19 Link Building Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs

Link building is the most vital Off-page SEO strategy, and today we’ll discuss its importance. According to a recent study by Backlinko, backlinks have a more significant impact on search engine rankings than any other ranking factor.

Internal and external links are the most crucial factor in determining your SEO success. Your search engine rankings, website traffic, and overall revenue can be positively affected by the number of high-quality backlinks you receive.

Moreover, most people continue to make costly and ineffective link-building mistakes that harm their search engine rankings without even realizing it. The most common mistakes people make can be so expensive, so go through this article to learn how to avoid them if you want better results.

Top Link-Building Mistakes People Make

1.Buying links

Buying and selling links can both be detrimental to your blog’s SEO. There are algorithms in place that search engine crawlers can use to detect when you buy links from other sources to boost your rankings. If you purchase links from a directory or a PBN network, make sure you don’t mistake reporting them to Google.

A common practice among bloggers at the time of Google Page Rank’s rise in popularity was to solicit links from external sources in exchange for small fees. Google’s PageRank algorithm was killed in part because of spammy links. To avoid being penalized by Google, you must remove all of your spam links from your site as soon as possible.

When Google detects that you purchase links from questionable sources, your search engine ranking takes a hit. However, tens of thousands of people continue to do so. Here’s a better strategy if you’re still mulling over whether or not to buy links.

2. Building Links From No-Index Pages Or Domains

No-index pages, domains, and websites can be used to build links. Because of Google’s search algorithms, your site will likely be penalized for poor link building if you try to get links from unindexed pages.

Avoiding mistakes like these will keep your website safe in Google’s search results, regardless of whether you’re doing it intentionally or not.

3. Getting Site-Wide Links Or Footer Section Links

Even in 2022, this is a common blunder that most people make. Are you also under the impression that getting links with keyword-stuffed anchor texts will help your search engine rankings? If so, you are incorrect. If you’re overdoing it with the optimized anchor text links, Google may personalize your site.

It’s more likely that you’ll be penalized than promoted if you build links to multiple blogs with the same anchor text. In no time at all, search engine bots would classify these links as spam. If you’re going to use the same anchor text over and over again, it’s best to use a variety of different ones. Obtaining site-wide or footer-section links is the fourth step.

Several years ago, the most effective link building strategy was to get site-wide and footer links from other websites (using a variety of anchor texts). To be on the safe side, avoid using links from the footer, sidebar, or site-wide because Google has started taking it seriously.

Even I made this mistake a few times when I was trying to build some quick links for a few high-earning pages, such as Black Friday week or Cyber Monday. After realizing it could get my site penalized, we stopped this practice and instead focused on naturally building links (without focusing on getting links from footer section, sidebar etc.)

4. Irrelevant Link Building

If you run a blog about cloud computing, it’s not a good idea to link to a beauty-related website. Bloggers often link to high-ranking websites without considering the relevance of their content to the site’s audience. Make sure the blog you’re linking to has a similar focus to your own.

Others say you can still build quality links from other niches, but you must be very vigilant to write a high quality guest post that is also relevant to your topic. Only then can you expect to see positive results from your link-building efforts.

5. Ignoring User Intent

Website owners and digital marketers often make the mistake of thinking that any old backlink is a good backlink. It’s not entirely accurate, especially when it comes to user intent. When a person is searching the internet, they have a specific goal in mind. 

This goal is known as user intent or search intent. User intent is determined by a variety of factors, including the words a searcher typed into the search bar, the websites they have previously visited, and their previous search history. What does this have to do with link-building, you ask?

What if you’ve written a guest post for a third-party website and received a backlink? The content marketing page on your website that the third-party links to, for example, has content that is not relevant to the topic at hand.

6. Disregarding On-Page SEO

User intent, On-Page SEO, and Meta Descriptions all work together to communicate to Google what a web page is all about. Google is looking for relevant backlinks when it comes to this page’s SEO strategy.

Creating content that covers topics that seem irrelevant to your link building strategy sends a negative or spammy signal to Google, as we just discussed. When Google sees this, it may conclude that your website is part of an elaborate link scheme.

