You can go far by creating great content and investing in on-page SEO optimization. However, you can only do so much when you’re up against more authoritative websites. In those cases, you need to invest in off-page SEO.
A link acts like a vote for your site, so having more will increase your authority in the eyes of Google. And when websites that have 3.8 times more links than the rest of the websites rank number one, it makes sense to invest in link-building.
However, your website’s link-building campaign may not always give the expected results. Keep reading to learn eight common backlink-building errors you need to avoid.
1. Focusing on Quantity Links
Yes, most website links you get will provide some power to your backlink profile. However, the power of low-quality links doesn’t offer much. You’ll need way too many of those links to make a meaningful impact.
On top of that, it can also make it appear like you’re spamming backlinks to get higher rankings.
It’s much better to focus on the quality of links. Try to find authoritative websites that get a lot of web traffic. These are the websites that Google likes, which means the impact of those links is much better.
2. Not Diversifying Link Sources
It’s tempting to double down on a source of links from websites after learning how to do it right. While there isn’t anything wrong with this, the impacts of those links will go down over time.
Google wants to see a diversity of backlinks. If all you have is forum posts or blog comments, you won’t get as good of results.
Try to include as many types of links as possible during your link-building campaigns. Doing this will show Google that various website platforms trust your website.
3. Using Link Schemes
There have been a lot of backlinking strategies over the years. You had strategies such as tiered link-building and link wheels available that helped you rank higher on Google. Even though those strategies worked well in the past, that doesn’t mean they will work well today.
Keep things simple when you’re building links to your website. You don’t need complicated link structures to get results. Just get links from good-quality sources, and you’ll do fine when building links.
4. Ignoring Website Relevancy
Sure, you can build backlinks on many websites out there. Some web admins go this route and build links from websites that have no relation to your site’s main topic. This may work to an extent, but you’ll get much better results by building links from sites in your industry.
Focus on websites that post content that relates directly to your content or is an adjacent industry. Google will take relevance into account when determining how much to value a link’s worth to your website. That means you get more value from a site from a relevant website than one from a random industry with no relation to yours.
5. Ignoring Bad Links
Even if you never invest in building links from poor-quality websites, that doesn’t mean you’ll never receive them. As time goes on, you’ll get spam links from auto-generated websites and people trying to harm your website with negative SEO. Even if the chances are you won’t suffer because of those links, that doesn’t mean it will never hurt your rankings.
Regularly check your backlink profile using web tools to see if you can find any of those links. Collect any links that appear to be poor quality and put them into a list. You can upload that list to Google Webmaster Tools to have Google ignore those links.
6. Only Building NoFollow Links
Google doesn’t treat all links the same based on website code. There is an attribute to a link that tells Google how it should treat things. Those attributes are nofolow and dofollow.
A nofollow attribute on a link informs Google that you don’t want the search engine spider to follow the link to the linked website. That means you may not get as much power from a link if it is nofollow.
A dofollow link doesn’t have that issue. You’ll get all the link juice from a link.
Of course, don’t just build one type of link. Use a mix between nofollow and dofollow links.
7. Over Optimized Anchor Text
The anchor text you use plays a role in how your website ranks. The anchor text you use tells Google more about the page getting linked to. That’s something Google can use as a ranking factor for keywords.
Try to vary your anchor text by using as many long-tail keywords as possible. Doing this will help you diversify your anchor text and improve your chances of ranking for several terms.
8. Not Monitoring Competition
It takes a lot of work to start a backlinking campaign. You must find link sources, outreach to other websites, and much more. It takes a lot of time to start everything from scratch.
You can jumpstart your progress by looking at the websites that link to your competitors. You can use a backlink checker to see what links your competitors have. While you may be unable to replicate an entire backlink portfolio, you may find a few easy wins that help you improve your rankings quickly.
Find more here to see how you can check your competitors’ backlinks.
Don’t Fall Victim to Common Backlink-Building Errors
You may end up spending a lot of money to create a quality backlinking campaign. The last thing you want to do is to make common backlink-building errors that cause you to waste money and not get results.
Luckily, there are many mistakes you can avoid when creating backlink strategies. Remember the errors above to avoid getting bad links and improve your chances of boosting your website ranking.
Of course, backlinks aren’t the only thing you’ll need to improve your Google rankings. Check out the blog to find more SEO tips that will help.