The Most Common Link Building Mistakes You Might Be Making
By Space Coast Daily // August 27, 2022
Link building is an integral part of SEO, with the number and quality of backlinks being one of Google’s ranking factors. Link building can seem simple. After all, it is all about linking your content to each other and encouraging authority sites to link to your content, right? Yes, but not quite.
You need to do link building right if you want the benefits it provides. To help you do this, we will be looking at some link building mistakes many SEOs make, and that you might be making, too.
Not Optimising for On-Page SEO
Many people use technical SEO on their pages but forget to check for search intent issues. Search intent is the reason why someone did an online search. Your link building efforts should be aimed at meeting their needs, whether their intent is finding the right information or finding and purchasing a product they need.
Start by ensuring your target keyword is referenced adequately without keyword stuffing or spamming. Next, look at how competitors create content and do on-page SEO with search intent in mind. Do not forget to show you are an authority in the subjects you write about, and to direct users to what they are looking for and need.
You are Using Blackhat SEO Techniques
Black hat techniques are those used to try and deceive search engine crawlers. Before these crawlers became as sophisticated as they are today, black hat SEO techniques such as content cloaking, using private link networks and keyword stuffing worked. Today, these same techniques can lead to your website not ranking and being permanently banned by search engines.
To ensure these techniques are not being used in your SRO, it is best to hire digital marketing companies that only use white hat SEO techniques. Using such techniques, digital marketers like Digitally Unique Ltd can ensure ranking improvements and traffic increases without the risk associated with doing SEO the wrong way.
Not Checking for Broken Links
Links break all the time, perhaps due to the content being moved to another URL or a page being deleted. Broken links can impact your ranking, and this is why it is a good idea to do regular broken link checks. Every three months for websites that post a lot of content or every six months for those that post moderate amounts of content are best practices. Businesses have a choice of several tools, both free and paid, that can help them find broken links.
Poor Outreach
While organic backlinks are great, SEOs must also learn how to do outreach for link building purposes. Bad outreach can be detrimental to your SEO efforts because it can limit the number of backlinks you get. When reaching out to other businesses and websites:
■ Ensure your email subject lines are short and to the point.
■ Be specific and include all pertinent details, getting to the point as soon as possible.
■ Outline the desired outcome.
■ Edit your email for grammar, punctuation and spelling.
Link building involves putting your website in the best position to gain links and sourcing these links yourself. You need to know how to do both, and correct common link building issues, to find success in link building.
