Five Common Link Building Mistakes
*This is a guest post by Danny Cooper*
Link building is a very consuming task, in fact it’s the most time-consuming part of SEO (aside from explaining SEO, of course). Because of the time consuming nature of link building you really can’t afford to waste time by making mistakes or building worthless links. In this article I hope to show you five of the most common mistakes so you can avoid them!
Anchor Text
This is the most common link building mistake there is, if you want to rank for a keyword you need to have links with that keyword as the anchor text pointing to your page. Not a single day goes by without me seeing links with worthless anchor text such as “click here”, “read more” or “your name”.
Note: using your name as the anchor text is fine if you are trying to rank for your name.
This blog has a PageRank of 5, so my link below will be a “PageRank 4 Link” right? Wrong. The homepage of this blog is PR5, however because my article is on a brand new page it is actually a “PageRank 0 Link”. This isn’t just limited to guest posts either, it’s exactly the same situation with directories, article directories, forums and social bookmarking websites.
Ignoring Nofollow
A nofollow link will not increase your pages ranking position what-so-ever, they are completely worthless in terms of link juice . The only time it is worth building nofollow links is when they are going to send you a lot of traffic.
Quality over Quantity
When it comes to link building quality definitely trumps quantity. Even a beginner SEO can build hundreds of low quality links from websites such as directories, blogs and forums. However it is a lot hard to build just one PR6 or PR7 backlink.
Spamming
If you want to ruin your reputation online and get yourself exiled from online communities for the sake of a couple of links then spamming might seem like a good idea to you. To the rest of us it’s just plain stupid. Thanks to filtering plugins most spam won’t even reach the moderation queue, nevermind become a live link.
This is a guest post by Danny Cooper who is currently experimenting with Micro Niche Finder
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30 Responses to “Five Common Link Building Mistakes”
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I see your point, but I have to disagree with you on a few things:
Anchor Text:
Sure it`s important to use the target kw where possible, but throwing in a direct URL link, name or click here can still give you link juice AND it helps make your efforts appear more natural to the engines.
Page Rank:
Sure, when you drop a link on a brand new page your link is on a PR 0 or n/a page, however, this isn`t to say that page can`t still pass value! If your link is within a site that has a higher PR HP, eventually the spiders will crawl the page with your link AND the page itself should gain PR over time. As long as the page gets cached, your links will get seen.
Ignoring Nofollow:
Google absolutely still sees and even follows no follow… I`m sure this will cause an uproar, but come on… I`ve seen it time and time again. What about de.li.cious? All no followed, yet Google still indexes the links… I`m not suggesting you look for no follow, all I`m saying is, I don`t think it`s a complete waste.
Quality over Quantity:
Any healthy backlink portfolio consists of a variety of link types. By bypassing the “lower quality” you aren`t doing yourself any favors. Why would only PR 6 and 7 sites naturally link to you? It looks suspicious! Instead, having Quality AND Quantity is your best bet!
Spamming:
I tend to think that if you are contributing to a blog and hey, you drop a link back to yourself, it`s not really spamming, as that`s the way blogs are intended to work! However, I agree with you on the reckless spammers…. if you don`t have anything intelligent to contribute, don`t bother!
Anyways, these are just my thoughts…. been doing link building for many, many years… happy to stumble across your blog!
Michael Martin Reply:
February 19th, 2010 at 7:16 pm
Jenny,
I agree with your sentiments as any experienced SEO sees the points in the article as inaccurate.
Perhaps its best to view it with the intention its geared as a high level general SEO 101 guidance to beginners (understanding it has holes in it)
Jenny Stradling Reply:
February 20th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Yeah, I get that… my blog is all about SEO for the beginners.. gotta start somewhere!
Gerald Weber Reply:
February 20th, 2010 at 2:39 am
Jenny,
Regarding the anchor text. It’s not realistic to have your keywords as anchor text 100% of the time or when it sounds awkward. Also it’s important to change it up by using similar anchor text phrases, but the fact if you want to rank highly for your targeted keywords proper anchor text usage is extremely important!
Regarding the no follow. I realize this is a subject of great debate. I don’t really go out of my way for a no follow link but I generally agree that ignoring them completely is not the way to go.
Regarding the spamming issue. I think a big part of the problem is that what is considered spam is largely subjective and can change depending on the platform/setting.
I do agree if the comment is relevant and on topic there is no harm in dropping in a link that add to or expands the conversation.
Jenny Stradling Reply:
February 20th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Don`t even get me started on anchor text…. I`ll have to be a guest blogger myself
Gerald Weber Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:57 am
I will be looking forward to it.
The Dude Reply:
February 24th, 2010 at 6:55 am
Good points Jenny. As for nofollow Google does follow the link to continue crawling and indexing though passes no link juice according to them. However there was a bug a while ago in their algorithm that was letting anchor’s and or links slip in to the index which was corrected. Google has admitted that with the Canonical tag, hope i spelled that right, that if they see a webmaster has used it and is doing their own site more harm than good they reserve the right to ignore the rule. They’ve tested and brainstormed every way it could be misused both intentionally and accidentally, creating endless loops messing with Googlbot etc. So if they will at times ignore that rule, I believe they would ignore nofollow if it means they are going to provide a cleaner more relevant list of indexed sites to someone searching. Oh I just scrolled up and read a little about quality trumping quality, how about this example which we should all be familiar with click here
The Dude Reply:
February 24th, 2010 at 7:01 am
Typing to fast for my self 116wpm I find shortcuts i never knew about on firefox. So as I as saying searching click here on google get.adobe.com/reader comes up in first place for click here no place on the site does it say click here 458,000 backlinks according to google which it displays probably double or more not all have anchor that say click here but enough to rank it. Even without all the .gov links i’m sure the quantity would rank it for that phrase. adobe.com 60,300 links, google.com 149,000 backlinks, as for another example of quality and speaking about social bookmarks google doesn’t look at a social bookmark and simply say oh this is a social bookmark link were not going to give it as much link juice, to google a link is a link it’s the hundreds of other factors that come in to play and determine how much juice it gives. I live and breathe link building I build an incredible amount of links, a master a guru of sorts of getting links. Some of my first links from 2003 are still up to this day and favorite a PR7 from uncle sam himself…. Well just my 2 cents on some aspects of link building questions comments criticism welcomed.
