Advanced Link Building - Avoid These 7 Mistakes

[Mitchell]

Recently SEOMoz did a survey among the top SEO experts. The results were surprising to say the least. None of the SEO experts could come to a 100 percent agreement on any one subject! So, if they can't come to an agreement on SEO and link building, how is the rest of the world supposed to?

Rand surveyed the Top 37 SEO experts in the World. Basically the Survey is a series of questions asked of each expert. This group of experts could not come up with an agreement rating more than 1 on many of the questions!

So now that we know the experts can't agree, I might as well tell you the mistakes I've made plus the ones I see done by many Webmasters when link building.

Failing to Procure Reciprocal Links.
I've seen so called SEO Guru's say that reciprocal linking is dead and they will hurt your site. This just isn't so. The important thing to remember is to make sure the links you trade are from quality sites. It doesn't matter if they're PR0, just make sure they're not from a spam/ adult/ pharmacy/ hate type site. Reciprocal links can be on a resource page if you run a website or a Blogroll for you bloggers. Just remember to trade!

Failing to Acquire Low PR Links.
For some reason, many Webmasters do not want PR0 sites linking to them. This is link building suicide! One day, those PR0 sites could be the next PR5 or better. Frankly, I don't care who links to my sites. I can't control it and if they're passing any amount of authority, and even PR0 sites pass some, I'll take it. It also looks natural when you have many more low authority sites pointing to your site than all high PR sites.

Failing to Link Out.
Once again, we're talking about making your site look natural to the Search Engines, especially Google. Authority sites link out to other authority sites. Google expects to see this. I can't tell you how many times Ive had a site stuck in the SERPS only to get a little boost when I linked to a higher authority site. So link out to authority sites!

Failure to Check Your Reciprocal Link Partners' Websites.
Once you exchange links with someone, you need to follow up on a routine basis and make sure the link back to your site is still there. Some sites go down, accounts are closed, domains expire and are purchased by someone else, Webmasters change website topics and some Webmasters simply take your link down after you exchange links. I've seen people put the "nofollow" attribute on the links after they've made a trade. I've seen it all happen, that's why I monitor my link partners and you should also.

Failing to Use Anchor Text in Your Link.
If someone gives you the opportuníty to use Anchor text in the link back to your site, use it! In my opinion, anchor text in a backlink is the second biggest off page ranking factor for SEO. Only the relevancy and authority of the page where the backlink originates is more important in my experience.

Failing to Cover Up Your Paid Link Footprints.
Look, from here to the end of time, people will sell links. And from here to the end of time, Google will be trying to find paid links. And from here to the end of time, you'll see blogs, websites and blog networks (think Backlink Solutions) get de-indexed for selling links. If you're going to buy or sell links as part of your link building plan, you'd better be hiding your footprint or Big Daddy G is going to find you one dark, cold and stormy night. There are several ways of hiding your footprint.

Failing to Build Links.
I see people on the forums all the time asking how they should go about link building or how to get started link building. Many say they don't know how and so they don't even try. People! I hate link building as much as the next person, but it's not Rocket Science. You may be able to rank high in a low competitive keyword niche with on-page SEO, but for a competitive niche where's there's money to be made, you're going to need some relevant backlinks!

TIP: One of the most effective link building strategies you can perform is to find out who's linking to your competition and get links from them. You simply go to Google and type in link:yourcompetitorssite.com. You'll then get a líst of sites that are linking to your competitor's site. Browse that site to see if there is a place to put a link to your site at. If not, simply Contact the person running the site and ask kindly for a link. Many times they will not respond, but some will. Now, out of those sites, do the same thing. See who's linking to them and get links from those sites!

This is probably the easiest way to get relevant backlinks but it's a technique very few Bloggers and Webmasters use! Sure it's tedious and time consuming, but in the long run, those top rankings will be worth all the time you practiced link building!

[Zheka]

Very interesting!!! But can you give more details about "Failing to Cover Up Your Paid Link Footprints." What does "Paid Link Footprints" mean?
Thanks!

[Zheka]

Does it mean Google doesn't like paid directories?

[Mitchell]

Google simply doesn't like people buying link to again PR, so if Google believes that you have bought a link to gain PR, specially from Link Farms they will ban you.

However business Directories are in a different category and Google doesn't mind them as much as it hates link farms.

Google want to see genuine websites that are useful for their visitors and because anyone with money can buy links, they do not encourage it.

Recently Google Revealed More Linking Secrets To Webmasters

A site's content is one of the main factors. Therefore, you should have a compelling site with interesting information and/or provide quality products, entertainment, opinions...

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

Content visible to License Owner only.

Then Maile Ohye explained further how to create unique and compelling content for your site:

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

Content visible to License Owner only.

What has confused things lately is all the "link buying" which Google greatly discourages and has shown its displeasure by de-ranking many paid directories. The size of your "wallet" shouldn't be the determining factor in how pages and content are ranked. If you're selling a link, it should have the "no-follow" tag so that it doesn't pass PageRank along and confuse the system. Policing or deciding what is or what is not a "paid link" has become a major problem for the search engines, including Google.

You should not have more than "100 links on a page" as this can overload the search engine robots that regularly crawl the web, indexing pages. Likewise, your site's "linking architecture" should be natural and easy for both your visitors and the robots to follow. Make sure your important pages are no more than a few clicks away from your homepage.

As to interior linking, the two main points being: Intuitive Navigation for your visitors and Crawlable Text Links for the search engine robots. Use descriptive anchor text links that explain your content to your visitors. The anchor text is the underlined clickable part of the link and many SEO experts suggest you place your keywords or variations of them in your anchor text.

Make sure your site is transparent. Do not use "link cloaking" on your site. Make sure what your visitor sees is what the robots are indexing. Use a 301 Redirect if you have permanently moved any webpages. Again, there is stressed the need for a sitemap as this can be very helpful for both your visitors and robots to see and find all your valuable content. Make sure you have a sitemap and all your important pages are listed on it.

One final note, many professional webmasters and marketers don't worry about PageRank as much as they are concerned with SERPs. Getting those top rankings for their sites in the search engine results is what really matters. Again, quality content and building quality links play an important role in achieving those top spots and maybe Google has already given you the formula for getting them. Maybe, maybe not.

[Zheka]

Thanks again! Very interesting! So directories like indexu are not considered as a paid directories? Right?

[Mitchell]

Content visible to License Owner only.

I wouldn't think so, I have also noticed that Google does count links on most IndexU directories as a possitive one and being in IndexU directories help your SERPs.

[Zheka]

ooo... I got it! thanks!