A recent study which was conducted by a prominent SEO training company sought to analyze over 11.8 million search results to determine which factors contributed to first-page search engine rankings. The results that they found were astonishing. Upon analyzing content, page speed, and backlinks of the search results, their data demonstrated that the link authority of a site was directly related to higher rankings.
They also showed that the #1 result within a search result, had an average of 3.4 more backlinks than websites that were in positions 2-5. They also came to the conclusion that backlinks had a more profound impact on rankings, more so than any other kind of ranking factor. Unfortunately, the reality of the fact is that many people conduct effective link-building practices that end up costing them an abundance of money as well as to inadvertently hurt their search rankings. Therefore, in the post, we’re going to take a closer look at some expensive mistakes people make that you should avoid in 2021.
- Purchasing Links
Selling or buying links can hurt your site in the search results. Search engine crawlers are continuously updated and have been getting smarter at determining if a given site purchased links from another source. In addition to that, some search engines have insider systems as to which people can report blackhat links that are sold by PBN networks and other directories.
- Failing To Remove Toxic Links
Some search engines have released updates that were designed to enhance their search results by deranking web pages which have ‘toxic backlinks’. Toxic backlinks can be best described as being irrelevant or unnatural links that can harm the rankings of a website. As such, search engines have been releasing updates that penalize sites that feature an abundance of toxic links or sites that have bad backlink profiles. Fortunately, there are several tools available that you can utilize to analyze the relevance and quality of your backlink. At the end of the day, if you want to increase your search rankings, you need to take a closer look at your backlink profile and remove toxic links.
- Focusing On Building Do-Follow Links Only
One of the biggest mistakes some people have been making is that they either focus on either no-follow links or do-follow links. Most experts would agree that focusing on one kind of link is ineffective SEO link building. And, some search engines may penalize you for partaking in such a practice. As such, if you guest post in an effort to build quality do-follow links, use the comment section to build no-follow links as well. By doing this, you’ll have a mixture of no-follow and do-follow links, and avoid the possibility of being penalized by a search engine for focusing on one kind of link.
- Building Links Too Fast
Most link-building services would agree that there’s no special rule to go by when it comes to how fast you should be building links for your site. For instance, if you establish hundreds of links to your website on the first day you release it, you’ll get penalized by the search engine. Some of the most influential SEO experts in the industry have said that getting a high DA link is better than getting an abundance of links from low DA sites. Meaning, when it comes to building links, it’s important to remember that quality plays a more critical role than quantity. So, as opposed to building 40 links from a low da site, you should focus on getting 5 links from a relevant authority site.
- Low-Quality Content
Some people use URL builder Google to track their campaigns but fail to focus on quality content. Low-quality content is one of the primary reasons why some people are unable to get backlinks naturally. Look at it this way, if you aren’t providing content that’s worth linking to, why should a search engine improve your ranking? By allocating more time and resources to creating quality content that generates buzz and social shares, you’ll naturally get backlinks from other sites.
Knowing the right steps to create a link-building campaign is important. BUT, knowing the specifics oN certain practices that you need to avoid is equally important as well. Therefore, it’s important that you become more aware of practices that you should avoid which only cost you money and add little to no value.
Author Bio
Delan Cooper is a writer with years of experience in marketing communication. He enjoys meeting new people and reading more books to get inspired for his own book. Connect with him on Twitter.
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