Link Building Mistakes That Can Cost You
Link building happens to be one of the most critical SEO elements that determines how well your page will rank in the search engines. However, there is a right and wrong way to build links and if you don’t do it right, your website rank will suffer. Many new webmasters don’t do their homework and start off on the wrong track, put in hours and hours of hard work and later come to realize that they were doing it the wrong way. Building links ethically and with proper planning leads to long term results and gives you an edge over the competition. So if you’re beginning your Internet marketing career, there are a few link building mistakes that you need to avoid if you want to get high quality traffic without the unnecessary headaches. Let’s look at some of these frequently made link building mistakes.
Honest link exchanges are one way that you can build good quality links in a white hat manner. However, you have to use caution before spending money on any link building efforts, as not everyone is honest. Some links seem like a good deal until you later find that they turn out to be “no follow” or that they disappear altogether after a short time. Always remember to verify that any links you purchase are “do follow” and that they are still there after you pay for them. Don’t make the mistake of blindly trusting someone to buy a backlink, do your research first.
The most frequently made backlinking mistake is probably failing to recognize that quality is more important than quantity. Logically, 5 links should count more than 1 link. But the search engines work differently, as they give a lot of importance to the source of the link. Quality matters more than quantity here. As an example, having a large number of links from poorly regarded, spammy sites is not nearly as good as having one single link from an authority site with a high page rank. The best kinds of links of all to get are those that are from well ranked sites in your own niche; these are much better than a high number of low quality links. The search engines can even penalize you for using blackhat link building tactics, which is what they consider having too many links of a low quality. The apparent shortcuts when it comes to link building won’t help you in the long run. If you want long term success, build it gradually by creating a high quality site and exchanging links with other good sites.
Another thing to watch for is the site’s reputation that you are linking to. In other words, the site, which used to be on a decent scale, starts to run adult ads and other racy content. Make it a habit to inspect any site that has a link on one of your pages.
Finally, I would like to tell you that link building is a very powerful SEO strategy that will give you a big advantage if done properly. In time, you will become an expert link builder.
