If you are trying to optimize your website for the search engines, you may be doing it all wrong. There was a time when getting all of the backlinks you could, from anywhere and everywhere was the key, but not anymore. Link building has to be thoughtful, well planned and appear natural. If you are not seeing good results with your SEO campaigns, you may be making mistakes. Avoid the below mentioned mistakes and improve your site’s SEO.
1. Too Much Too Soon
It is unnatural for a website to get too many backlinks too soon. If other site owners were going to link to you, it would take them awhile to do so. The search engines regard anything else as manipulation. Add links to your site at the rate of a few per day, not hundreds.
2. High PR Pages with Tons of Links
Getting a link from a page with high PageRank is the delight of webmasters. Take caution, though, because if a high PR page has hundreds of outbound links, in the end it can hurt, rather than help, your rankings. It is better to get a link back from a site with less outbound links even if it has low PR – it is likely to remain stable in the search engines and produce better results. But at the same time, if you get a backlink from a high PR page with less outbound links, then it is a real delicious delight.
3. Using the Same Anchor Text Every Time
There are multiple reasons to avoid this. For one, search engines may see it as spam. For another, you want search engines to understand your site better. Use a variety of anchors to describe your link. Instead of always using Wagons, use Red Wagons, Rare Wagons, or whatever relates to your content.
4. Using the “Click Here” Anchor Text
If your site is not about “click here” (e.g. how to click a mouse), then don’t use it as an anchor text. If you continuously use “Click here” or similar text, then you will finally rank high for the text “Click here” in search engines which is of absolutely no use. Use an anchor that describes the content, as explained in number three above.
5. Too Many Links from One Website
Getting multiple backlinks from one site that you have found to be easy for linking is tempting, but it proves nothing to search engines. They don’t get too excited about just one site liking your site. It is necessary to get links from lots of sites so the engines understand that many websites see yours as important.
6. Stick with Related Sites
If your site is about those wagons mentioned above, a search engine sees no value in the fact that a site about glass slippers links to yours. The reason for the link out, as far as the engines are concerned, should be to provide further related information about the topic. Unless that wagons on your site are replaced with glass slippers, the links are useless.
Good SEO doesn’t involve tricking the search engines. Search engines will figure out what you are doing, and your site will end up low in search results. In fact, the engines may drop it from searches altogether by banning it. It is not hard to get backlinks the correct way, so as your mama used to tell you, do it right the first time. You can also make use of the various link building tools available.
