The Top 6 Link Building Mistakes We Might Be Making
Link building is one of the oldest digital marketing strategies out there. So are we writing about something so old? Perhaps the real question is: if it’s “old,” why are people having such a hard time doing it?
In fact, a lot of marketers might be using what they think are effective link building methods, but end up ruining their search engine scores and even lowering their conversion rates.
Content marketers make link building mistakes without even realizing it. If we want to be effective content marketers, we’ve got to write content in such a way that they help us naturally build links. And to do that, we need to know what exactly we should avoid. Here are top link building mistakes we should stop making:
1. Don’t Target The Wrong People!
Obvious sentence alert: Content marketers specialize in creating content – be it blogs, multimedia, or even ads – that audiences will love. We all know that, but not all content marketers get to write for the right people. You should focus more on making content that your intended audiences will actually want to share and use as a reference.
It can also help if you target local audiences, as 46% of Google searches (SEO Expert Brad) look for local services and businesses. Your content doesn’t just have to be good. It has to be informative, educational, and useful for people you want to link back to you.
If you’re planning to rank in a particular industry, you’ve got to make content that brands in your chosen industry will want to tap. These include industry insights, trends, strategies, and even unique perspectives. If you target the wrong people, your cont2. ent ends up ignored or, worse, gets classified as spam.
2. Don’t Spam Your Keywords!
Old tips advise their writers to “include” the keyword three to five times, or to include them as many times as you want. There are interesting tips that also declare keywords should be 5% (Moz) of your overall word count. However, if you’re going to ask me, the best way to include your keywords in any content is to make it as natural as possible. In short, don’t spam your keywords.
If you think a keyword won’t fit naturally in a piece, don’t include it or you risk ruining the flow of your article.
Make sure it’s included in your headline, your alt-text, and meta description for SEO purposes. However, feel free to incorporate your keywords as best you can in your content.
The more natural your keywords appear, the stronger your content becomes – both for viewers and search engines. In the above picture, Moz has made a beginner’s guide to link building, where they already mentioned not just relevant keywords but also relevant topics of interest as well.
3. Don’t Pay To Get Backlinks!
If you’re in the process of sharing your content with blogs that are open for link exchange or guest posting, don’t pay for the backlink. Of course, this is okay if you’re an advertiser. However, if you want to improve your SEO with your backlink, search engines are becoming warier of paid links.
If you do want to pay for your content to be posted, make sure your links are no-followed. This is actually a Google requirement.
These links won’t be extremely useful for your search engine score. But if they bring traffic, is that such a big deal? If a site wants you to pay for a backlink, you should probably check your content to see if it can be improved. (It has to be impressive enough that blogs don’t ask you for payment!). Although, maybe you’re talking with the wrong blog!
4. Don’t Settle For Unrelated Industry Websites
If we’re desperate to get link building results, chances are we may have considered just looking for random guest posting sites and posting our content there. Easy fix, right? However, if we exchange and/or build links with websites unrelated to our niche, we’ll end up harming our search engine score.
Don’t do this tactic, because it might be easy for random sites to post your content. Search engines might see this and associate your content with spammer content creators. This can significantly hurt your rankings for your keywords.
Organic link Builders use relationship-based link building in primary and secondary niche markets of your website. Going one level deeper, your potential target audience visitors can be reached by placing links in related websites earning you authority, referral traffic, and business opportunities. Remember target audience traffic from link placements is so important in SEO and brand awareness.
For instance, Reddit is a great place to post your content. But you shouldn’t rely purely on Reddit for your link building efforts. Since it has many niches inside of it, your content might not find the kind of audience it’s looking for.
5. Don’t Randomly Choose Your Content Platforms
We have to build links naturally, meaning, we need to make sure our industry content can be seen in places that readers in our niche regularly look at. These include authority websites, relevant niche blogs, social media networks, and other online communities. You also have to consider the way your content appears visually – especially on mobile devices.
Studies say that 51% of smartphone users found a brand while doing a mobile search. As a Content Marketer, it is important for us to keep up with the trend.
For example, vertical videos on YouTube are getting more attention nowadays.
6. Don’t Forget To Recheck And Reclaim Your Links!
Proper content marketing isn’t just about writing the best blog or making the best content. Rather, a lot of it has to do in making sure your content also goes back to you.
You can use SEO tools or manually find broken links that don’t lead back to your website. These come in the form of 404 links, misspelled anchor texts, or wrong spellings in links.
Should these happen, correct them with the site’s webmaster ASAP. Alternatively, you can also find broken links that lead to competitor sites, and try to convince webmasters to include a link to your related content instead. Leaving broken links alone might have other marketers “steal” those from you.
Link Building Mistakes Are More Common Than You Think
With the above tips in mind, we have to remember that a lot of link building “techniques” people share aren’t universal for every brand and every campaign. A lot of the link building methods they share often work best with a particular industry, or even a particular digital marketing strategy.
Don’t just jump on every tip you’re given. Always compare what you’re told to tips from respected sources.
Remember, link building mistakes can be very common and hard to spot. We’re so used to seeing some of the mistakes elsewhere, they don’t even appear to be wrong! Take extra caution whenever you start link building campaigns, so that the time and resources you allocate to these strategies are worthwhile.
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Daniel Martin loves building winning content teams. Over the past few years, he has built high-performance teams that had produced engaging content enjoyed by millions of users. After working in the Aviation industry for eight years, today, Dani applies his international team-building experience in organiclinkbuilders.com in solving his client’s problems. Dani also enjoys photography and playing the carrom board. You can connect with Daniel on LinkedIn here, or follow/tweet him @danielmartin_a
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