What You Will Learn
What is Link Building
Why Link building is important
Common Link building mistakes
Do follow and No follow links
Sources of natural backlinks
What is Link building?
Link building is regarded as one of the most significant SEO techniques by SEO experts.
Let us first understand what Link building is. In simple words, Link building is the practice of getting external pages to link to pages in your website or blog. These links are known as backlinks.
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Why Link Building is Important?
So why is link building important for a blog?
Why bloggers are running behind backlinks?
Backlinks are links to pages in your blog in external sites or blogs. Websites with good number of backlinks are ranked well in SERP by Google.
So it’s important to have backlinks. But there are some guidelines to be followed while building backlinks for your blog.
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By backlinks, Google means quality backlinks. After the introduction of Penguin and Panda updates, Google has become very strict regarding the use of backlinks.
Any unaccepted backlink building practices could affect your search ranking or may even lead to de-indexing of your blog. So here we discuss about-
10 Important Link Building Mistakes That Can Cost You Heavily
1.) Backlinks From Sites With Bad Reputation
This is what happens when you give more importance to the quantity of backlinks than its quality.
Gambling sites, porn sites, illegal sites, spam sites, sites with plagiarized content or other sites de-indexed by Google are not liked by Google.
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So if you get these sites link to pages in your blog, Google won’t like your blog too. This would have a negative impact on your search engine rankings.
Also keep a track on all the sites backlinking to your blog. There are times when high ranking quality sites get de-indexed by Google.
2.) Buying Backlinks
Google always prefer backlinks which are naturally made.
But many of the beginner level bloggers make the mistake of purchasing backlinks from various websites.
These are regarded as black hat SEO techniques by Google. Google simply hates buying and selling of backlinks.
Also avoid other black hat SEO techniques like reciprocal links and link farms.
3.) Having Only No-Follow Backlinks
There are mainly two kinds of backlinks – do follow and no follow backlinks.
Do follow links allow both search engines and internet users to reach our websites.
While no follow links allow only internet users and do not allow search engine bots to reach our websites.
Because of this presence of no follow links do not improve search engine rankings of your website.
4.) Backlinks From Irrelevant Niche
Suppose your blog is about photography. You managed to get backlink from a high ranked website. But it is a blog about SEO.
Is this helpful?
Not really. Always look for backlinks from sites within the same niche.
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5.) Backlinks Without The Required Keywords In The Anchor Text
Anchor text is the clickable text in the backlink.
One of the major mistakes bloggers make while using anchor text is using words like “Click Here” as anchor text.
Instead use keyword rich anchor text for backlinks. This could improve your search engine ranking to a great extent.
6.) Many Backlinks With The Same Anchor Text
We have seen the advantage of using keyword rich anchor text for backlinks.
But there is a problem if we use the same anchor text for a number of backlinks.
This would lead to a drop in search engine rankings. The solution is to make use of more related keywords (semantic keywords) to keep your anchor texts unique.
7.) Backlinks Only To Home Page Of Your Blog
This mistake is commonly made by entry level bloggers.
Suppose a large majority of backlinks to your blog are to the home page of your blog and other internal pages are ignored.
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These backlinks are not considered as natural backlinks by Google.
Maintaining a balance between the number of backlinks to homepage as well as other internal pages in your blog is therefore important.
8.) Backlinks From Only Low Ranking Sites
The main purpose of backlinks is to boost search engine rankings for your blog.
Having a large number of backlinks from low ranking pages would not help your cause.
Instead of concentrating on quantity of backlinks, concentrate on the quality of backlinks you build.
A few backlinks from high ranking pages could boost your SEO.
9.) Backlinks From Only High Ranking Sites
You might be wondering how this could be a mistake.
Going by the rules of Google, having backlinks from only high ranking sites is good for your blog’s SEO.
Also Read – Backlinks – Your Webpage Needs Backlinks for Better Page Ranking
But SEO experts suggest that having an adequate mixture of backlinks from high and low ranking pages would be an even better approach.
This adds to the variability of your backlinks and makes them appear natural and more authentic.
10.) Too Many Backlinks In A Short Span Of Time
We have already discussed that in case of backlinks, quality matters and not quantity.
If you are aggressively building backlinks for your blog, Google algorithms may get the impression that you are resorting to black hat SEO techniques.
In some cases, this might even lead to de-indexing of your blog.
Sources of Natural Backlinks for Your Blog
While talking about link building mistakes, we have seen many black hat techniques of building backlinks. So we know what not to do.
But then what are the right ways?
Following are some white hat SEO techniques for building quality backlinks.
Through social media
Forums
Blog directories
Thorough research about popular blogs in your niche
Wrapping it Up
So we have covered all aspects of link building in this article.
Commonly made link building mistakes and the right strategies for link building were discussed in detail.
So try to build quality backlinks for your blog keeping the above mentioned points in mind.
Both on-page SEO (quality content) as well as off-page SEO (quality backlinks) is crucial in improving search engine rankings of your blog.
