Search Engine Optimization

Most of you are well aware that link-building is one of the most important aspects of SEO. But gaining credible, relevant link popularity is not as easy as it sounds. Link-building can be very expensive and time-consuming, so make sure your efforts are worthwhile by avoiding the 8 most common link-building mistakes below.

#1 Failing to Use Anchor Text or Using Worthless Anchor Text

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when building links is using worthless anchor text such as, “click here” or “read more.” Anchor text needs to contain target keywords if you want to improve your site’s search engine rankings. Furthermore, anchor text is supposed to help search engine spiders determine what your website is about, so make sure to use anchor text that’s relevant.

#2 Getting Links from Unrelated Websites

If your website is about cooking, you need to get backlinks from websites about cooking in order to increase your search engine ranking. If you don’t get backlinks from sites that are relevant to your niche, you’re wasting your time.

#3 Getting Links from Websites with Poor Reputations

Be sure to check the reputation of a website before getting a link from it, so you don’t unknowingly become associated with a bad online neighborhood. If your website becomes associated with websites that engage in black hat SEO techniques or other questionable practices, your website could end up getting penalized by the search engines.

#4 Only Building Links on Sites with a High Page

RankingTry to get backlinks both from sites with low page rankings and high page rankings because it looks natural. Plus, the sites with low page rankings could end up having higher page rankings in the long run.

#5 Building Links on Websites That Cannot Be Crawled

Search engine bots are still not capable of crawling websites made with Flash or JavaScript. They also can’t read text links within frames, so don’t waste your time building links on websites that are Flash generated or framed.

#6 Blatantly Buying Links

Although everyone keeps quiet about it, link buying is alive and well. Just make sure that if you buy links, you do it discreetly and cover up your footprints. Google has declared war on paid links and may de-index your site if you are found out.

#7 Valuing Quantity over Quality

Think that 500 links is better than 50? If you answered yes, think again. One link from a high quality source is far more valuable than 20 links from questionable sources. Generally, the harder it is to get a link, the more valuable it is. Focus on creating great content, networking, and guest posting to garner high caliber links.

#8 Accumulating Links from No Follow Sites

Links with the no follow attribute will not help you improve your site’s ranking. Building links on no follow sites is only worthwhile if they can bring you significant traffic. In terms of search rankings, however, no follow links are totally useless