7 Taboos About Link Building You Should Never Do

Link buildingLink building is a process of acquiring links pointing to your website. These links are obtained by creating content, participating in social media or commenting on other blogs. is one of the most fundamental aspects of SEO. It is also one of the most difficult to get right and maintain, which is why many marketers and businesses shy away from the practice. After all, how can you guarantee a link building strategy will work if at one point in the future Google will turn around and black-list your techniques? Thankfully, since the Penguin Update, quality has taken precedence for SEO agencies. Google is looking for quality and relevant content to provide for users’ search inquiries. So long as you also provide quality and enforce quality everywhere you can, you will continue to adhere to Google’s guidelines now and in the future.

That being said, there is still a lot that is misunderstood about link building. To help you clear up those misconceptions, here are seven common taboos about link building that you should never do, and what to do instead.

1. Use Private Blog Networks

One of the first taboos you need to know and completely avoid is the use of Private Blog Networks. These networks, otherwise known as PBN, are a database of websites which work together to boost one company’s presence online. They often fall under “link building schemes” that are blacklisted by Google. What this means is that even if your site once benefited from the practice, it could be working against you today.

To start, Google works hard to find and purge PBNs from its search results. What’s more, the specific sites your link is on don’t necessarily need to be blacklisted for the PBN to work against you. When one site in a network is penalised, they are all penalised. After the 2012 Google algorithm update, known as Penguin, most of these PBNs were found and penalised, thus putting them out of business.

The reason why there is still talk about PBNs today is that, in theory, they are an easy way to boost your online visibility and to improve your backlink profile. As they can go bust at any moment, however, they are a risk to your site. Google’s algorithms only improve, and new trust characteristics are added every year. You need to do your best to adhere to their guidelines, and private blog networks amount to blacklisted link farms or link building schemes.

2. Using Poor Quality Content

Machine learningMachine Learning is the branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. and AI are becoming very sophisticated, meaning that algorithms have begun to take note of natural language and can actually use the quality of your content against you. That is why using poor quality content in your link building strategy is a huge mistake. Yes, it can be very cheap to have a foreign writer go through, copy another article, and run it through Google translate a few times. You can get thousands of pages of “custom” content for a steal.

As with everything, however, you get what you pay for. When you try to use this content either on your own site or on other publishers in a bid to improve your backlink profile, you will have wasted your money. Google takes note of the quality of content just as much as where it is posted. By not investing in custom and bespoke content written by a native speaker, you waste every link placement.

3. Use One Metric to Determine the Quality of a Site

Quality is the name of the game, and the better the quality of your content and the publisher that posts your guest blogs is, the better Google will regard the backlink. By committing to a white-hat and quality campaign, you can also better protect your link building strategy for the future. How you choose these publishers, however, matters. Google uses several factors to determine the quality of a publisher, which is why you too need to use more than one metric when deciding which publishers to partner with.

Guest posting can be a great way to improve your backlink profile and your organic reach. The better the website you are publishing content to, the more your efforts will pay off. To determine the quality of a website, you will need to check several metrics:

• Domain Authority
• Page Authority
• Trust Flow
• Engagement

The sites that you post to should have a high domain authority (DA), a high page authority (PA) as well as a good trust flow. If that site also is engaged with and ready widely by users, then that is even better. When a site that has a thriving community with plenty of monthly readers, you can benefit not just from a boost from algorithms, but from organic reach as well.

4. Only Commit to a Link Building Strategy

SEO is not a one-trick pony. You cannot expect to use just one SEO strategy and call it a day. You need to combine your efforts and commit to a well-rounded campaign in order to better your business and its visibility.

Investing in just a link building strategy won’t get you far, after all, if your business has previously been penalised for being a part of a PBN, for example. Similarly, if your site is not optimised for algorithms and users alike, then your organic reach will be limited. Start with a complete audit, clear up any old and now black-listed techniques, and then work on building your backlink profile.

5. Not Researching Your Keywords
   

You don’t want to rank on a keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. that is not relevant to your website. Google doesn’t want you to rank well on it either, which is why you need to be careful about which keywords and search terms you focus on. Without a clear strategy, your efforts will be widely wasted. Keyword researchKeyword research helps websites unearth the best keywords to drive traffic and visibility. This research is supported by a number of powerful web-based tools, the best of which we’ve listed here. for link building is just as important as it is for any PPC campaign. Without knowing which keywords are most searched within your industry and niche, you won’t be able to target your efforts as effectively as possible.

Another mistake is to try to aim to rank on the most searched keywords. Local SEO campaigns are notoriously more successful. By mixing up your efforts to include both global keywords and more niche ones, you can start to see ranking improvements and increased organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page. sooner.

Further, just because you have specific keywords that you want to rank for doesn’t mean you should throw natural language out the window. Natural linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages., or links to your site that sound natural within the context of the written content, are preferred by Google. Users rarely search for just keywords, and Google is trying to accommodate that. The result? Natural search inquiries. By using more natural language, you can improve your search engine ranking and the quality of your guest posts.

6. Not Monitoring Your Back Link Profile

The internet is a dynamic and ever-changing sphere. It is also consistently changing, updating, and evolving. A bad site might improve and become better. A good site might be caught using black-hat SEO techniques and consequently be ranked lower. By not monitoring your links, you open yourself up to the risk of your backlink profile becoming corrupted. A guest post you created once a year ago might start hurting your overall performance if it has been penalised, for example. Similarly, if you don’t keep an eye on your backlinks, you won’t know which ones are still active. Know where your links are located so that you can continue to ensure your backlink profile is working in your favour.

7. Not Being Consistent in Your Efforts

SEO is not a one-and-done activity. You cannot build a campaign and then let your site sit for years and expect it to work as well as you want. SEO and link building must be consistent, in order to grow your online presence and visibility online. You wouldn’t stop advertising or marketing just because your one campaign is over, and neither should you stop your SEO efforts.

Link building takes time, and the more effort you put into sourcing quality publishers, creating custom and shareable content for said publishers, the better. If you don’t, your competition who have invested in a consistent and steady stream of backlinks will outrank you.

SEO is considered to be the long-term solution, yes, but that does not mean you can do it once at the start of your website’s lifespan and ride on your efforts for years afterwards. Everything about your online presence must be consistently updated with quality content. This applies to your website and to your off-site presence. The more you invest in this, the more it will pay off and continue to pay off in the future.

Conclusion

Link building is one of the most formidable components to a great SEO strategy. Combined with other key tactics like an SEO audit and site optimisation, you can and will see improvement in your search engine ranking. If you do not have the time or resources to commit to a professional link building strategy, however, don’t panic. You can instead enlist in our services. We can help you optimise your entire digital presence and create a backlink profile that will see you increase your search engine ranking in no time.