SEO is important for everything you do on the digital platform to ensure the success of your business. Without SEO, it is very difficult to compete, especially when your competitors are using SEO tactics to make their presence stronger in the digital world.
It won’t be wrong to say that SEO is one of the most important and must-have parts of all digital marketing strategies. The reason behind this is that SEO ensures the visibility of a business online for relevant search queries made by people.
While we are talking about SEO, then you should know that link building is one of the most vital parts of SEO. Link building ensures a wider reach of business online, improved authority, better recognition, and much more. Without link building, it will be just impossible for you to create effective SEO for your site.
To build links, there are certain rules that you need to follow, as avoiding them might become the reason for penalties by Google. This post will be entirely focused on telling you about link building along with the rules that you must follow to avoid being penalized.
What is link building?
Link building is a process in which a hyperlink to one’s website is placed on another site of a similar niche. This technique is highly admired by search engine bots of popular search engines like Google and is also an effective SEO tactic. One of the key reasons why link building is so much admired, practiced, and suggested is because it lets internet users to easily navigate between the webpages on the internet. And, the navigation through these links is so specific that people easily find the information they are looking for.
With link building, you need to know that links placed on other websites that drive traffic to your site are known as ‘backlinks’ and the links you have on your website that direct traffic to any of your webpages are known as ‘internal links.’ Both kinds of links have their own importance and both help in improving the reputation of your business and increase web traffic. Let us see some rules that you need to follow during link building.
Rules of link building
-
Great content
We always say that you cannot keep content aside, especially with your digital marketing efforts. A quality content created in accordance with SEO is one of the best ways of building links. Everyone wants top-quality content and especially when you want a backlink from a popular & trustworthy site, you need to give something unique & catchy. If you can prepare such content (guest post), no one can take away your quality backlink.
Plus, quality content is also necessary for you to give links to other sites as well, because, you cannot only ask for backlinks, you need to give some as well. It’s also a good SEO practice to do.
Without quality content, you won’t be able to get a quality backlink and even if you get one, the chances of getting traffic through that link are less.
Always remember, to post great content with your backlink, choose a quality site, because that’s how you will get the attention you want. If you want a backlink just for its sake and get it through any website that has no genuine visitors and authority, it’s of no use. The only thing that you’ll get through this is a waste of your resources. So, do enough research to find a quality site relevant to your niche before getting a backlink.
-
Don’t pay for links
The second rule and the most important one is to avoid paying to get any backlinks. This is a bad SEO tactic and is never admired by search engines like Google. Payment is made when you are not able to get a quality backlink through your content and if this is the case, the traffic on your content will not be as you expect, thus, you will not get a significant rise in web traffic on your site.
Remember, the genuineness of your backlink will decide how effective it will be for you and how much authority you will get from search engine bots.
-
Avoid exchanges
Rule number three for your link building strategy is, never exchange links. What we mean by saying this is never give a link in return for a link. This is strictly considered a bad SEO practice and if Google bots find it out, the ranking of your site will drop down instead of getting up.
Just like getting paid links, link exchanging is also done when you don’t have quality content that can grab the attention of people. When the audience will not like your content, it doesn’t matter where it is posted, you will not get traffic through the link present in that content copy.
-
Add site to local listings
Having your mention in local listings serve as one of the best backlinks and popular search engine like Google also favors this. Adding your business to the local listing will ensure that it is a genuine one as you will provide a proper address and contact number for people to find you easily.
To ensure that you are benefited from listings, it is also important for you to clearly mention on your website that where people can find you online and link the page to listing having those mentions.
-
Look for unlinked brand mentions
When you start to do well on the digital platform, people start talking about your brand on different platforms. Even you will see your brand mention in several articles over the internet, but the most disappointing part that you’ll experience with your brand mention is that there will be no link.
Now, what you need to do here is to find out mentions of your brand and request the website owner to add a link to your webpage on that mention. This is one of the most effective rules of link building.
Remember one thing, before asking to add a link, do check whether the site is qualitative and authoritative or not. Getting a link from a poor site will only harm your SERP ranking.
