If you have reached this article in search of some good Link Building Ideas, there is a good probability that you are a blogger. Link building is one of the essential components of SEO and is definitely one of those processes which takes most of your time in developing your blog.
The Importance of Link Building
But there are some things which you must not do in order to avoid losing all the good work done by you so far. Here is a quick overview of things which you must avoid while building your links –
Avoid Link building through buying links
This is the first one to come on the list. I believe that most of you would already be aware of why you must never purchase links from reliable/unreliable sites.
Those who don't know are advised not to try this one ever. The reason: Google hates it! A small hint of your involvement in any such deal may get you banned in the most prominent search engines.
Link Building on Directories
While many of the bloggers still suggest the use of web directories for posting links, I feel that they are outdated now. Even though, it is no crime to get the help of directories, I feel one may waste one's energy on this not-so-useful tool.
In short, you may do it when you start up by default, but don't rely on it as your sole link building strategy.
Link exchanges
This one can be as serious as purchasing links from a site. Even though link exchanges take place even now, they are not as favorite a choice as they used to be a few years back. The smarter we get, the smarter become the search engines.
The search enignes of present world are smart enough to realize if you are exchanging links or not, if done on a regular basis, and that is something which may hamper your reputation with them. Anyhow, link exchanges usually do not provide you much of link juice because
a) there is a good probability that the person might be exchanging links for the same page with others as well which reduces the page's contribution to your ranking, and
b) you usually get to exchange links with blogs which are yet to make a name for themselves and hence, do not have a good page rank.
In addition, this comes under two way link building which is mostly neglected by search engines. Only one way links are usually valued.
Use Anchor text in your link building strategy
Many of us, even now, do not understand the value of anchor text. Creating links to your desired anchor text helps you to build backlinks for desired keywords. That is something which adds value and credibility to the link when the search engine spiders look for the inbound links to your blog.
Not using the same, is simply losing out on an already available opportunity. It doesn't take much time anyway on your link building schedule!
Posting unwanted links
That last thing that you would like to know is your link to be slammed as a spam link. Do not clutter other's comment area by your link. Link building process is something to be treated with caution and respect. It's a slow process which reaps great benefits if done properly.
While it is true that in order to look natural, you must build links with your url too. But leaving a url hyperlinked is not welcomed in most places, especially when you leave comments. Even when you write guest posts, it is a best practice that you leave anchor-texted hyperlink to your blog and not a direct url.
So, what other goofs do you know about link building?