4 Link Building Mistakes Your Small Business Should Avoid
Link building is a crucial part of any search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, and implementing the right practices can make a world of difference in improving your small business search engine rankings. Keep reading to discover four common backlink building mistakes that your small business should avoid.
1. Buying Links or Selling Links
In the past, many businesses thought they could just buy links to improve their rankings. And for a short period of time in history, that “somewhat” worked even though it was frowned upon by the search engines.
However, Google quickly adapted and is better than ever at identifying these spammy link schemes and punishing the websites involved in paid link building schemes. In fact, buying or selling links is one of the worst SEO mistakes you could make! It is best to always focus on building organic backlinks from high quality, relevant websites.
2. Acquiring Too Many Links in a Short Time
If you build too many links in a short span, search engine may mistake you for trying to cheat the system, and your rankings will plummet. It is far better to make backlink building and PR outreach a regular and consistent part of your marketing practices.
You should also be wary of link spamming tools that claim they can get you thousands of high-quality links in a short period. While some might work for a very short while, Google algorithms can detect these types of schemes and penalize your site, even yielding a manual action that can put you far below where you were before you attempted the malicious backlink building. Backlink building should be a consistent process, working overtime to achieve your goal through legitimate backlink building on relevant websites where a link to your website or resources drives value for the website visitors.
3. Focusing on Quantity Instead of Quality
While it may seem like a good idea to focus on achieving a large quantity of backlinks, this can often result in getting too many low-quality links and subsequently lowering your rankings.
To improve your small business rankings, focus on achieving a few relevant, and high-quality links at a time. For example, one link from a major news outlet or industry specific blog where you were quoted is far more powerful than multiple directory links.
While quality and quantity are both technically important when it comes to links, you should prioritize quality first and foremost.
4. Getting Backlinks from Irrelevant Sites
While earning links and boosting your visibility is great, it is also important to focus on receiving links from websites and web pages related to your small business industry, desired audience, and/or geographic location. A lower quality but hyper-relevant backlink can be just as helpful, if not more, for your search engine rankings than a high-quality but irrelevant link.
Get Professional Help with SEO and Backlink Building
At Igniting Business, our SEO specialists can help your small business achieve quality, relevant backlinks and improved search engine rankings through our robust ongoing SEO services. For more backlink building tips, to learn more about our ongoing SEO services, or to schedule a free consultation, contact us today!
Need Tools to Help You Building Backlinks on Your Own?
We understand not everyone has the budget to hire an SEO Agency. Or perhaps, you are the person in charge of the marketing and SEO at your company which includes building back links. Do not worry, we still want to point you in the right direction!
One tool that we have found very helpful in the backlink research and building department is Semrush. Semrush has an excellent SEO and backlink research tool where you can spy on the backlinks of your competitors, research powerful backlinks, get content suggestions, track your SEO progress, monitor earned backlinks, and even be alerted when your company is mentioned online (which creates an opportunity for a backlink).
Additionally, Semrush has a feature where it can monitor your overall backlink profile to let you know if your backlink profile appears spammy or “toxic” to Google. Of course, with any great tool, it is critically important that you fully learn the tool and associated strategies to interpret the data and take action as needed.
Try out Semrush for free today.
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