3 Common Beginners’ Pitfalls of Link Building

Link building is one of the strategies to make your website rank higher in Google’s search results. Link building is about obtaining relevant backlinks that refer to your own website. Google keeps an eye on the link profile of your website and will consider you as an authority when many reliable domains refer to your website. This will make you higher in the organic search results.

Link building strategies

When you place unique, high-quality content on your website, there is a good chance that other websites will refer to it in their own content through backlinks. This way a natural link profile is created and Google knows that you are an expert in your field.

There are link building strategies to speed up this process.

However, the effectiveness and quality of the backlinks obtained can vary significantly within these different strategies. Before you start, it is, therefore, advisable to determine whether the domain you want to link to is valuable.

Some things that play a role in the calculation of the value of a link are:

To clarify the different forms of link building, I will discuss the most common types in this article. I call this good, bad and ugly link building strategies, in terms of effectiveness and quality.

The good

Guest blogging, link earning and repairing broken links are good ways of link building. These backlinks are harder to obtain, but are the most natural and have the highest quality.

Link Earning

The most natural form of link building is through link earning: earning backlinks. You do this by writing high-quality content that adds something to the current internet. This content should be so good that other websites can use it as a reference.

Is your content unique and do you think more websites are interested in this content? Then write a press release in which you share (a part of) your findings. Add a backlink to your article and send the message to relevant websites within your industry. Do these websites also find your article newsworthy? Then they will write about it on their website, with a backlink to your article. This link is then earnestly earned and will increase your domain authority.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is one of the most popular methods of improving your website’s SEO value. To do this, you’ll need to start with conducting Manual Outreach , which is the process of contacting third-party websites to see if you can become a content contributor to their website in exchange for a backlink to your website.

If you have valuable knowledge about your profession, it is a good idea to share this knowledge on relevant blogs. Think of blogs and websites that are specific about your field. To share your knowledge, you can write a blog about a topic that might be interesting for the relevant website to publish. Please contact us in advance to ask if this website is interested in this.

Make sure your guest blog is informative so that your colleagues can learn something from it. Of course, you add a backlink to your own website, so that the reader can read more about your product or service. The writing and publication of guest blogs is a time-consuming and intensive process, but if it succeeds — it’s precious.

Repair broken links

By searching the web for broken links, backlinks to pages that no longer exist, you can help the other to keep his website technology in order. This is good for the health of the website. Have you discovered a broken link to a page that no longer exists, but does your website have a page about the same subject? Mail the manager with the question to replace this link for a backlink to your page.

This form of link building is time-consuming, but very effective if you succeed. The disadvantage is that you depend on the goodness of the other person. Maybe your mail was seen, but it is only decided to delete the link. Then your commitment has been for nothing.

Trading and offering links is not entirely according to the rules of Google. The links are then not obtained in an organic way. It is an effective way, but take care of it.

ABC link exchange

If your website links to another website and links this website back to you, you call it a link exchange. However, exchanging one-to-one links is not that effective. After all, Google quickly finds out what you’re doing, so that less value is given to the backlinks. If you still want to do a link exchange, ABC link exchange is a better option. You link to a relevant website, this website links to another website and that website then links back to you. You create a network of sites that connect well. Yet this tactic is not guaranteed safe and effective.

It can be very time-consuming and involve much organizational hassle to establish contacts with different websites within the same subject. After all, it is often your competitors, or the counter-party does not benefit from this.

Offering links

Has anyone written a blog or other text about a topic you know a lot about? Maybe you can offer a useful link to more information about the subject. When your offer is accepted, you have a qualitative backlink to your own content. Do not be afraid to contact the administrator of a website who can provide you with extra input. Chances are that they like it that you are so engrossed in the subject and offer help. Unfortunately, this is a labor-intensive tactic.

Bad link building

Placing links to your website in reactions to blogs or forums is often not very effective. The reason for this is that users can quickly experience it as spam. Also, the backlinks are not in the content of the page and many websites will automatically make the backlinks in the comments no-follow. A no-follow backlink is also part of a natural link profile. You should, therefore, have these ugly backlinks, but do not focus exclusively on them.

Blog Comments

If other websites write about topics that are relevant to your business, you could post a content reaction with a link to your own website. Make sure that your response and link are relevant. Do you have a blog about a similar topic in which you offer more depth? Then you can report that best. Important in this is that your reaction is genuine.

A lot of effects will not have this form of link building. The link is at the bottom of the page in the comment section. Google can see that the link is not included in the content and will, therefore, attach less value to it. Not the most effective way of link building, but sharing knowledge of your field is never wrong. And, as I said, these types of backlinks are also part of a natural link profile.

Forum posts & social media

Placing messages on forums that are relevant to you works on the same principle. Here too, it is a real response to relevant information that people really benefit from. However, forums are pretty much extinct and people nowadays talk to each other through social media. Links via social media are not counted as backlinks by Google.

Again, not very effective for link building purposes, but you can lead people to your website by showing them that you understand things.

Link building in practice…

As you can see, there are many ways to improve your link profile. I advise you to focus on qualitative backlinks. These are the hardest to obtain but will have a greater effect on the findability of your website.

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