There are all sorts of strategies that marketers can use in order to generate traffic back to their websites. One of the oldest and most solid strategies is link building. Link building can be conducted in a few ways, but when it’s performed correctly, the marketer will experience an increase in site traffic, and hopefully, site conversions.
With this said, there are certainly wrong ways to go about link building. As you discover what you need to know about link building, consider the following mistakes that others have made on your behalf so that you don’t have to fall into the same traps:
Spammy, irrelevant link trades
When it comes to what you need to know about link building, if nothing else, please don’t engage in practices that would be considered spammy in the attempt to generate a bunch of links back to your site. This includes link-bombing social media groups, forums, or social media posts.
And keep in mind that Google penalizes irrelevant links, too. For example, if your company is known for selling athletic gear, then reaching out to a blogger that publishes a home and garden publication for a link would be considered an irrelevant match, because the two industries have little to nothing to do with each other!
Linking from sites with no juice
If you want to win at link building, then you should be generating links to or from high-authority sites. On the other hand, linking to or from low-respect, low-authority sites will only hurt your efforts to rank higher on Google in the SERP. Some circles have referred to this passing of authority as passing “Link Juice.” Now it is also known as link equity.
Spammy anchor texts with no keywords
Let’s take a quick look at what anchor text is. The anchor text is usually located at the bottom of a web page, and it contains hyperlinked text that leads the end user to another website page. For example, if a marketer wanted to lead readers of a fishing publication to their fishing and tackle website, then they’d create relevant anchor text at the bottom of their marketing content article, or blog post.
Ideally, the anchor text should contain a highly-targeted keyword. However, new and careless marketers either forget to select a keyword for the anchor text, or they’ll create anchor text that contains spammy, irrelevant wording.
And here’s another anchor text mistake: it’s common for marketers to use keywords unnaturally in their anchors. For example, the marketer might use the same keyword or phrase at the bottom of all of their text content, whether or not the keyword or phrase is relevant to what was posted.
Linking to or from sites on Google’s bad list
It’s crucial for marketers to make sure that the sites they’re linking to and from aren’t being punished by Google. Otherwise, the linked site will also become guilty by association.
Creating a link building strategy that allows you to accomplish your goals isn’t hard to do, but it does require a time investment. But at the same time, using incorrect and unethical link strategies take up even more time, so why not avoid them altogether?
