6 Link Building Mistakes to Avoid

Alejandra | April 20, 2022

First things first, what’s link building? I’m sure you come across this term often when discussing search engine optimization, search engine rankings, and results pages.

Well, that’s because link building plays a huge factor in all of those points. The act of linking gives you the main purpose of increasing traffic and authority on your website.
 

The process involves the creation of links to your content, leading to other internal pages, or external, relevant websites. 

According to Conductor, out of all link-building tactics, 13% of SEO experts state that link building provides the most value.

A common example here would be backlinks. The backlinks you earn from other sites send a signal to Google that your site is worthy to be ranked higher because of its relevance. 

And once your rankings shoot up, you get new audiences to visit and engage with your site.

Sounds simple, right? But an effective strategy is key. 

You can’t just sprinkle links all over your content. Yes, it’s possible to get carried away and that can be absolutely detrimental to your website. 

You’ve got to keep in mind that there are improper and proper link building techniques. 

So in this blog, I’ll be giving you some tips about the 6 mistakes to avoid when it comes to linking. 

1. Links that lead to poor quality content 
   

No business would want to associate with websites that produce low-quality content.

This jeopardizes the rankings of both your website and the linked one. 

Once visitors don’t see the value in your content, you’ll immediately lose them and it’ll tell other websites to stay away from it.

And once this starts happening, your bounce rate would increase and this will tell Google to move your website down its ranking. 

Here’s a quick tip on how to avoid this: understand what low-quality content is and the factors that attribute to it. 

Here are some indicators: 

• Broken links

• Low word count

• Duplicate content

• Unorganized writing style 
  
  

2. Only linking to your homepage
   

This is a practice that Google may label as black hat SEO, which are violations done to increase a website’s search ranking. 

Link building should be natural. 

Merely linking to your homepage alone would make it appear as if you’re buying links. 

And once Google catches you, it’ll take a long process to be labeled as a trustworthy source again. 

This is why it’s best to link to various pages on your website. Plus, this leads your audience directly to the page they wish to land on.

3. Linking to irrelevant websites

Link relevance is the primary criterion of Google when it evaluates the quality of a backlink. Every link you build on your website has to have relevance to the topic of your content. 

Remember: the higher the relevance, the higher the page rank for the associated topic/terms.

4. Link spamming 
   

Building a lot of links on your website isn’t the best strategy to keep in mind. 

Some would think that linking to an abundance of high authority websites is key to making your own website sky-rocket, but this is considered link spamming. 

This would definitely get you in trouble with Google’s algorithm because they can easily pick up these excess duplicates and give your website a penalty. 

The golden rule I always keep in mind is quality over quantity. 

And don’t forget, it’s not necessarily all about link building, you have to let your audience focus on your website’s own content too. 

Still following? Let’s move to the next one.

5. Improper anchor texts 
   

Anchor texts are those words or phrases that contain a clickable hyperlink. 

You have to make sure that the text itself is optimized and natural. Similar to watch was mentioned previously, relevance is important.

When picking your specific anchor texts, you have to think about what you want to rank for and the keywords you aim to optimize. 

You could do some research and come up with a list of keywords relevant to your main topic and mix those in your anchor text in a natural way. 

A common mistake is also using exact match anchor texts. An example would be using the words “content marketing” for liking to a page about content marketing. 

It’s best to use partial-match anchor texts. This adds more variation to the keyword on the linked page. 

6. Not tracking your links’ performance
   

Lastly, if you don’t get the chance to track your links’ performance, you may be missing out on issues that need your attention. 

Like for instance, if the website you linked suddenly started receiving low visitors and engagements, or if you noticed that the quality seems to be decreasing. 

You have to pull that link out of your content immediately.

Regularly take note of the websites that are performing well and those that are underperforming. 

This would guide you in forming your SEO strategy. 

You may be interested to read this next blog: 6 Reasons Why SEO Matters During the Pandemic

Now, let’s conclude!

A lot of people make mistakes when it comes to link building. It needs to follow specific and strategic practices. 

If you avoid the 6 link building mistakes that we just went through, you have the chance to take your website to the next level, with higher rankings, authority, and reliability. 

Go ahead and reach out to us with your thoughts about link building! We’d love to hear them! 

And if your business is looking to revamp its SEO strategy, you can click the link here

to check out what deepconnex has to offer!