There are many factors that affect your ranking on search engines. Link Building is an important one. In the words of Google- “webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.” This tells how important it is to build quality links. We often talk about things one should “do.” However, it is equally important to be aware of what “not to do. Many link-building practices can do the opposite and harm your SEO. Therefore, it is important to be familiar with the don’ts of link building.
Building good links helps your website earn credibility, authority, increased web traffic, higher SEO scores, more sales, improved relationships within the industry, and much more. On the other hand, poor links and linking practices can be detrimental to your business.
A quality site links with yours only when they find your content worth it. Earning a backlink from a site with a high E.A.T. score tells Google that your content is not only great but also rich in E.A.T. As a result, it gives you a ranking boost.
But link building isn’t just all about that. Many a time, websites don’t realize their link-building mistakes until it’s too late. Make sure you don’t make the same mistake. Hence, to help you out with that one, we have created a list of some link-building practices that you should avoid.
Linking Building in 2021: Don’ts
# Don’t put quantity over quality
A general misconception is that a high number of backlinks is essentially good. However, it is just not true.
The numbers of links do matter but what surpasses it is their quality. A website (X) with lesser links could rank better than the other (Y) with more links. This could be due to possibly two reasons:
- X has better quality links than those of Y
- Y has links from spammy and poor sites
Therefore, you need to be a bit more cautious with your links.
When you check your link profile for periodic monitoring, make sure not to focus only on the number of links but also the quality. It is possible that you may find spammy and poor sites linking with you. In that case, you’ll have to get rid of those links, or else it may bring your search ranking down.
# Don’t exchange links
Another very common link-building practice is exchanging links. However, it can adversely affect your SEO. If you think you can outsmart Google like that, you’re mistaken.
When Google notices two domains exchanging an unnatural amount of links, it could penalize them. Hence, trading links is one thing you should refrain from doing.
However, this does not mean that you should avoid reciprocation of links totally. It’s just you should be very judicious and selective while doing so lest Google should perceive it as link trading.
# Don’t buy links
Buying links is one practice you should (or even must) refrain from. Buying links can at best make no difference at all and at worst bring your SEO down to the ground. There is no way it could be beneficial.
Although some may tell you that paid links are okay if you buy them from high-quality sites. However, this seldom happens. Moreover, there a lot of factors that come into play. Buying links may work out for you but there is a bigger chance that it may not.
Hence, this is one practice best to be avoided altogether.
# Don’t overlook your content
Many a time website owners end up over-looking the very core of link building— content. If you don’t produce EAT-rich quality content, no quality site would like to link with yours. Therefore, your primary concern should be creating content-rich in quality and EAT.
Read Also: An ultimate guide for EAT SEO
Make sure that you post only relevant content that goes with the theme of your website. The duplicity of content should also be actively avoided and scanned for. Moreover, when you guest blog for a site, make sure that it’s relevant to your niche. Doing so on sites that are irrelevant to your industry/niche is a link-building practice you should refrain from.
The point being, everything else is secondary apart from content in link building. Therefore, make sure you don’t end up being distracted from it.
# Don’t define anchor text
It is an outdated SEO technique to suggest specific anchor texts. This type of over-optimization is not only unhelpful but can also be detrimental.
Google not only favors sites with a variety of anchor texts in their backlink profile, but it also penalizes those that have an unnatural amount of links with the same anchor text pointing to it.
Therefore, it is always best to let webmasters, editors, bloggers, and writers decide themselves what anchor text they want to use when adding your link to their site.
# Don’t practice anything black-hat
If you are planning on using some black-hat means of link building—just don’t! It may give you some temporary benefits but by nature, it is detrimental in the longer run. In fact, search engines like Google are aware of such practices and have developed sharp algorithms to penalize sites involved in black-hat link building.
Hence, black-hat tactics are not only unethical, but it is also detrimental. So, make sure that you are not involved in any of the practices mentioned below:
- Comment spam on blogs
- Paid links
- Cloaking
- Link farming
- Keyword stuffing
- Misleading redirects
These are some of the link-building practices you must avoid at all costs.
Final Word
Link building is an important part of search engine marketing. The sorts of sites that link with yours play a great role in determining your search engine ranking and visibility. Therefore, you need to be very cautious with your link-building practices. With the help of the list above, you can keep yourself from the don’ts of link building. This will eventually help you have a great link profile in 2021.
You have reached the end of this article. Didn’t get the answers to your questions? Ask us in the comments!