If you want to improve your website’s search engine rankings, you can use a link scheme. Using link schemes is a black hat SEO technique that can get your site penalized by search engines.

7. Overusing Exact Anchor Text

In an effort to boost their website’s ranking, SEOs frequently overuse exact anchor text. The text that appears as a clickable link is known as “anchor text.” This type of link is used by website visitors to move between internal and external pages.

With a mouse hover, you’ll see the hyperlinked text appear in blue. But they can also be used to link to an image. However, overusing exact anchor text that matches a focus keyword and not using variations of a keyword can have negative consequences.

8. Creating Low Quality Content

Ideally, Google would prefer that webmasters use natural link building techniques to build backlinks to their sites. As opposed to buying or exchanging links, organic link building is the process of acquiring links to a website through natural means.

Small and medium-sized websites, in particular, may find it difficult to build a strong online presence without purchasing or exchanging links from other websites. Although it’s important to get natural backlinks, it’s not something you should overlook. 

In other words, what’s the best way to get backlinks without paying for them? When you produce high-quality content rather than low-quality content. With the help of valuable or viral content, you can achieve this goal. 

Writing that is both informative and not just a regurgitation of existing content, an attractive and eye-catching infographic, or some social media post such as a TikTok video or a YouTube video are examples of share-worthy content. 

A lot of brands have become multi-million dollar businesses just by creating content that goes viral, even if it sounds a little far-fetched. Your link profile and overall potential are only constrained by your creativity and outreach abilities.

9. Discounting Nofollow Links

Another common SEO myth is that nofollow links have no effect on your site’s search engine rankings. Dofollow links, it has been said, are the only ones worth having pointing to your website. Please don’t misunderstand. No doubt, dofollow links are the most important. Why? 

Dofollow backlinks are a signal to Google that you want their Googlebots to follow it and see where it leads. As opposed to this, nofollow links tell Google that although this link exists, you are not required to follow it. 

Nofollow links’ authority is still up for debate. In general, Google says that they do not follow them. When it comes to search engine optimization, nofollow links have been a controversial topic among SEO experts.

10. Prioritizing Quantity Over Quality

Prioritizing quantity over quality is one of the most common blunders in link building campaigns. To make you believe that their brilliant link building strategy is exactly what your website needs in order to succeed, some so-called “SEO experts.” Actually, they take your money and give you low-quality backlinks, which they claim will help you rise in the search results.

This appears to be a fantastic idea on paper. The backlinks are pouring in as you open up your SEO tool. Isn’t it better to have more backlinks? It’s not always the case. Backlinks don’t all carry the same weight. A toxic backlink, on the other hand, is a low-quality or spammy link that is more likely to harm your search engine rankings than aid them. 

There are many factors to consider when deciding whether a high number of backlinks is better or worse than a high quality backlinks. Links from low-quality or irrelevant websites may lead search engines to believe that the website to which those links point is also low-quality or irrelevant. 

It’s possible that this will have an adverse effect on the website’s position in search engine results. High-authority backlinks, on the other hand, show a website’s trustworthiness and respectability. Google will give your site a big boost in the rankings.

11. Being too Critical of Third-Party Metrics

Backlinks from sites with high domain authority that are relevant to your niche are the most valuable. However, don’t become a complete backlink prudishness. Links with duplicate or irrelevant content should be avoided, as should spammy, low-quality links Small to medium-sized websites that produce high-quality content and have established themselves in a niche similar to yours can, however, have an argument to be made. 

By themselves, small and relevant sites will not give your site much weight in the search engines. Nevertheless, a smattering of smaller, more relevant sites will. An added benefit of working with smaller websites is that their owners are more likely to be open to link exchanges, making it faster and easier to build backlinks. 

You never know how valuable a backlink from a little guy could be in the future. Perhaps the site is now a small one. In the near future, that seemingly worthless backlink could become one of your most valuable ones if they continue to build trust and produce high-quality content.

