On-site optimisation is one side of the SEO coin. Building inbound links is the other. But is there a wrong and a right way to build links? Yes, there is.
Top 3 link building mistakes a lot of us make
- only building links to your index (home) page: search engines tend to appreciate natural-looking links. If yours all point to your home page it looks contrived. Add deep links to the mix and you create variety for people and search engines. I’m a terrible sinner where deep links are concerned so please don’t do as I do… do as I say! At the moment almost all my inbound links point at my index page. I’m due to get cracking on deep link building as soon as I get a breathing space
- chasing a single or limited number of key phrases: when did you last check your keywords and phrases are still relevant? People change, markets change, trends change and the internet changes. Restricting your SEO to a piffling number of key phrases can seriously affect your website’s reach as well as excluding people who search on the terms you’ve neglected. Another sin I’m honour-bound to admit to!
- chasing any old source of links no matter how crap: it’s highly unlikely you’ll get seriously penalised for poor quality inbound links. How come? Because if the world worked that way there’d be an entire industry dedicated to creating toxic links pointing to competitor sites. There isn’t. But some SEOs think Google turns off the juice from bad links so they don’t have any effect, good or bad. Which means linking from dodgy neighbourhoods potentially wastes time and money
