Link Building Mistakes which Every Webmaster Should Avoid!

Links are crucial for the ranking of any website, but since the Penguin updates of Google, we all are now aware that quality links matters a lot for the SEO purposes of any website. Read on this blog post of mine on link building mistakes which every webmaster should avoid.

I being an SEO have seen many up and down in the SEO industry. Major ones were certainly after Penguin and Panda updates of Google, which actually transformed the entire SEO industry.

There was a time when I saw SEO’s running towards building as many links as possible. Sometimes they use to create 2-3 secondary websites from the same niche to support their link building campaigns. They use to offer links from those websites to the webmaster who accepts giving a link to their main websites.

I sometimes surprise to see such mails on my mail id:

Hi, This is So***.
Are you interested in link exchange with a PR 5 website? I have a Page Rank 5 Blog http://xxxxxxxxxxx.**/
I am looking for some one way back links to one of my younger blog http://XXXXX.com.
If you add a link to http://XXXXX.com in your website, I will give you a homepage dofollow backlink from my PR5 blog (http://xxxxxxxxxxx.**/)
The backlink from my PR 5 blog will be dofollow and will be placed in my homepage. I hope you will do the same.
High PR backlink increase the value of your blog and will bring you more traffic by helping you rank higher in search engines.
If you are interested in getting this high PR backlink, simply add the link to http://XXXXX.com with the anchor text ***** in your website/blog and reply to “*************@gmail.com”.

I received the mail a few days back only, and usually receive so many such mails. I just wonder if these things are still working for some guys.

Link Building Mistakes which Every Webmaster Should Avoid!

Link Building Mistakes which Every Webmaster Should Avoid!

Here are some mistakes which every webmaster should avoid while doing link building for their website:

Link Exchange

Thanks to the Penguin updates by Google, webmasters are now a bit aware of the side effects of exchanging links with other websites. Though if you read the above mail, it is a scenario in which both my site and the other site whom I am linking to from my site will get one-one links and there will be absolutely no connection between the three links in first instance. So many people might show interest in such link exchanges.

But honestly soon it will form a pattern and Google has all the ability to track such patterns and penalize your website.

There was a time when “you scratch my back and I will do the same for you” was working, but not now. Now a day’s such types of link exchange might penalize your website and your site will be out of the Google search results.

Though on a serious note, doing such kind of exchanges are not that much bad too, unless you are getting quality links. Now the meaning of quality has changed badly during recent times. You should get links from a relevant page, which has full of quality content supporting your website’s concept and having very few outbound links, or a few outbound links to some quality websites.

Don’t overdo such things but yes getting a few quality links in a month will not harm your website.

Paid Links

As I said above that you can get a few quality links for your website, but the major concern is that how can you get those links?

Many people use to pay for such links. To be very frank, it is like doing suicide. If you want to kill your own website, then you can go for it.

I think I can write a separate post on how we can get quality links for our website that too without paying anything. On this blog we will stay tuned to link building mistakes only.

So to continue the same discussion, I must say, you should neither give a link back from your website nor pay something to get a quality links for your website.

Article Directory Sites

Links from pages having relevant and good quality content is considered as a good link building tactics and hence many SEO’s and webmaster still goes for publishing their content on article directory sites. Though a poor quality article directory site might harm the reputation of your website and hence submitting your articles on such article directory sites should be avoided.

Low Quality Web Directories

There was a time when web directories were considered as the number one source of link building for any website. Now a day’s human edited web directories can be considered safe to submit your website, but you must need to be cautious about building links through web directory sites. Be cautious to see which sites are featuring in your categories, if quality sites are listed there with quality information, then only you should go ahead to submit your own website.

Developing a quality web directory is not an easy task, so you cannot expect all the web directories as a quality web directory one.

Poor Quality Social Bookmarking Sites

A site which approves and displays links to your website without going through any verification is actually harmful to get a link towards your website. We should thus ignore such websites. Poor quality social bookmarking sites are of the same nature. You submit a link and see your link is live within seconds.

We should always submit our website to quality social bookmarking sites which has some editorial policies. Sites which approve any link after going through different quality guidelines must be considered as a good quality site.

Blog Comments Links

These links are also considered as poor quality, if you are posting comments like “Good Post”, “Great Post”, “Superb content”, etc. types of comment. Always try to grab quality links for your website, if you are using blog comments for this purpose, chose the blog after much consideration, and post comments which can be useful, which should not look like spam comments.

In case if you are leaving a short comment, then in that case I would suggest you all to not leave your link with the comment. Also never use your website’s name for giving a comment, it is always better to comment with your real name. You can also read my blog on how to do comments on blogs.

Poor Quality Press Releases

Normally press releases are considered as the best link building medium, but if you are selecting sites of poor quality to display your press releases, you are actually going to harm the reputation of your own website. You must need to follow the quality guidelines associated with press release websites.

Also remember one very important thing associated with PR websites, they usually don’t allow anchor text links, so getting naked links from the PR websites is still better than getting an anchor text filled link from those sites.

One quite common misconception about building links towards any website is that if a link is coming up with “nofollow” attribute, then it’s considered safe for the website, despite of the quality of the origin of link. Honestly, no matter if a link is nofollowed or not, but a poor quality link is always a poor quality links to your website and you must need to consider it as a negative SEO element towards your website.

In any case if you are finding poor quality links to your website, and then the first thing which you can do is to request the website owner to delete or remove the link from their website. If accepted then it is quite good, if not then it is your duty to let Google know that you don’t own such links and disavow them quickly. You can also check this blog of mine if you don’t know how to use disavow links tool.

I hope I have been able to rectify all your doubts about link building exercises, which people are generally following these days. You might ask me about how can we build back links to our website these days, don’t worry I would come up with that blog too and that too very soon. Please do share whatever you thought about this blog post of mine. Please do post comments with your opinion and suggestions about this blog post. You can also read one of my recent blog on 7 Common SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them?