to keep abreast of your competitors is to focus on your link portfolio.
SEO Works’ dedicated team of link development analysts can assist you with creating an organic and natural link profile to help boost your Search Engine rankings. Through the years of experience in SEO, they have acquired a large database of websites, across a wide range of subjects and industries. Speak to one of their SEO consultants and find out more about the link building services they offer.
