Link Building – The Right Way & The Wrong Way!
Link building, coupled with on page SEO, is one of THE most important aspects of website search engine ranking and as much as we all hate doing it we have no choice if we want our sites to rank well for our chosen keywords. I think the reason people hate building links to their sites is simply because it's a very tedious and slow process which doesn't usually have an immediate, overnight effect on their search engine rankings. But ultimately if link building is done the right way then it doesn't have to be as tedious as it first appears.
Link Building The Wrong Way!
There are right and wrong ways to build links to your site, probably the most common mistakes people make are the following:
Building links very quickly to a brand new website
If you have a brand new website which has just appeared on the internet then the last thing you should be doing is building hundreds of links to that website to get it ranked. Personally, I only ever build around 5-10 backlinks to a brand new site once I know it has been indexed in the search engines. Over the next few weeks I then build around 5 new (quality) links each week. Building too many links too quickly to a brand new site is un-natural and it will appear as such, remember the saying slowly slowly catchy monkey!
Build a large quantity of poor quality links
Why are people still submitting the same article to 1000 directories, their website to 500 directories or commenting on 50 thousand blogs with a link back to their site. Concentrate your time and effort on building 10 quality links rather than building large amounts of irrelevant, un-related links.
Building links from un-related websites
This ties in with the above, submitting 1 article to 1000 article directories or submitting your site to 500 directories doesn't have the effect which it used to. If your site is a site built around Shelby Mustangs then don't build links from golf directories!
Building links through one method
There are many methods to building backlinks but you would be surprised the amount of people who only utilize one. Variety is essential so don't just build backlinks from blog commenting, try to use multiple methods such as article marketing, web 2.0 link wheels, videos, directories, press releases etc etc.
Building links using the same achor text
You should be trying to reduce your footprint as much as possible so building links to your site using the same anchor text over and over again may cause more harm than good, especially with a brand new site. Use different combinations of the phrase you are trying to rank for.
Building links only to the home page
Don't just concentrate building links back to your home page, always rotate the pages you build links to along with the anchor text you are using.
Link Building The Right Way!
Building links the right way simply involves doing the extact opposite to the above:
- Build links slowly to start with and gradually but steadily increase over time
- Build quality links from quality sites - Don't get links from a bad 'neighbourhood'
- Build links from sites within your niche/topic e.g. links from golf sites for a golf niche
- Alternative the methods you use to gain backlinks i.e. don't just use blog commenting as a link building strategy.
- Alternate the anchor text you use when linking back to your site
- Alternate the pages of your website which you actually build links to
Understand that Google or any search engine for that matter doesn't really want you building links manually, they want the links pointing to your site to be created naturally by people who find your website valuable. For this reason you should make linking appear as natural and relevant as possible.
In the next few posts I want to cover some of the link building methods you can use and also tell you how I took a site ranking from number 35 in Google to number 2 in just over a week.
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You are right on every point discussed! I recently attempted to help someone who has a brand new site and couldn’t understand why her site seemed to be sandboxed by Google. After some questioning, she said she had built over 700 backlinks to this site! Being new to Internet Marketing, she thought that was what she needed to do, and didn’t realize the harm she had done until it was too late.
I look forward to seeing your next post on this topic.
Rochelle
.-= Rochelle´s last blog ..Commission Ritual’s Forum is Now Open to All =-.
It’s very easy to do and I know I’ve done it in the past when I was first starting out and you know as well as I do, getting your site out of the Sandbox can be a challenge and a half. Back links are so important but as I cover in my next post, less is more if you aim for quality and relevance rather than quantity.
See this all the time and blame it on the fact that everyone thinks you just have to get links and that’s it. Must admit even did it myself a few years ago, but the tools available then weren’t so good, and had a site go from Google’s first page to nowhere and it has never recovered – due to too many links too fast with same anchor text (lol) – so I Iearned the hard way!!
.-= Affiliate Blogger´s last blog ..Affiliate Marketing Basics – Mining Money Online to Make Money Fast =-.
Thanks so much for your information. Creating back links is something that has always daunted me. You make it seem much less daunting.
BTW…I tried to leave a comment on your post about FreeTrafficSystem.com but had some trouble. I just wanted to know if, now in February 2010, you had any more experience with or thoughts about the system.
Happy Ground Hog Day!
Olivia
I know that feeling, I think we’ve all done it in the past, sometimes making the mistakes yourself is the only way to learn.
Slowly always win the race in this instance.
It’s always important to go about link building with the right attitude and mind set.
Yes I’m still using the Free Traffic System, I do only use the free version and not the premium one and still seeing okay results with it. It forms a small part of my link building through article marketing. The Free Traffic System is good because it enables you to gain links on relevant blogs.
If you haven’t tried it much it’s worth giving a go.
Ben,
Just curious what your thoughts were on UAW and this topic.
Thanks.
Scott
I’ve actually never tried UAW, or at least I don’t remember trying it. If I’m correct it’s like FTS on Steroids. My current link building strategies work just fine so I’ve never really had the need to but now you’ve bought it up I may try it out and feed back here.
The only thing to be wary of is the speed at which they are submitted, even if they are approved over time, too many links to a new site too quickly will hurt you. What I like about FTS in comparison is that it’s much ‘tamer’ in that in doesn’t submit that many articles and it submits them fairly slowly and so I have never had any bad effect from it.
Cheers
Ben
Great article and GREAT list of “wrongs”! I’ve seen lists of wrongs but most of them fail to mention some of these like building from unrelated websites, building only one type of link, or failing to alternate your anchor text (that’s a good one that A LOT of people miss).
I also, believe it or not, read an article earlier today that said building links from link farms is perfectly fine – umm NO!
Good stuff, Ben! Have a question though:
What is the reason, that you would want to vary your anchor text? If you aiming at ranking for say “blue widgets” – shouldn’t that (ideally) be your anchor text?
Yes and no, you should vary your use of anchor text to:
1) Make your linking look more natural – having the exact same anchor text all over the place linking to your site will cause attention
2) You can target alternative keywords WITH the words “blue widgets” in and still rank for that term as a secondary to the actual term you use in the anchor.
Leave your response!
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