Break Free from These Toxic Link Building Habits

Link building has its ups and downs. If you’ve ever had a bad day, you would understand how you can go from being cheerful to having gut-wrenching thoughts that can poison your mind. Think of those thoughts as your link building habits. Good link building practices can improve your ranking juice while poor practices get you nowhere.

The digital marketing sphere changes daily. It can be difficult to keep up when Google changes frequently changes its algorithm or different marketers like Optimind Technology Solutions adapt new ways to improve their link building strategies. Instead of thinking of these hurdles, its best to focus on what you can bring on the table. Focus on how you can improve your practices.

Read on to find out which link building habits are keeping you from making real progress. That way, you can eliminate them once and for all.

1. Submitting to directories irrelevant to your business

Your link building effort won’t pay off if you put your site in directories that have nothing to do with your business. The effect becomes worse if your customers aren’t visiting the directories. The only time you should submit your link to a directory is when you are sure it’s a high-quality and local based directory. That means having your link in the site provides value you can use in the future.

2. Using generic outreach emails

You do not only lose a chance of getting extra link juice when you send a generic email. You also fail to build valuable connections with the recipients of the email. It pays to give attention to what you include in your outreach emails. People will appreciate you for taking time to know their name, background or any information that would regard them as a human being and not as a webmaster.

3. Making PageRank a priority

PageRank (PR) is one of Google’s algorithms to measure the value of a page. Link building used to revolve around PR as if it was a valuable currency. Nowadays, it doesn’t provide as much value to the business as it did years ago. If you want your site to gain value through link building, you need to stop making PR a priority. It’s time you assess a site for what is and what it means when your link becomes part of it.

4. Creating hidden links

This one is an old-school tactic. It’s creating a white link on a white background. Users can’t see it, but search engines detect it once they crawl the page. As search engines develop, this tactic won’t do anymore. Instead of creating hidden links, why not add them to your sitemap? It looks better and will you benefit in the long run.

5. Taking part in forums

Not all forums are trusted by the online community. Forums are great for engagement but not so much when not regarded by trusted authorities. If you wish to participate in discussions to further your link building strategies, you must ensure that you are providing content in a community that can bring value to your website.

6. Posting useless comments

Making spammy comments is not only annoying. It can also push others to report or call you out and kick you off the platform where you are posting the comment. It can affect your credibility and make others wary of your shady presence.

While on the topic of creating comments, you should also steer clear of tools that automatically create links on different websites. These tools come up with comment links and post on blogs without checking the quality of your site. The tools’ poor judgment can negatively affect your link building strategies if you don’t watch out.

7.  Counting on social bookmarking sites

According to Moz, links from social bookmarking sites have no value. You might have several pointing to a page but it might not be enough to crawl the page.

8. Creating profiles to build links

Google is still not smart enough to figure out which profiles are real people and which ones aren’t. But, if the profile you created doesn’t match your website or brand name, you’re in trouble.

9. Purchasing domain

Getting an expired domain to suck out their link juice works well if it is done correctly. Redirecting their links to your site brings loads of traffic but if you don’t check those links. You can get linked from nasty sites.

Adhering to these habits doesn’t only give you a bad day. It also puts your site on the lowest of the low. It’s time for you to adopt new strategies to bring brighter and better days to your SEO team.