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Backlinks are essential to your SEO strategy – there’s no doubt about that. But with linking can come confusion and questions. Is this site trustworthy for link exchanging? What keywords do I use for my links? How many links is best? We could go on and on.
A recent SEOMoz community posts on backlinks got me to thinking – what are the linking mistakes that people are most likely to make? With that, the best question to ask about your backlink strategy is: are you making these linking mistakes?
Linking Mistake 1: Building Links with Only 1 Keyword Phrase
Using your keywords in your backlink strategy is extremely important; otherwise, how would it fully aid in your SEO strategy? However, you want to be careful not to zone in on only one keyword – give your keywords equal love in your backlinking. One of the keys to a successful linking campaign is to make sure it looks natural. Acquiring 1,000 links to your site all at once using the same keyword looks fishy. You don’t want to do anything in your link building that makes your site look spammy to the search engines. And you don’t just have to stop at your product keywords – you can use your brand name for building effective backlinks as well.
Linking Mistake 2: Only Linking to Your Homepage
You want to attract links to various pages of your website, not just the homepage. Why? Because this will build a good overall linking structure which can lead to a better overall page rank and will strengthen the authority of all the pages. Building links to just your homepage will only build up authority on your homepage – you want all of your pages to come up in the SERPs for an effective SEO strategy. You also want to drive your user to the right relevant link – i.e. if you’re linking with an auto insurance keyword, link to the auto page.
Linking Mistake 3: Trying to Obtain a Ridiculous Number of Links
The number of backlinks you obtain is definitely important to your overall linking strategy, but you don’t want it to overcome you. Too many times people get so caught up in getting the highest number of links possible that the quality of links suffers. Take your time when building links – make sure you always choose quality over quantity.
Linking Mistake 4: Don’t Judge a Page by Its Page Rank
Although page rank is a popular metric for determining a site’s clout, it’s not very clear on how a site’s page rank ultimately affects SERP positions. Page authority is really what you want to be judging sites by when looking for places to distribute or exchange links. Many SEO tools are already incorporating page authority into their link metrics. For example, SEOMoz has created two helpful metrics in measuring a site’s authority – mozRank and mozTrust. The importance of knowing a site’s page authority is growing quickly; you want to make sure you are placing links with a trustworthy, relevant, and authoritative site. If something looks fishy about the site right off the bat, then it’s time to walk away. Also, make sure the content on the site is relevant to your link needs and to its readers, just as you would with your own site content.
These are a handful of mistakes SEO-ers and their clients tend to make when starting or continuing a link building campaign. Even though gaining links to your site is important, it’s also crucial that you take a step back and carefully evaluate the way you’re linking and the sites you want to link with. What are you doing to ensure a successful and quality link building campaign? Any other ideas on what not to do in the basics of building backlinks? Tweet me @Astonish_Shawna!
