10 link-building techniques that are harmful to your SEO

Many vital elements are involved in enabling any website to achieve a high ranking on search engine result pages, coming up with amazing content, accurately identifying the target audience, choosing the right keywords to match the user’s search terms, etc. These on-page optimization processes are very helpful for a good website ranking on the SERPs. Still, there is also an essential off-page optimization segment that digital marketers can’t neglect – SEO link building

What is a link?

A link is a connection between one website on the internet to the other, highlighted in a different color and described by the anchor text. Whenever you go through the content of a website or any webpage on the internet, you’ll find there are certain words or combinations of words displayed in a specific color, and when you click on the link, it directs you to another webpage.

There are two types of website links in SEO, inbound links and outbound links. Outbound links are the links you place in your content to direct the users, readers, visitors, target audience, etc., to another webpage. These types of website links are created to fulfill the knowledge or information gap that was not possible to fill on the current webpage. Inbound links are the vice-versa of the outbound, with one difference being that these types of links redirect the users from other websites to yours.

Backlinks in SEO are one of the crucial parts of off-page optimization that helps improve the website ranking, though there are many criteria for an efficient website optimization through website links. Getting an inbound link to your website is vital, but it will only be effective if it’s a high-quality backlink, i.e., depicted through relevant anchor text and coming from a reputed website of the related genre.

Importance of inbound links

The digital marketers or the digital marketing agency constantly works on improving their SEO through different techniques from generating great content, keyword selection, identifying the preferred audience, etc. These on-page optimization methods are very crucial for website ranking, and online marketing agencies have partial yet direct control over these factors. The on-page optimization helps in getting inbound links which is an essential part of off-page optimization and benefits the website and its ranking in many ways.

• Drives more traffic – Inbound links drive more traffic to the own website from the visitors of the other website benefitting the SEO.
• Certifies the authority of the content and the website – Backlinks create a sense of trust and authority in your website content and its usefulness in the eyes of the visitors.
• Increases brand awareness and builds reputation – Backlinks are very useful in increasing brand awareness and reputation of your website, but they should be high-quality backlinks, i.e., coming from an authoritative website relevant to your website.
• Keeps your website ahead of its competitors – Backlinks in SEO improve the ranking of the website with the additional benefit of off-page optimization that became possible because of the on-page optimization of the website. Thus helping in enhancing the ranking in multiple ways and keeping your website way ahead of its competitors.

These inbound link benefits become essential for any website to acquire to reach its SEO marketing goals, which is why link-building is done to get maximum backlinks.

What is link building?

Link building is the process of acquiring one-way links, also called backlinks or inbound links from other websites to your own website. It is an essential part of website optimization as it helps in improving the visibility of the website on the search engines. Google rates backlinks in SEO very high as it establishes the authority of the website if the backlinks are received from the reputed and relevant websites by using suitable anchor text, and that is why link-building becomes so important for the digital marketers to exercise and capitalize on. SEO Link building is a delicate process and, if not done properly, can give undesired results. Also, some backlink-building techniques may harm your SEO, and avoiding them at any cost is highly recommended.

Link building techniques that are harmful to your SEO

As much as backlink building can give unimaginable results to your SEO, it can also hamper the website ranking if the link building techniques are harmful. There are many digital marketing agencies that provide link building services that can benefit your website and also help in avoiding these harmful techniques.

• Non-relevant website links – One of the most harmful link building strategies is to get links from a non-relevant or unrelated website. E.g., suppose your company is involved in providing digital marketing services, and you receive a backlink from a very reputed XYZ mobile phone manufacturing company. In that case, it will be a very irrelevant and unproductive link that will not help in any way to optimize your website ranking. Acquiring a backlink in SEO is essential for your website ranking. It can provide exceptional ranking results, but this inbound link must be coming from a website that is related to your page content.

Therefore the emphasis should always be on acquiring as many as backlinks from the website that are related to the genre of the page content to enjoy or gain the maximum benefit of SEO link building.

• Unworthy content – The content on your website should be worthy enough to acquire links and help in SEO link building. One of the main reasons websites do not get a backlink is because of the quality of content they produce. Any reputed or authoritative website will only give backlinks to the website with good content relevant to its described title and meta tag. No website wants to redirect its user or the target audience to a web page that doesn’t maintain the standard of the information passing through it, and that is why it is so essential for the reputation of both the website that is giving and receiving a link, to produce worthy content for the visitors.