Danny Cooper Reply:
February 25th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Jenny you make excellent points, most of which I agree with. I guess I should of elaborated on my points a little more (I have a tendency to skip over what I consider common knowledge).
Anchor text – 100% agree, diversity is required to keep a natural looking link profile.
Pagerank – I agree all pages pass some value, but a lot of time your pages can rot in the archives with pr0 forever, I could point to tonnes of examples on big websites like article directories.
Nofollow – I agree they MUST still follow the links, however if they’ve publically stated they won’t pass link juice we’ve got to believe that.
Spamming is also a complete waste of time.
I will not completely ignore nofollow links if it can be obtained without much efforts. Nofollow links will give you visibility and brand recognition, besides traffic.
I totally agree with you on most of these points, but I don’t think that ignoring no-follow linking should be ignored. First of all, I agree with Jenny that they still do get indexed, but secondly, building links IS about more than simply raising your PR. When it comes down to it, it’s all about traffic, right? So why would you ignore the opportunity to be seen by a prospective visitor to your website.
Obviously, seeking out no-follow links is probably a waste of time, but if you come across one, don’t ignore it simply because Google doesn’t follow the link. We’re not selling our products and services to a search engine, after all.
Jenny Stradling Reply:
February 20th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
I totally agree with you. Besides, Google (and the other engines) can change their mind at any given time and what wasn`t effective may become so and vice versa… so, you`re right, why pass up on opportunity, just in case?
Danny Cooper Reply:
February 25th, 2010 at 9:40 am
Brilliant points Ian, seems like I got all into link building mode and forgot about the traffic benefits!
The article is misleading and inaccurate. And Jenny Stradling covered everything I wanted to add here.
Good job Jennifer.
Jenny Stradling Reply:
February 20th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
Thanks
I’m sure most seasoned SEO’s now about the anchor texts but I think most websites owner/ business owners with websites and beginner SEO’s are clueless as to the importance of this.
I think the page rank example is also a common mistake. Many people don’t understand that a new page starts with a PR 0
very good post. In my mind,the page rank is important but not everything,and we may put more attention to the content of the websites but not only page rank or alexa rank.
John S. Britsios (aka Webnauts) Reply:
February 20th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Did you read the comments of everyone here before posting? If not you better do that and repeat what you said.
Or is your comment one of those link dropping attempts?
John,
How can it be a spam comment his name is the same as his URL which leads to “the best sites in the world”
Its a better attempt than saying great site, great read would u like viagra (insert link here).
John S. Btitsios (aka Webnauts) Reply:
February 20th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Michael you probably have not noticed that he seems to be one of those link building fanatics.
Michael Martin Reply:
February 20th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
John,
The above comment was completely tongue in cheek
The mistakes you are mentioning are really helpful and i agree spamming is not good for business.
A prove that nofollow links value something Jenny won a follow because of them … =D …
Good coments can bring more visitor … maybe this is not a SEO tatic but for sure can bring more visitor …
The entire blurb about page rank should be deleted. What we see as visible page rank is a meaningless metric.
Danny Cooper Reply:
February 25th, 2010 at 9:43 am
I’ll have to disagree. PageRank is not a 100% accurate measure of page strength, ability to rank, ect. But using as a rough guide IS helpful, no doubt about that.
Nofollowing internally is suicidal, getting nofollow links from 3rd party sites still helps you out tho as it only stops juice being passed, relevancy and trust are still passed (matt cutts says so)
@Jenny “Google absolutely still sees and even follows no follow”.
What Google says and what Google does is not always the same!
My background historically is in recruiting so I’m very much a novice here so place my observations in an appropriate context…
1) don’t no follow contextual links still pass the anchor text? So if a given page has developed a page rank won’t a no follow still provide not only traffic but a sense of “clarification” in that it might nurture how a given pages relevance to a given topic is viewed?
2) I completely disagree that page rank is irrelevant….ever (and I have no problem being corrected here). So far every client I’ve worked with who has a “high” page rank and low performance does in fact of on site errors. In one case I sorted out 4 on site problems with minimal results before hitting on the golden BB. He went from out of the top 100 to #3 nationally for the term in question (not an exceptionally difficult term to rank for) in 48 hours (about where he should be).
So to me the page rank/performance ratio is a great indicator of the sites internal efficiency…
3) As already mentioned nothing is absolute, best practice is best practice but adding quality no follow links certainly seems better then adding questionable links of “higher quality” {PR wise} for short term gain. At the end of the day building a good site should be rewarded somehow…shouldn’t it?
Dave
I love the absoluteness (hate that word) of the writer. Sure there are SEO things to be done which carry more weight then others… WE ASSUME… we are not google and those are kept pretty much under the cover of night.
Social back links are good, they add credibility from REAL people. No I do not mean your own… or spam all of your social accounts… but that is not spamming either in my opinion.
Just focus on content and leave the SEO to the google gods and the ones that focus on back links with only pr2 sites.
Content is king and if you have good content the people will come.
How can link building be so confusing? It seems like people ate grasping for straws, doing everything under the roof. Does anyone have any real answers? Or is it just all guesses and riddles?