Link-building practices have always been essential components of a search engine optimisation strategy. Beyond giving a website more credibility and higher rankings on the search engine results pages or SERPs, it can also generate a greater volume of web traffic and lead to better SEO metrics. However, the sad truth is that many people still commit errors when trying to build links, hurting their efforts in the process. 

While finding a link building agency like ocere.com can go a long way in ensuring that you get the best possible results, there are things you can do on your end to avoid pitfalls that could end up creating potentially irrecoverable setbacks. With that said, here are some common link-building mistakes that you must avoid at all costs.

1. Purchasing links

Purchasing links can do more damage than good. As the crawlers that search engines use start to get smarter, their algorithms may be able to sense whether you’ve earned your links naturally or purchased them instead. Search engines like Google even make use of insider systems wherein users report links that are being sold by PBN networks and other directories.

In other words, you could risk plummeting in the search rankings if you decide to buy your links rather than work for them, hurting the chances of your business succeeding. So don’t even try—instead, do it the proper way. 

2. Failing to remove your toxic links

Google’s Penguin update had been primarily designed to enhance its search results by ensuring that web pages containing any toxic links are removed. These backlinks are irrelevant and unnatural and can harm a website’s rankings. And the update enables the search engine to penalise sites with many of these links alongside a poor backlink profile. 

Thankfully, removing any toxic links your website may have isn’t complicated. A few online tools can help you analyse your links and remove undesirable ones easily. However, please don’t take this for granted because it will impact your SEO and keep your business from generating sales. 

3. Irrelevant link building

If your blog is all about cloud computing, it isn’t a good idea to build backlinks on portals based on beauty remedies or other irrelevant online sources. It’s a common mistake for people to focus solely on the websites with high rankings and domain authorities that they overlook matching their niches. Therefore, don’t just add links impulsively. 

To that end, be sure that the source is relevant to your content. In this way, you’ll attract your audience and keep them engaged. Moreover, you’ll avoid incurring any penalties that might lead to lower rankings for your online domain.

4. Building links way too quickly

While there’s no such thing as a rule of thumb on the speed of building links, you’ll be in danger if you opt for manipulative links, which is almost always the case when you do it too quickly. If you’ve amassed too many links for your website in a day, there’s a good chance that you’ll be penalised by Google for it. And as was mentioned earlier, you must also try to keep the links you build to 80 and above when it comes to their domain authority score to benefit from the search engines.

Conclusion

There are a ton of link-building techniques and strategies that can aid you in generating the desired backlinks. However, there are many that could do the opposite of the intended effect and cause problems that your website may never be able to recover from. As such, you must try to avoid making any mistakes when it comes to link building.