All seasoned SEO experts understand the significance of quality content and links in curating a well-defined and targeted SEO strategy. While creative content is always king, links are an enormously significant ranking factor determining a website’s visibility and authority.
It is important to note that the wrong link building practices can prompt Google’s algorithm to downgrade your website. Or worse, trigger a manual action. For instance, a decade ago, press releases were immensely popular in the SEO industry and considered a sure-shot trick. However, as publishing press releases got heavily abused, Google’s algorithms picked them up as an easily manipulated link scheme. Today, SEO experts are keen on avoiding press release links to circumvent a Google penalty.
Moving on, this article will walk you through the bad link building practices that can harm your website and its credibility on search engines.
The results of your link building efforts will only bring in returns when they are well-strategized and contemplated. Are you randomly incorporating links and paying huge sums of money for your link building efforts? Are you incorporating data-driven insights to understand the leads generated by your link building efforts?
It is essential to obtain insights and use data-driven analytics to conduct a site audit. SEO experts must coordinate their link building efforts and put together a scheduled strategy. This will help them target their efforts at a specific audience and generate higher ROIs. Small business owners that cannot afford to outsource can invest in the best site audit tool. Such a tool will prove immensely helpful in streamlining link building efforts and generating actionable insights. These insights can be reincorporated in a refined strategy to boost SEO returns in terms of authority and visibility.
If you’re only linking to the homepage, you’re making a colossal mistake. You see, it is essential to get links to various pages across your website rather than focusing solely on the homepage. If you continue receiving links to your homepage, it will defy the entire purpose of building authority and credibility via value addition. Google algorithms and bots will quickly identify this as a spammy activity.
When another website writes about your business and adds a link to your homepage, it appears appropriate. However, it is better when another website links your product pages, blog, or news pages.
It is crucial to put together a link building strategy that mimics a natural way of incorporating links carrying information. SEO experts are advised to be highly specific while linking pages to boost lead generation and conversions. Linking key product pages or informative content pages helps to generate maximum results.
Have you been paying for certain links? This is by far the worst link building strategy, and experts strongly recommend against it. Buying large volumes of links from companies that claim to improve your rankings is a hoax.
You see, a high-quality link from a credible and premium quality website is all that matters. Are you wondering whether Google can detect your little secret? It cannot, but it still isn’t the appropriate way to get the results you seek.
If a company or SEO expert has sold one high-quality link to you, other entities will also buy from the same source. While one link wouldn’t do much harm, Google will quickly detect multiple links on a website. This can put your website at risk of a manual penalty or warning. Now you wouldn’t want that, would you?
Are you recycling the same content on different websites? This is both a terrible and lazy strategy! The purpose of link building is to build authority and credibility for your business, products, or content. Links published on high-quality and authoritative websites will lend you trust and authority.
However, if you’re publishing the same content on different websites, you’re defying the purpose. An article that contains similar paragraphs or phrases with a few differences is still duplicated content. If you repeat this trick multiple times, it will backfire. Recycling your content is a destructive practice that will do more harm than good. There are no shortcuts to link building, and you will have to put in the effort to create new content for each website and refreshing your content to offer value. After all, creativity is the driving force of SEO success.
Most SEO professionals tend to neglect social media engagement entirely while focusing on link building. Are you wondering how social media fits into your link building strategy?
It is often difficult to identify social media links that can boost your website’s ranking. However, if you receive multiple links from websites and none from social media, it would appear fishy to Google’s algorithms. It is crucial to carve out a harmonious balance as a sudden influx of website links will appear fraudulent. Google will quickly identify this activity as spam and potentially thrust a penalty or warning your way. All your efforts could end up going to waste. Divide your link-building efforts across multiple platforms, such as Facebook, websites, tweets, Instagram, and more.
It is crucial to put together natural, original, and well-thought links as opposed to fake links. The underlying purpose of link building is to facilitate the users of a website by offering value in terms of content or products. If your links do not benefit your users, they are worthless and spammy. The links should align with a web page’s content and guide your users towards other, relevant pages.
You see, your link building strategy is an essential element of your marketing mix. It is aimed at making your website experience more interactive and immersive. Links help users find your products or content more efficiently, thereby enhancing website navigation. However, if you’re focused on stuffing as many fake links as possible, relevance will undoubtedly take a backseat. You know what they say, you can’t fake it till you make it!
Link building efforts should always focus on relevance, usefulness, precision, and creativity. SEO experts must ensure that the links support a business’s aim to offer utility and value. The link placed on a web page must indicate something: a call to action, relevant information, or a product page. It should serve a purpose, either to offer valuable information or generate leads and boost conversions. If you’ve simply posted a link to appease Google and it doesn’t receive any clicks, it’s useless, and you need to STOP being useless!