You cannot have a comprehensive and competent SEO plan without link building in the mix. In simple words, link building is the process of gaining backlinks from niche sites to your website, in hope of getting referral traffic and improving rankings. While some SEO experts pointed out that link building may not be relevant anymore, it’s probably the biggest myth. Search engines love links, and links have a big role to play in search engine algorithms.
In this post, we are sharing some of the common link building mistakes that every website needs to avoid.
- Linking to wrong websites, or sites with bad repute
Remember than your eventual goal is to have a natural backlink profile, and for that, you have to choose relevant, niche and authority websites. Ensure that your posts are only published on such sites, and not any website with a bad repute (think of auto-blogging or porn sites, for instance). Links that you gain from such sites hardly does any good to your SEO efforts, and sadly, many SEO companies are still using this practice to show clients that they are producing a lot of backlinks. To identify the best matching sites and anchor texts, use a backlink software, such as SEO Jet, which has a bunch of handy features for link building.
- Using city names in anchor text
It’s true that you have to optimize for local searches, but if you are opting to rank the city name in the anchor text and reap results, you may not succeed. Cities or locations cannot be considered keywords in the truest sense. Instead, Google relies on the IP address and other details from the website to find business locations. Using the city name in the anchor text is a red flag in itself. It also doesn’t look natural. Keep in mind that backlinks have to be natural and must fit in the content easily, not stick out.
- Using contents having 500 words
Unfortunately, for a while, a 500 word guest post has become the norm of sorts, and it doesn’t really count as a good practice in link building. Think of this – there are millions of such posts on the web, and you may ask why ‘500’. That’s because the profit margin is high, and most guest posting service don’t need to put in a lot of effort to write such contents. At the same time, don’t expect a lot when you are using smaller contents less than 500 words. So, how many words should a guest post contain? Ideally, 750 words. That’s the benchmark. Long contents that have been researched well are your best bet.
- Using low quality content
Your link building efforts are useless, if you don’t use good, quality content. You have to ‘create’ content and not generate posts. In case you plan to use a guest posting service, ensure that you do a thorough check on how they create contents, whether they have an in-house team of writers, and if they can handle your website’s unique needs. Your content must have something for the target readers, and that’s the essence of writing good guest posts.
- Believing that publishing content every week is a must
This is a common myth about link building. Should you really aim at gaining links that way? Not really. What you need is good, amazing content, which can generate curiosity and get your audience engrossed. If you write content that stands out once in two weeks and promote it extensively, you are likely to get more traffic. So, how frequently should you publish? We recommend that you consider your budget and work with the guest posting service to come up with a plan. As we had mentioned earlier, using a reliable backlink software is always handy to gain insight into link building process.
Final word
Among the other link building mistakes is the lack of having a clear content strategy. Many SEO agencies actually don’t have a strategy in the first place, and they don’t even plan their work, so obviously the guest posting service they are working with is equally confused. Make sure that you work on your link building strategy and contents in a planned manner. Don’t shy away from taking risks, and always associate with relevant sites that have something to do with your niche. Authority sites mean nothing if they are not niche or relevant to your website.
Check online now to find more on guest posting and link building tools. Ensure that your contents are backed by solid background work.