-
Avoid hidden links
The rules of link building are not only for how you can build links, rather they also include strategies that tell you what not to do. That is where this rule is focused on.
In the process of building links, it is always advised not to use anything that can get you penalized. One backlinking tactic that you must avoid is adding hidden backlinks. If you do so and this clever tactic of yours is found out by search engine bots, you are going get a heavy penalty. Don’t be surprised if your site is banned.
So, just follow simple rules stated by the webmaster to create links and enjoy your success on the digital platform.
-
Comment smartly on blog posts
Active participation in blogs and forums that are relevant to your niche is a good idea to increase your reach and get recognition. But, if you overdo this thing, it could affect your reputation negatively.
What we mean by saying this is, that posting irrelevant comments that offer no value to readers is not a good idea. You need to know when it is the right time to comment on the blog or forum and when your comment will deliver maximum value to the readers. Posting comments by strategizing things and then adding your link relevantly to those comments will be of great value for your link building strategy.
-
Consider link velocity
Every rule of link building is important and each one has its own value. The next in our list is the link velocity. It is the frequency or speed at which you acquire links and it holds some serious importance in your link-building strategy.
Link velocity is also one of the main factors that matter to search engine algorithms. If the speed of getting links is way too high, then it is not considered a good practice and Google might penalize you for this. Thus, it is advised to build links slowly and that too genuine ones, because those links will offer you excellent value that even many ordinary links cannot.
-
Avoid getting links from bad sites
This simple, having backlinks from adult sites or websites with irrelevant content can harm your reputation and you might face a heavy penalty from Google. Thus, it is not only important to get backlinks from relevant sites but it is also important to see whether that site is publishing any banned content.
Another key reason why you should avoid links from such sites is that they use black hat SEO tactics to rank and linking to those sites will directly harm your reputation. Plus, search engine bots will also think that you are not authoritative enough to rank high and your SERP position will drop down.
-
Keep a check of your competitor’s backlinks
Reviewing your competitor’s backlink profile, you will get to know that most of the backlinks you both have in common. Now, if your competitors are ranking above you, then there has to be something different between both of you. Considering this rule will also help you know where the difference is.
The reason for their high ranking could be anything like they might have been writing much more helpful blog posts or guest posts or they would have chosen more unique & interesting topics than you or they might have left a very useful comment a blog post of related niche. These are the just examples but the actual reason could be anything, and that you will find while reviewing your competitors.
So, considering this link building rule will help you strengthen your strategy and get some great results. There are also many tools available that can help you with this and you can use them accordingly.
-
Reclaim broken links
It is also a good link building tactic that has proven highly beneficial to most of the users. If you have any webpage link of your site that you have removed it because it was not providing you enough value or for any other reason. In such a scenario, you can reclaim that broken link and add a redirect to it so that when people visit that link, they don’t have to see 404 error rather a webpage open in front of them.
-
Never use automated tools
Many businesses use automated tools to build links with a view to succeed in less time. But they should know that it is not a good thing to do. The major drawback that automated tools have is that they build links to all kinds of websites and blogs. For example, if your business niche is digital marketing, then automated tools can also put your link on a site or blog having a food-related niche. That probably has nothing to do with your digital marketing domain.
Thus, it is advised not to use any tool for building links as more than benefits it has drawbacks and you definitely don’t want that.
The Bottom Line
Whatever you do, there are some rules associated with that and they tell you what all things you should do and what you don’t to play fair. If you don’t follow those rules, you will simply be knocked out.
Things become strict when we talk about having a strong presence on the digital platform. Here, there is no scope for cheating, as if you found doing one, be ready for paying the price, and this a huge one. Link building is one of the most important tactics of SEO to ensure visibility of your site when a relevant search query is made. It also ensures a wider reach of your brand and drives traffic from other websites as well where your backlink is placed.
While building links for your website, it is also important to follow certain rules to avoid being penalized by Google. The sole purpose of this post was to tell you about those rules so that you can play fair and minimize the chances of facing any kind of penalties.
We hope that it would have helped you a lot in learning about the rules that you should follow during link building, and that could be the defining factor when you look towards your end-term goals.