The SEO community continues to evolve. Many of the old links building tactics are entirely out of date today, while new opportunities arrive knocking at your door. Google is launching algorithmic updates (last year's Panda and the very recent Page Layout Algorithm), one after another. Though such updates are revolutionizing the face of the SEO industry, link building still remains to be the trump card for high search engine rankings.
Under these circumstances, it's pretty easy to make mistakes while building links for your blog or website. Given below are seven of them that you need to open your eyes to and avoid them at any cost.
#1. Manipulating the Anchor Text
Search engines have now become quite suspicious about the anchor text thing, as it can be easily manipulated. If you were playing the anchor text game to obtain high search rankings till now, you need to stop it right away. Manipulating the anchor text of a link makes the backlink profile look 'unnatural', and that's the reason why search engines have started to devalue the same.
#2. Mass-Submitting to Junk Directories
Bot-powered directory submission is another big mistake that link builders can easily make. Gone are they days when you could rank a website at the top of search results overnight by submitting to thousands of directories at once. Web directories as a means of building links are fast becoming extinct. Many generic directories are already of out of business.
The point is quite simple - no ranking algorithm will provide any weightage to web directories that aren't used by people, and only exist as a means of blind link submission. Eric Ward of Search Engine Land throws more light on the very topic in his article - A Few Link Building Predictions for 2012.
#3. Not Using Guest-Blogging
Guest blogging carries high significance, because it's an excellent strategy to place your links on niche-related websites. Apart from creating 'link juice', you can use guest blogging to generate website traffic, create awareness about your brand and establish your expertise. Guest blogging can bring you a higher rate of success if you target the right kind of blogs.
#4. Limiting Your Social Media Efforts to Only Facebook and Twitter
Therer's absolutely no doubt that social media is a powerful platform to build links the natural way. However, social media is not just about creating a Facebook or Twitter page for your brand, blog or website. There are many other social platforms that you need to use to reach out to new audiences. Any place where your target audience spends time is a best place to be.
#5. Not Asking Niche-related Authority Sites for Links
Keep asking, and you'll get it. If you really want to survive in the race of search rankings, you can never ignore the potential of building high quality links by requesting authoritative websites for a link to your website or blog. Asking will, however, will bear fruit only when you have some top quality content published.
#6. Not Linking Out
Linking out brings huge benefits both in terms of SEO and networking. Outbound linking can immediately help you build the authority of your own blog or website. However, you need to link out to only top quality and authority sites. The attention that you attract by observing this exercise can result in the generation of quality backlinks for your own site. And search engines love this practice as well. So, be generous!
Are you making these mistakes? Please don't hesitate to share your own thoughts and views on this topic.
