Building and acquiring links to your website is the most common and favorite way to improving the search engines’ rank and boost the web traffic, only if done ethically. If not, you are just hurting your own online goals, and in turn your own business. A few deliberate mistakes (I call them deliberate because you know they are mistakes) could waste your time and money, turn up no results, and damage the reputation of your website. It is strongly recommended to plan a strategy with discretion. By avoiding the most common link building mistakes, it would be convenient to increase the credibility with users and search engines alike, helping the purpose of bringing in traffic to the website.
No use of relevant keywords in links:
While building internal links on your website, it is vital to use the keywords in the anchor text, navigation text, and any contextual links to any other items in your website or even those that link to external websites. Just make sure, the keywords don’t look stuffed, in fact they should look natural and the content should be readable to potential prospects.
Accounts On Too Many Social Networks:
Now this one is a catch. You get lured by several social media websites popping up every week. You create social profiles on them. If you don’t utilize the social network on a consistent basis, or if it is not getting any response from the target audience, there is no point in signing up. Acquiring links from inactive profiles will create a bad image for you in Google’s eyes. The popular ones are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, to name a few. However, you could check out the popularity of the social networking sites which your ideal prospects engage in, and then opt for such sites.
Avoiding “nofollow” links:
No wonder, “dofollow” links are your favorite, but you simply can’t neglect participating in those places which have “nofollow” links as all your efforts will seem only for link building purpose. Both kinds of links send traffic to your website. One is through search engines rankings, and the other by active humans. The end goal is to attract humans to your website, so it is wise to have “nofollow” links coming to your website.
Too many links in the footer:
The bitter truth is that all links are not equal. The links in the footers of your website or blog are not considered as valuable links by the search engines. Footer links should enable people to navigate a site, not for search engine’s rankings.
Not following the basics of commenting:
While commenting on other person’s blog posts, articles, or forums, it is vital that some basic rules are followed. Your comment should be something valuable, that supplements to the ideas expressed in the content. Expression like, ‘way to go”, are not going to work here. Some valuable insights will be appreciated by the website and the people who read your comments. Your comments should not seem to be self-promoting.
Trading links with others:
It is undeniable that every link that goes out of your website should be of value to your audience. Trading links with others or exchanging is a strict no-no if you are doing it on a regular basis. If someone has some value in their site that you could recommend, ask for an affiliate link.
Using auto-approved directories:
There are no live human beings to moderate the links coming in to their site with an auto-approved directory. Thus, your websites could be dumped into spammy websites which are just a waste. Go with a reputable directory that is monitored by humans and that is relevant to your audience.
Using random article directories:
Article marketing has not gone away. It has only grown up. What is vital in the current scenario, is quality, relevant content that links to your site naturally. Try getting some authority thought leaders to write guest posts and submit articles on directories that provide information that the readers would enjoy.
By avoiding the basic mistakes given here, you’ll be able to create a campaign that drives quality traffic to your site. This is what the whole game is about; you don’t want tons and tons of traffic, you only want massive and targeted traffic that consists of your ideal prospects.
