Backlinks have been indispensable to successful SEO, but high-quality backlinks have become increasingly difficult to get since Google started penalizing websites for poor backlink profiles. As a result, the site owners have become extremely picky about the guest posts they accept and the quality of links embedded in the posts.
If you’ve been struggling to gain quality links to your site, the only way forward is to create quality content that webmasters will want to publish and to find sites that will allow do-follow links to your own site. In addition, avoid the following mistakes made frequently by backlinking beginners.
Placing too many links to your site in a single blog post
While this may look like it’ll get you additional clicks, this common mistake, in fact, makes a well-written blog post or article look more like spam. A simple rule to remember when writing guest posts for high-authority sites is that great content is what will get people interested and retain their attention. So focus on writing quality content that’s relevant, informative, interesting and worthy of your audience’s time.
When submitting a guest article for link building, add no more than two links to your website, make sure the anchor text is natural and relevant, and avoid linking both anchor texts to the same page on your site.
Backlinking with irrelevant keywords
The keywords that you use as anchor text in a guest post should be chosen with great care. Avoid using phrases such as go here, click here and the like. Instead, pick keywords that will help boost your ranking and that the reader will not find ill-placed or spammy.
Another common mistake that could sabotage your backlinking campaign is repeating the same keywords in every guest post. This makes search engines question your site’s credibility as your backlink profile doesn’t look “natural” to them.
According to the SEO experts Submitcore, when you entrust your backlink campaign to an agency, discuss what keywords they will use as anchor texts and also ensure they don’t keep using the same keywords over and over again so that you get maximum value for your buck through improved traffic and higher search engine ranking.
Linking to and from sites with a poor reputation
When you’re trying to build a solid backlink profile, you need to choose your linking sites with care. This applies both to sites where you’ll publish your guest posts and the sites that you’ll link from your own website or blog.
Getting numerous backlinks from irrelevant or spam websites won’t do any good for your SEO. Instead, it may attract SE penalties and harm the credibility of your website. Choose niche-relevant websites with a good reputation and high readership, and avoid sites that have too many links on every page.
Similarly, steer clear of lucrative offers to place backlinks on your blog to websites with little or no credibility, as doing so will affect both your search engine ratings and your reputation as a trusted online resource.
