I'm often contacted by clients who complain that their link building efforts don't work. I tell many of them to re-evaluate their strategy first of all. What I've experienced is that most of the webmasters and small business are making some common link building mistakes. Though creating explosive content is the best way for building more top quality links the natural way, there are also a couple of other things that you should keep in mind so that you get faster results.

Given below are five reasons that can make your link building efforts almost fruitless. Make sure you avoid these mistakes.

#1. Your Links Lack Relevance
In terms of link building, what search engines are really concerned about is relevance. It's not actually the number of links that matters. Instead, it's the relevancy that makes a real difference. If your link building isn't bringing you the desired results, it's just the right time to analyze whether those links pointing back to your domain have any relevance. Relevance in a conversational term will mean why one site should link to another.

#2. Link Variety is Missing
The variety of links is the second most important thing that you should focus on. If you want to climb up the ladder of organic ranking, you should try to bring good variety to your site's links. When the inbounds links pointing to your domain belong to many different sources (that are also relevant), it sends good signal to search engines. While building links for your site, you should try to get different types of links including links from blogs, links from Wiki directories .net links, .com links, .edu links, .org links, blog comments links, no-follow links etc.

#3. You Manipulate Anchor Text
This is one of the most common link building mistakes that I see many webmasters make. If you're obsessed over the use of exact match anchor text, you should say goodbye to this mindset right away. Instead, you should try to diversify the anchored text as much as possible. You can use your brand name, URL name, long tail keywords or short tail keywords to diversify the anchor text. If your anchor text link looks manipulative, you can get your site quickly penalized by search engines like Google.

#4. Your Links Don't Look Natural
The pattern of your links should also look natural. Remember the best links are those that you get unasked. This is because these links look very natural. There are different dubious link building schemes. If you use any of such link farming schemes, you'll make search engines suspicious. Getting 1,000 links in a day is never something that can happen naturally. Make sure your links look natural to attract the maximum attention from search engines.

#5. You Are Not Consistent
This is again one of the most common problems that I've noticed. If you think link building is a one-time task, you're making the biggest mistake. You can never expect good results until you are consistent in your link building efforts. You'll see no improvement in your site's SEO if you build a couple of links and then sit idle. Search engines like Google also pay close attention to the pattern of links as they build over time.

Are you ready to reassess your link building strategy? Please don't hesitate to share your thoughts and opinions.

Backlinks are the backbone of just about any effective SEO campaign, but how do you go about finding the sites where you can get these backlinks? There are paid links services like Text Link Ads, but Google has a much easier time detecting those than the more "organic" links that you would get through interacting with the site owner directly.

A simple Google search in your niche is one way to start, but Erin Everhart has come up with at least five other ways for you to find those valuable link partners. She outlines these strategies in a recent blog post published on Search Engine Land.

One tool is called Listorious and it is used to find a list of people tweeting about a certain topic. This is more robust that sifting through hashtags and you can even search for Twitter lists instead of just individuals. Erin also recommends looking through the Facebook likes of pages in your niche to find related businesses and webmasters. Curated lists are another way to go, as are the blogrolls you find on sites that are already in your industry.

Another strategy is to search through LinkedIn. This won't lead you to a directory of websites that could be potential link partners, per se, but it will lead you to the people who are in that niche. You can sift through based on companies, locations, keywords, and so on, finding just the right people in just the right positions. And finally, Erin talks about utilizing guest blogging communities like My Blog Guest and Blogger LinkUp for the same purpose.

What strategies do you use to find potential link partners? How do you ensure you're getting a quality backlink from a quality website?

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.

There is a lot of conflicting information about link building in the Post-Panda climate of Google's ranking algorithms. The fact is, no one truely knows exactly how Google is evaluating inbound links to any one website. This has always been the case as Google has worked hard to protect their algorithm metrics and the specific changes they constantly make to improve search result quality.

But, we have learned that many 'old school' and previous SEO techniques are no longer successful and can possibly bring harm to your websites ranking ability. This can lead to being sandboxed or just getting all your links devalued or even de-indexed. Basically, you wasted a little or a lot of time getting backlinks that are negative or useless toward your ranking results. To make sure you don't make any of these mistakes lets take a look at some of the "negative" SEO tactics currently.

