Since introduction of Panda and Penguin updates from Google, lots of link building techniques have not only lost their effectiveness but may even harm your website rankings on Google and other search engines. You need to make sure you are building panda and penguin free links for your website. Today I’m going to share some link building mistakes you should ignore if you want to survive and want to take your website traffic to the next level in today’s search engine world.
If you are continuing with the link building methods, which you were using years back, you are inviting Google to place some form of penalty on your website. This penalty may appear in the form of lower rankings for targeted keywords, drop in page rank and decrease or complete de-indexing of your website contents from Google search results.
Generating too Many Links using the Same Anchor Text
I still notice lots of link builders and internet marketers create too many links for their targeted pages, using the same anchor text. If you are doing so, you are forcing Google to place an over optimization penalty on your website.
Ideally, you should be building backlinks for your website in a natural way. You actually need to kill some of your SEO skills a bit. When you are building backlinks, you should mix all type of anchor texts. Suppose I want to get top rankings for a keyword Easy WP SEO plugin on Google, I may go ahead and build backlinks using the following anchor texts:
- easy wp seo
- easywpseo
- easy wp seo plugin
- download easy wp seo
- easywpseo review
- Know more about this onpage plugin
- Click here to download this seo plugin
- Click here to buy this plugin
- Read more about this amazing seo plugin
- ….
- ….
I hope you get a better idea about the type of combinations, you should be using to build natural looking backlinks for your website now. If are still building backlink using the same keyword over and over, that clearly shows you want to gain search engine rankings by generating lots of backlinks using the same keyword. If someone is linking to your website naturally, he can use any word to link to that page. He can even use any junk keyword like click here, read more and more details etc or whatever comes to his mind.
Buying Links
No doubt, this point has no direct relation with any of Google recent updates. Still I am including it in this list as many people make the mistake of buying links from other website with the intension to get higher rankings on Google and other search engines. You may enjoy higher rankings after buying some targeted backlinks from other websites in your niche. If Google sense you are involved in any form of link buying or selling activities, it will impose a huge penalty on your website.
In the past as well, Google placed a manual penalty on small and big brands like Overstock and Forbes for being involved in paid link building activities.
Doing Massive Link Exchange
Doing massive link exchange will be counted as a bad practice keeping in mind the kind of algorithmic changes Google is carrying out these days. If you want to do link exchange, do it with very few websites and only those relevant to your own website niche. It should be done to share value-adding websites with your reader and not for the sake of getting higher rankings for your website on Google and other search engines.
So you should think about your readers before making decision about a link exchange request.
Ignoring Social Media Links
No doubt, we were able to get top rankings on Google for even competitive terms in the past without using any social media network. However, if you are still thinking of a similar scenario, you are making a big mistake.
In today’s search engine world, social media signals have become very important and you must have a strong presence on popular social media websites if you are dreaming of getting a top ranking for your website on Google and other search engines. You can drive lots of targeted traffic, brand awareness and much needed link juice for your website from these websites.
Using Cheap Services like Fiverr for Bulk Link Building
In the past, some people were using Fiverr.com type of websites to build thousands of profile or forum type of links for their websites. If you are still doing or thinking of using services that promise to build thousands of backlinks for your website in quick succession, you are making a big blunder.
Links created through such services are going to backfire immediately.
Submitting your Website or Content on Panda Hit Websites
You must be still submitting your website or content on other websites with the intension to build some targeted backlinks for your website. Are you sure, you are generating links for your website from Panda free websites? If you end up getting links for your website from Panda or penguin hit websites, you are not doing anything good for your website.
So, you need to check traffic trends for that website to know whether a particular website is hit by recent algorithmic changes from Google using the tools that are mentioned on this page.
Building Sitewide Links
No doubt, sometime back, sitewide links were considered as one of the easiest ways to get higher search engine rankings and improved page rank from Google. But that practice will work no more in today’s web world. You need to stay away from such practices.
You need to make sure you are not intentionally building sitewide links for your domain from blogrolls or sponsored sections that are placed in a website sidebar or footer section. When you are getting sitewide links from a domain carrying thousands of pages, you will end up getting thousands of backlinks to your website using the same anchor text. This may convert naturally looking backlinking profile of your website in to SEO optimized one.
No doubt, there must be additional link building mistakes that I forgot to mention in this guest post. If you know of any, do share in the comments section below. By now, we have talked about the mistakes we should avoid while building backlinks for our website. But in case you want to know how you should build backlinks for your website in Google panda and penguin age, do check this post.
Image © Dmitry Koksharov – Fotolia.com