Google has made great strides in leveling the playing field and ensuring the quality of link building. Its Panda and Penguin updates have shaken up the way links are built and have seen many websites lose its precious SERP. Ranking on the top of Google searches in the past was simply done by creating hundreds of links. It was just a matter of who had the most resources for paid links or who had the most links at the end of the day. But those days are over and if you’re starting your link building campaign, here are a few link building strategies that you should stay away from.
1. Money Keyword Only Links
Using target keywords for anchor texts has always been the standard for any link building campaign in the past. However, with Google’s Penguin update, building a more diverse inbound link profile is key. Hundreds of links using the same anchor text pointing to your website can appear unnatural to Google’s eyes. This does not stop you from using money keywords for your anchor texts. You just have to make a conscious effort to use a variety of terms for your anchor text.
- Use your website’s URL or inner pages (www.shoes.com or www.shoes.com/men)
- Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) or related keywords
- Generic Links (click, here, visit this website)
2. Article Submissions
If you’ve been building links for your website then there’s a good chance that you’ve reached out to article submission sites. However, most of these websites have been penalized after Google’s updates. These have been popular in the past because of the amount of link juice they give but these have been downgraded by Google.
3. Paid Links
You could term this as a double whammy. Not only are you shelling out dollars to have a link placed on their website but it also drags your SERP down. Quality and natural is where you should place your money on. The rule of the game is the harder you work to get the link, the better its chance of providing your website with much needed link juice.
4. Generic Link Exchanges or Blogrolls
Everybody wants to be top dog and getting links from the first source they come in contact with is a common mistake that plagues many webmasters. Some overzealous link builders try to make link exchanges with other websites that are not related to their niche. If you plan on going this route then try partnering with niche-related websites. These does not only provide you with good quality links but also helps you establish personal relationships with your peers.
5. Creating Social Profiles for Links
Setting up a social profile and creating a link to your website is quite easy. There are quite a number of services that could do this for you and all you have to do is to give them your personal details and website. If you’re gunning for sheer numbers then this is the way to go. But the links provided by social networks is still suspect and could actually have a negative effect on your website’s rankings.
6. Focusing on Dofollow Links
A majority of webmasters requesting link building services will only accept Dofollow links. But this could also send a red flag to the guys at Google that you’re focusing too much on your link building efforts. Diversifying your inbound link profile does not only mean using a variety of anchor text but combining dofollow and nofollow links.
7. Social Bookmarking Submissions
Social bookmarking is not an entirely bad idea. There is quite a number of software that could easily post your link with little or no supervision. Again, with Google’s drive towards quality having links from these places is like parking your car in a bad neighborhood and waiting for something bad to happen.