12. Purchasing Links From Low Quality Sites or Link Farms

Purchasing links can actually harm your search engine rankings, which may come as a surprise to you. The same is true for exchanging links. That’s the least of it.

Let’s get this straight.

Link farms and other dubious SEO services can easily be identified by Google’s algorithm as having low-quality or bad links. Fortunately, a reputable vendor like Loganix can help with this.

There is a high standard for the quality of backlinks used by services like ours. As part of our guest blogging for link exchange strategy, we employ US and Canadian writers while also utilizing anchor text that is relevant to the topic at hand.

13. Acquiring links from unreliable SEO services

Even though buying links is a common practice among bloggers and other website owners who want to boost their search engine rankings, it’s important to choose the right service. You can buy links from a slew of SEO services. There are a lot of companies out there selling links, but it can be hard to tell which ones are legitimate. 

The algorithms of search engines can easily detect low-quality links sold by many vendors. In order to get high-quality links that will boost your ranking, it’s critical that you choose your vendor or service carefully if you plan to buy backlinks. Learn about some of the best link-buying services later in this article.

14. Creating backlinks for only one page

In addition to creating backlinks for just one page, many marketers make the mistake of only optimizing one page of their website. In this case, all of the website’s backlinks are concentrated on a single page, most commonly the index or home page. You might wonder why this is a bad thing. 

As a result of the possibility that these links will be deemed artificial and false by search engine algorithms, particularly Google’s. Internal pages of your website should also have backlinks in order to increase their visibility and credibility. This is a more well-rounded strategy that boosts your website’s search engine rankings.

15. Try to remove toxic links from your websites

When it comes to website owners, this may be the most critical and costly mistake they make. Toxic links are not only a waste of time and money, but they also hurt your search engine rankings, which means you lose out on valuable incoming traffic. Nonetheless, how do you identify and remove harmful links from your website’s content? 

Toxic backlinks can now be detected by many major search engines. Removed from the search results, these websites are then no longer visible Toxic links on your website can be detected and removed using a variety of tools. In order to exclude low-quality links from Google’s evaluation of your website, you can use Disavow, a Google feature.

16. Building links too quickly

As long as you’re not trying to get manipulative links (which is the most common case when you’re building too many links too quickly), Google won’t penalise you for doing so. Google will penalize you if you start building thousands of links to your site on the first day. 

According to the majority of SEO experts, getting links from sites with high domain authority (DA) is preferable to getting links from sites with low domain authority (DA 80). (DA with 20 or even less). 

As a result, when it comes to link building, the importance of quality over quantity cannot be underestimated. Try to get two links from authoritative and relevant sites instead of 20 links from low-quality sites to begin receiving more benefits from search engines.

17. Getting links from pages with weak social shares

A post’s social circle performance can be used to determine the quality of its content by Google’s algorithms today. It is safe to assume that a post with 522 retweets, 3000 likes, and 500 Pinterest shares will outperform any other with low social impact. 

However, if you’re trying to get links from pages with zero or very few social shares, you’re wasting your time and money, so it’s best to avoid doing this at all costs. The importance of social shares in SEO can be seen in this image.

18. Linking from site with thousands of outgoing links

You can expect to see comments in the comments section of a well-written blog post. There is no guarantee that this section will be flooded with thousands of comments containing links to their own websites. If you come across a page like this, it’s best to avoid commenting and risking your post getting lost in the avalanche.

19. Building links exclusively for home page

Among newbie bloggers, this has been a popular trend to build backlinks solely to the home page. Google will see this as unnatural if you build all of your links to a single page. As a result, when you’re link building, don’t forget about your other pages. Improved backlinks and higher search engine rankings are both benefits of this strategy.

Conclusion

In order to build high-quality backlinks, one can use a plethora of different link building strategies. There are a few more costly link building errors that we make, however, and these mistakes can have long-term negative effects on our websites’ rankings. 

We wrote this guide to warn you about bad link building practices so that you can improve your site’s search engine rankings and drive more traffic to it. Consider whether you’re committing any of these blunders, as well as any others you’ve come across.

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