Link building generally is the procedure of linking web pages from different websites with each other. The web pages can be a blog, article, or other pieces of content like a video, infographic, user-generated content, ebook, etc., that provide your readers something valuable.
Although link building isn’t everything in search engine optimization, it still carries weight massively in 2024. This detailed blog on the dos and don’ts of link building will make you aware of what strategies you should implement and what not to.
Do's of Link Building
The most important thing you should know while starting your business is to dedicate a part of your time to writing blogs. But don’t just create random blogs. For example, if you have a website where you offer interior design services, you should focus on creating blogs with various topics from the interior decoration niche. Some of them might be – Top Kitchen Decor Trends in 2024, How to Revamp Your Adobe with Neutral Colors, etc.
Blogs act as a great medium that can teach your readers how to use something or what not to do while decorating a space and many other things. This way, you can build trust with your users and may attract them to be your potential match.
Stick to creating most of your blogs informational rather than using them as an advertising medium.
A blog is also an easy medium for other websites from your niche or industry to link to yours. Plus, you can effortlessly edit a portion of your blog and update it with other information as per your requirement.
Linking homepages on other websites doesn’t always make sense, but a relevant topic would be a great choice for everyone to link building opportunities. That’s the reason you should have blogs on your website.
- Focus on Quality over Quantity
While you build links, give more priority to gaining backlinks from high-quality, authoritative, reliable, and relevant websites rather than going after a lot of low-quality links. Google gives much importance to quality backlinks. So, if your websites have backlinks from a high domain authority, Google will take your site as a trustworthy source of information in that field and increase its online visibility.
2. Making Unique Content
Producing high-quality, user-engaging, and informative content has a crucial role in link building that delivers magnificent SEO benefits.
Besides, if your content is informational and provides value to the search query of your online traffic, more people tend to link to your web page. It leads to boosting your chances of earning high-quality organic backlinks.
3. Reaching out to Bloggers and Influencers
When you are new to any industry (meaning you have recently created a website), the probability of your blogs getting popular is less in the beginning. That’s when you have to reach out to famous bloggers or influencers who work in the same niche or industry to make your website viral.
Now, these bloggers or influencers may help your business to gather the attention of their users in exchange for something. Either you write them a guest post, provide some resource material, or finally an amount of remuneration.
If any of the bloggers or influencers come to an agreement that you will create a guest blogging or something else, and in return, they will allow you to put your website address on their platform, you will acquire a high-quality backlink.
On the other hand, you can pay them money for mentioning or promoting your business on their platform. By building a good relationship, both of you can grow together.
4. Natural Link Acquisition
Take part in industry discussions and social forums, and offer insightful answers on various Q&A sites like Quora, Reddit, etc., to influence other website owners to engage with your content as well as build links. It results in Google recognizing your website as an authority.
Don'ts of Link Building
- Building Links from Low-Quality Websites
Just think of the following scenario.
You are traveling to one of your dream destinations that is 300 km far away from your location. After covering 100 km, you come across a path without any alternatives and has too many potholes as well as bumps. What will happen? All of a sudden, you have to travel along that bad road, leading to fading your happiness away.
Similarly, this is what happens when you start building links from low-quality websites. Google or other search engines will decrease your search rank and impact your website authority negatively.
So always focus on acquiring backlinks from high-authority websites rather than building from low-authority websites. You can even take the help of good SEO tools, such as Ahrefs, SEMRush, Ubersuggest, etc., to check the website’s authority before approaching any of them to acquire backlinks.
2. Avoid Implementing Black Hat SEO Practices
Don’t indulge in manipulative and unethical link building practices that may affect your website negatively from an SEO perspective. Some of these techniques that Google or other search engines take action against are buying links, being involved in link schemes, or using automated link building tools.
3. Building Backlinks from Non-Relevant Websites
Just imagine you love gardening. So, you nurture the flower plants and other plant species with the utmost care every day.
Suddenly, a few of the plants start fading or dying. Do you like to take advice from your friend, a specialist human doctor, or would you prefer to take advice from a plant expert from your local nursery? Of course, you will choose the plant expert without any doubt unless you want your plants to die.
Although your friend is a specialist, he is not an expert in diagnosing plants. That’s why you will prefer listening to advice from the plant expert at your local nursery.
Similar is the case with search engines. When crawling any websites for their links, search engines like Google, Bing, etc., focus on the relevancy of the website’s content as well as the backlinks the websites are acquiring.
Google or other search engines always strive to satisfy the searcher’s queries. And in order to do it, they particularly categorize every website by niches or industries. So if you start building links from different niche-focused websites without context, your website could be penalized and see a significant drop in search rankings.
Prefer building links from relevant websites rather than engaging with websites from different niches or industries just for the purpose of backlink building. Otherwise, your website may lose its authority.
4. Avoid Overuse of Exact Match Anchor Text
Everyone wants to rank their websites. But implementing the exact match keyword repeatedly on the anchor text is not a good sign. It may result in a search engine penalty.
Building backlinks through exact-match anchor text is an easy choice for websites to appear on the top pages of Google or other search engines. But it is not a good link building technique for SEO.
Moreover, don’t build backlinks from websites that have overly optimized exact-match anchor texts. Rather, approach website owners who have natural and diversified anchor texts on their content. It helps you draw in the right traffic to your website.
5. Neglect Low-Quality Directories and Link Farms
Avoid submissions to directories and link farms that offer irrelevant and low-quality links. It is not up to the mark and can harm your SEO efforts.Â
Instead, try to publish your web details, URL, and description to trustworthy and relevant directories that may offer value.
Final Analysis
Remember, what is working today may not work tomorrow. With the evolving search engine algorithms, backlink building practices may change.
But user-informative content by keeping relevancy will never change. You should think as a reader yourself and focus on the context. It will help you understand where to place your content and acquire a backlink from high-authority websites.
We hope this blog on the dos and don’ts for link-building practices in 2024 makes you familiar with the natural and organic process of backlink building.
Lastly, once you care for the readers and prepare content for other websites, they will happily give you backlinks in exchange.
FAQ
Ignoring Relevance.
Quantity over Quality.Â
Black Hat Tactics like Using manipulative techniques for quick gains.
Bad link building involves acquiring low-quality, spammy, or irrelevant links that violate search engine guidelines.
Harmful links are those from suspicious, penalized, or malicious sites that can damage your site’s reputation and rankings.
Bad links often come from unrelated or low-quality sites, with over-optimized anchor text. Use tools to analyze link profiles.
Disavow Tool: Request search engines to ignore harmful links.
Outreach: Contact webmasters to remove or update bad links.
Link building is safe when done ethically and following search engine guidelines. Avoid shortcuts and focus on quality connections.
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