Poor and Detrimental SEO Practices:

• Content duplicating, spinning, stealing
• Link cloaking
• Keyword spam, keyword stuffing
• Canonical tags for redirects, stick with 301's and limited use
• Hidden keywords, img tags, etc
• Non-relevant backlink building

What does Panda want to see?

• Quality, unique content
• Relevant and quality inbound links
• Participation with your community, forums, blogs, and more
• Media incorporation: videos, images, etc
• High PR backlinks from relevant sources

Please make sure to stop and remove any old "black hat" style SEO techniqus that are incorporated on your webpage, these will only harm your potential to rank on the search engines. Especially as the Panda algorithm keeps being pushed through the results, adding, deleting, and altering results for better user quality.

Focus on writing quality content for your site AND for your backlinks. Then you'll be able to distribute this content throughout the web, helping you gain strong contextual linking and anchor text that is integrated with unique content that speaks to your specific market and niche. If you do not have the time to put forth quality efforts, make sure to browse the web and find a quality SEO company.

About the Author:

Mason Stoller has been working in the internet marketing industry for over 8 years, starting with small business consulting and now working with major corporations across the United States with SEO Influence.com. Check out his personal SEO Tips blog at SEOBestTips.com.

As a strictly white hat SEO professional, when the powers that be (i.e. Google and Bing) declare that a particular link building technique is black hat, I stop doing it. Take link exchanges for instance. A few years ago link exchanges were an incredibly useful form of link building. I give you a link, you give me a link and everyone goes home happy. One day Google decided that link exchanges were nothing more than a glorified link scheme and attempt to con the algorithm. They labeled them black hat and I haven't looked back since, even if some other grey hat and black hat SEO practitioners still use link exchanges.

It used to be that I would get a dozen emails a day asking for a link exchange, but in the last few months I';ve noticed a growing trend in the number of e-mails I'm getting from bloggers and site owners asking if they could write a guest blog post on my SEO blog and in exchange I'll be allowed to write a post on their blog. So instead of a link exchange, it's basically a blog exchange. Here's the thing; I don't accept guest posts on my blog, and I never have in the 4 years I've been writing it. I might decide to open it up to guest bloggers one day in the future, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it. And while I am always on the lookout for new places to write guest posts, most of these emails are coming from spammy, low quality blogs that I wouldn't want links from in the first place.

This got me wondering; is guest blogging the new link exchange?

Why should site owners look for guest blogging opportunities?

1. Helps build your link portfolio

That's an obvious benefit of guest blogging, but it should not be the only reason you do it! Submitting a guest post to various low quality sites might get you links but they aren't the valuable links you should be striving to attain. The original Panda update was designed to take on content farms and I firmly believe that it wonrsquo;t be too long before Google starts cracking down on sites that blog exchange just to get links.

However, getting a guest post published on a popular industry blog means your post will (hopefully) get a lot of attention from that blog's readers. They can share, Like, Tweet and post your blog all around their social networks. The more times your content is shared, the more valuable it becomes in the eyes of the search engines. These social signals are becoming an increasingly important ranking factor.

2. Builds relationships with other bloggers and site owners

Once you get a foot in the door and have one post going live on another site, it's up to you to keep the ball rolling and build a relationship with that site owner. Don't let it be a one and done post. See if you can become a regular contributor to their blog or ask them to review a whitepaper or write a promotional post for a new product. There is so much more value to be had than that initial guest post.

3. Allows you to connect with more of your target audience

Obviously you want to write guest posts on related blogs because there is a good chance that's where your target audience is hanging out. By contributing to industry blogs you are positioning your name and brand in front of a wider segment of your target market. Links from your author byline might drive some of these targeted visitors over to your site and you may even land a new customer because of it!

Guest blogging, first and foremost, should be about brand building. It helps establish your credibility as an industry authority and creates unique touch points for you to engage your target audience. You shouldn't be focusing on just getting links from your guest posts! If all you care about is getting a link from one particular industry site, you might as well just become a regular commenter and get your links that way. Guest blogging has a lot more long term, valuable potential for your site.

Don't let guest blogging become the next link exchange! Treat each guest post as a powerful marketing vehicle and leverage it to its full advantage.