Most Common Link Building Mistakes to Avoid

In order to improve your search engine rankings, you need to optimize your website and have several links pointing back to it. The number of links will actually work as popularity votes, and that’s why it is important to pay attention to conducting a successful link-building campaign to boost your search engine rankings. What you should bear in mind is that, unlike in the past, you simply cannot get better rankings by having hundreds of thousands of links pointing back to your website – now, you also have to pay attention to quality. It is due to the latest Google Panda and Penguin updates that you should be extremely careful when conducting a link-building campaign, or else you will find yourself in serious trouble.

Here are a few common mistakes you should avoid in improving your rankings.

Spamming Links onto Comment Sections and Forums

It is a common mistake and is going to hurt you whether you do it using a robot or handle things manually. These links are no longer effective; in fact, they break within days and leave a negative effect on your SEO. Moreover, the search engines are prepared to take these as ‘strong’ links, which is why this will only be a waste of time. Above all, you will have a hard time determining if you’re adding links in comment sections that have ‘no-follow’ or ‘do-follow’ tags.

Similarly, you should avoid spamming your links on to forums. There are certain benefits of doing this, but the negative effects are quite serious. You can definitely find easier ways of getting links, such as publishing articles to article sites, etc.

Sticking with the Same Anchor Text

This is only going to penalize your website. The reason is that now the quality of your links is more important than quantity. Now you cannot impress Google with hundreds of links placed everywhere. Moreover, you won’t get any SEO benefits if you use the same anchor text for different links. It means you shouldn’t be linking to different sites using the same anchor text or it will be considered spamming.

Building links from Irrelevant Sites

 You shouldn’t be doing this, as it can affect your SEO campaign in a negative way. You can improve your rankings only with a well-optimized link profile, and there is no room for irrelevant links. It is worth mentioning that along with saying no to links from irrelevant sites, you should also avoid linking to a page that is not in line with the content or theme of your current page. What it means is that there might be a site relevant to your website but the page where you are going to place your link doesn’t say anything about the content you have on your web page.

Using Non-Descriptive Anchor Text

Many people think they can trick the search engine with this technique, but that’s not the case actually. Your link needs to have a descriptive anchor text, which means it should tell others where the link will take them to or what the landing page contains. This often confuses your audience and makes them skeptical about clicking your link – this also keeps you from getting maximum SEO benefits.

Making Use of Cloaking and Spam Bots

Again, it feels as if you’ll be able to deceive the search engine with this technique, but that’s not the case. By cloaking, you will be making your SEO campaign less effective. In case you really want to use this technique in a constructive way, you should rely on a high-quality widget to do it, as they often help you handle the task without breaking the search engine rules.

At the same time, you should keep yourself from using spambots. Even if you think you’re using the most sophisticated bots, you will still fail to yield enough results. By relying on these, you’re actually taking an unprofitable risk, as if you are caught, you will have your website banned for life.

Picking an SEO Firm at Random

It is a good idea to leave the task of conducting a successful link-building campaign to an expert rather than trying your own knowledge and making a mess of it. The only thing you should bear in mind is that you should never select a company at random. What it means is that you should conduct thorough research and ensure that the company you’re going to hire enjoys a good reputation and knows how to help your website using White-Hat SEO techniques. Leaving your site in the hands of rookies will make you pay heavily, so take your time and conduct your research before putting your money on an SEO firm.