Are your link building campaigns not delivering the results you expect out of them? And that all your efforts towards making them click are in vain? You are not the only one. To be fair, many understand the value of link building but are not quite sure when it comes to how to go about business. And to be honest, link building has always been and probably will be an integral part of a successful SEO campaign. Below, we have compiled a list of the most common link building mistakes people are involuntarily committing, mostly. Have a read and get straight to work. It’s only a matter of time your efforts, time, and energy will start reaping benefits.
1. Overlooking Search Intent
Focusing on Search Intent or User Intent is one of the best practices you can follow to ensure your SEO campaign, the time and money associated with it doesn’t go down the drain. Without Search Intent in mind, your content strategy would be rendered moot, having you lose out on high, relevant traffic from users who could very well be your long-term customers.
2. Ignoring On-page SEO
Once you have the Search Intent in place, On-page audit and optimization should follow naturally. And yet, it is surprising that just how many of them take this all-important aspect of a successful SEO campaign too lightly or overlook it altogether. The keywords, the meta tags, optimized images, ALT text, the title tags; it’s all so simple and yet ignored. Advice: don’t ignore.
3. Not making High-quality Content a Priority
If this aspect is mentioned again, it is because High-quality content is not a priority for many websites out there. Rather, quantity of content is, no matter how low-quality it is or how many times it has been spun around. You. Can’t. Go. Long. If your content is not unique, well-written, and adds high value for your audience as well as search engines. It also goes hand-in-hand with the above two points. You can’t do one without the other.
4. Bad Outreach Strategy
Nothing worse than when you have all the talent and resources at your disposal and then falter at communicating it to people responsible for linking to you. Which is why, while sending a email pitch to a prospect, make sure the duo of email Subject and its body are synced, with very direct and specific but personal, communicating the benefits clearly and crisply to the party.
5. Not Having Diversified Link Building Strategy
Building only one or few kind of links can lead you into trouble that you may find immensely difficult to get out of. Instead, try and build a diversified and healthy link profile. Having many types of backlinks means not leaving a trail for Google to sniff out and follow it back to you. And therefore not penalize you. As Mando would put it, this is the way.
6. Not Having Diversified Anchor Texts
If you use the same anchor text to build many a link, sooner or later you are bound to face penalty from Google, thinking of it as a black hat strategy. Instead, use several combinations of the anchor text with keyword variations to keep it all relevant. The key is to do it the natural way, or at the very least make it appear natural.
7. Getting Links from Poor or Irrelevant Websites
These includes websites that are in no way connected to your niche, directly or indirectly, unsecured websites, mistakenly building links from no-index pages, websites that are as good as dead on social media platforms, and pages with high number of outbound links. Instead, try to get links from websites that are relevant to your niche and have High DA and rankings.
8. Building Too Many Links Too Quickly
Too much of anything is always a bad thing, especially when it comes to pointing too many links to your website too quickly. It’s a malpractice that Google frowns upon and takes strict actions against. Whether the links come from one website or many, both are equally harmful to your website’s SEO health. Instead of high numbers, focus on high quality from High DA websites.
9. Not Cleaning Up Poisonous Links
These are usually the backlinks that end up doing more harm than good to your overall link building strategy. These are unnatural, spammy-looking, irrelevant links that harm a website’s search engine rankings. Sometimes, people use it as a negative tactic to derank a competitor’s website and gain unfair advantage. Use tools like Search Console or SEMrush to kick suspicious links out of the equation.
10. Excessive Link Trading
Link trading in itself is a practice you should be avoiding in the first place, unless you have a mutual respect for each other’s work and are certain that trading links would benefit both in a harmless sort of way. The content should appeal to both the websites in questions and moreover, should add value for the audience of both. Read the whole thing again and take a note of all the mistakes you are guilty of making. The idea is purely to keep you off making them again and gain some higher rankings and traffic you’ve been yearning for. All the best!