Link Building Death Traps To Avoid

Link building plays an important role in off-page SEO. If you are starting a backlink building campaign, you must attract quality backlinks. Remember, quality. These backlinks can help you rank well in search engines. It is imperative that you learn what mistakes need to be avoided. Digging your way out of negative rankings can prove to be challenging. Here’s what you shouldn’t do while link building:

Don’t Use Sitewide Links

Some web developers add site-wide footer links on their clients’ sites. For example, “Get Your Own Website Today” or “Web Development Company U.S.” If you do this, the risk of getting penalized by the Penguin algorithm is higher. One is not allowed to use too many exact anchor text match backlinks. wpmu.org is a good example of a site getting hit by this algorithm. If you have been doing this, now’s the time to stop.

If you are still managing a client’s site, it is a good idea to convert any site wide links you see into nofollow links. Alternatively, you can remove them. The idea is to avoid getting sidewide links via outdated methods like widgets and plugins. They no longer work and can cause more harm than good.

Don’t Forget About Anchor Text

Anchor text still play a major role in today’s time. Instead of using your site name, using targeted keywords as the anchor text can help you rank well for that keyword. Remember, words such as “Check This Out,” “Click Here Now,” etc. won’t do any good for you.

Getting backlinks from high PR sites is important. The backlinks, however, must be related to your targeted keywords. This way, you can boost your ranking.

Don’t Link to Sites with Poor Reputations

If you receive an email from a website owner pertaining to backlinks, don’t accept the offer right away. It is imperative that you check the site’s reputation. Remember to do your research:

• Is it an illegal site?
• Is it a porn site?
• Is it a duplicate content site?
• Is it a spam site?

Search engines such as Google are not fine with these sites. If you link to them, your site’s reputation will be affected. Most of the time, black-hat SEO companies utilize this technique to inject negative SEO into other websites.

Don’t Focus on Getting Nofollow Links

Nofollow links do not work on Google. The search engine has officially clarified it will ignore the nofollow tag. If you are aiming to rank in search engines like Google, spend time getting dofollow incoming links instead. For starters, you can target dofollow forums. However, nofollow links are not completely useless. You can continue building them if you are planning to rank top in Bing.

Don’t Keep Stagnant Links on Your Website

Link signals do not last forever. After a certain period of time, they may start to decay. This concept applies to popular websites because even they can go stale when they stop earning new links. Today, the freshness of a link is also a judgment factor in terms of link relevance. When it’s time to put together blog posts, always keep the freshness factor in mind. It’s a good practice to choose reference links that are less than two years old. The age, however, varies from topic to topic.