For a very long time link building has been one of the very important cornerstones of effective SEO. Links have been conventionally treated by search engines as votes in a continuous online popularity contest. The use of link data has been refined by the search engines to evaluate sites and pages. Link building is not everything in SEO, search professionals have tended to attribute significance to it in the algorithms. Using the link factor, search engines can evaluate the popularity of websites or pages and also authority, spam and trust. That said, it’s important to avoid link building mistakes.

Lately, link building has gotten flak. Search engines avoid or downgrade sites and pages that have irrelevant links. SEO practitioners are moving away from stuffing websites with links. Instead, they create original and relevant content to logically attract links. This method has benefits, being natural and safe. There are people who refuse to discard the system of manual link building, but complement it by providing relevant and valuable reader content. To do this, you must differentiate between a good and a bad link as perceived by Google.

Avoid Getting Your Links Featured On Questionable or Low-Authority Sites

Among the ranking parameters that Google takes into account is a site’s authority- the higher the perceived authority, the higher the rank in the results page. If your site’s link appears in sites that have already established their authority, Google gives you the rub-off benefit but the reverse can also happen and downgrade your site if your link appears in sites with questionable authority or poor content.

A few low-authority links are bound to happen and you should not lose any sleep over this as Google looks for patterns that it can validate with a fairly high level of confidence. Only if your site has been linked in a large number of low-authority sites, you will begin to hurt. As a matter of principle, you should focus on acquiring backlinks from sites with a high reputation and avoid the seedy ones. A good way of getting your website noticed is to include the URL in your emails that you send out through bulk email marketing services.

Make Sure Your Link Points to Content That Is Relevant

Context is assuming greater importance than ever before in the way Google’s search algorithms are tuned. It is simply not enough to have a link that points to your website – you need to have a content association that is pertinent to your site as well. For example, if you manufacture roller skates and you post a link in a blog about Chinese cuisine, you can be sure that some red flags will be raised. It is extremely important for you to ensure that you keep all your links extremely relevant and specific to your site’s content. Analyze the various types of sources that you want to rely on – the more close they are to the subject of your website, the better your link building strategy will pay off.

Avoid Too Many Repetitions of the Link on the Site

While the number of links is significant, it is possible to have too many links. It is equally important to maintain diversity of links. Google becomes extremely suspicious if it spots a large number of links on a particular site pointing back to any specific domain.Consequently, it may drive it down the SERP rankings. Google feels very happy when it encounters links that point back to your website from a diverse list of sources. Link repetitions suffer a value down-grade. Diversify the sources of the links as much as possible.

Avoid Linking Reciprocity

It may seem a smart and clever thing to come to an arrangement with a friend with a similar domain to exchange links so that both of you can benefit. Since Google is already aware of this reciprocal exchange arrangement, it can do you more harm than good when Google perceives the amount of link trading between the two sites to be excessive. The trading will drive both the sites down in the rankings by negatively impacting the authority associated with the domains.

Avoid Embedding Links in Anchor Text with Keyword Suspiciously Matched

Links with anchor text is popular. The best practice for links embedded in anchor text containing an exact match of the sought keyword. This technique has fallen out of favor. It is the quickest way to get a manual penalty from Google. The penalty is almost impossible to recover from. Google favors natural context and embedded links.

Avoid Inserting Links in Isolation

Posting links without any kind of accompanying content is the worst thing that you can possibly do. It does not really matter where you do it – blogs, forum posts or any other online media but you should make it compulsory to incorporate meaningful and relevant content that has a semantic context. Insert the links into the body of the post for the best effect. One of the best ways of achieving this is by way of guest posts on third party blogs.

Shun Link Schemes

Link schemes have declined a lot in popularity but a few continue to float around. These schemes act like link pyramids. Google is especially sensitive to it and considers it to be a violation of its service terms. Participating in a link scheme is a serious offence and could invite a penalty from Google.

Conclusion

Scrutinize your link profile to establish that you have not committed any of the sins enumerated above. Open Site Explorer, Majestic, Ahrefs, or any other commonly available link search tools aid in the process. In case you notice anything questionable, it is better to remove it than face the potential consequences. Next, ensure that you have all the safeguards in place to avoid future mistakes.

Author bio: Sujain Thomas is the head of digital marketing for a prominent ecommerce site. Among the many techniques she employs to elevate the profile of her site is periodic mailers with interesting content and offers that she sends out through bulk email marketing services in Mumbai.