• Trying to buy backlinks – Buying links to optimize the website ranking is the most harmful backlink-building exercise that should be totally avoided. Manipulating the page ranking by paying money for this kind of black-hat SEO service is very unethical and is never recommended. Google has algorithms that can identify these wrongful link building strategies and can heavily penalize your website affecting most of the growth and a rapid slip in the ranking of your website. Therefore, following the ethical ways in SEO link building is always instructed; the money used to buy links can be used to better the SEO practices.

• Not checking for broken links – Some constant updates and upgrades go on in a website and its content, and sometimes your website may have broken links unwillingly. Checking and fixing broken links becomes essential as it may affect the website ranking and can also adversely hamper the link building strategies. Whenever a user finds your link on another website and gets interested in giving it a visit, they should not encounter a page with a broken link as it leaves a very negative impression on them and depletes the reputation of your website. Also, the website that has attached the backlink to your page stops exercising the same, affecting the ranking of your website.

• Unsuitable anchor text – It is a very common mistake that negatively impacts all the effort applied in the link building strategies. Not getting a suitable anchor text for the inbound link adversely affects the off-site optimization’s benefit obtained through the backlink. It is essential to ask for backlinks on the text which is relevant and effectively define the content.

• Only focusing on building links – SEO is a process that demands the integration of several critical SEO marketing elements to work properly and give the desired results to digital marketers. Focusing on just one element to obtain a high ranking on search engine result pages is a waste of efforts that will not provide an expected outcome. That is why putting all the effort into just building links and ignoring other essential elements of SEO is never recommended. It is not a good practice building link practice and may not deliver the preferred results.

• Unoptimized internal linking – Internal linking is undoubtedly a very important factor in attaining the maximum benefit of backlinks in SEO. It is not only essential for the link-building strategies but also for the overall website optimization. The users that are directed to your website through inbound links on other websites expect a smooth navigating experience. A smooth user experience fulfills the purpose of SEO link-building strategies and retains them as frequent visitors to your website. This is the reason why unoptimized internal linking is a big turn-off for the users because it does not provide proper navigation throughout the website and generates a negative impression.

• Creating a network of blogs – As backlinks in SEO are vital in improving website ranking and earning organic traffic, creating a private network of blogs to give backlinks to one another is a common SEO link-building technique exercised by many websites to link to the main domain. This benefits their SEO, and they can give as many backlinks to their main domain through their network of blogs, but the problem here is the quality of content in the inbound links. If not much emphasis is given to checking out its relatability and relevancy to the content, then it will penalize your website, taking a toll on its ranking. Your website ranking will undoubtedly improve for a brief time as so many backlinks are still coming to your website but once Google figures out that these backlinks have been redirected to your website through a blog network, the ranking will be affected.

• Only enhancing homepage – Building all the backlinks for the homepage might indicate to Google that this website is just trying to make its presence known in the online marketing world and is not very much concerned about giving the users what they are actually looking for when clicking on a backlink. This will severely affect your website ranking and give results opposite expected results. Always make sure to build relevant links and not redirect the users always on your homepage; this will hinder the optimization of other website pages, affecting the overall website optimization.

• Focusing on a single platform – If you are building links for your website and it is only coming from one platform, it might look suspicious to Google. There are other platforms, too, apart from the search engines, that are equally useful in SEO. A great example will be the popularity of social media sites and the number of active users it has. Therefore it will be harmful to your website to build links only focusing on a single platform, neglecting others.

One more essential to avoiding harmful link-building techniques is to stop overlooking the fact that several digital marketing agencies have the required expertise to guide your website with its SEO link-building strategies and obtain high-quality backlinks from reputed websites. Also, choosing a good agency will eliminate all the chances of getting penalized by Google because of the proper guidance of professional and skilled link-building services providers.

Conclusion

Link building is essential if your website needs to leave an impact and gain the benefits of search engine optimization. Focusing on backlink building to improve the website ranking is crucial but making sure that these techniques don’t convert into harmful ones is more critical. Getting inbound links is one part of SEO. Still, it doesn’t guarantee a high ranking until all the other influential elements of SEO are taken care of. That is why a digital marketer should follow a wholesome approach when trying to enhance the ranking on SERPs using SEO techniques.