How to avoid building bad links?
SEO professionals and website owners go to great lengths to ensure that their websites get ranked on the first page of Google. But, you will always find unscrupulous competitors launching attacks to impact your website’s organic traffic. However, it not always competitors, but also your own spammy backlinks profile that can get your website penalised by Google and other search engines. When you are crafting a link building plan, it is important to know about bad links and how to avoid them. Being an SEO link building company, Nhance Digital has outlined some of those spammy links that you should beware of.
Press release links
For the past 10 years, press release links used to be very popular. Also, these links were easy to acquire. All that a website owner had to do was write an informative press release and syndicate it to several press release distribution websites. This assured that the website owner would instantly get a lot of links. This tactic did work well until it got abused.
But, Google considers press release links as a link scheme as they are very easy to manipulate. So, when you are writing press releases, make sure to avoid over-optimised anchor texts that are targeting your main keyword.
If you have to have a website link in your press release due to unavoidable factors, ensure that you are using branded URLs or naked URLs as your anchor text. Also, use only one link.
Links from foreign guestbooks
Links like these are considered to be extremely manipulative. These links can be placed manually or with the help of an automatic programme. If you have a lot of these links, it can cause your ranking to drop drastically. So, if you are in doubt of such links, disavow is the only option.
Discussion forum links
To be clear, we are not saying that links from all discussion forums are bad. If you are acquiring links from high-quality websites, an established user or maybe the link itself is not spammy or manipulative, you can consider keeping the link. You just have to make sure through link audit that the backlink is not spammy.
However, if you are getting thousands of links from foreign discussion forums and most of them are low-quality links, you need to disavow them. Spammy links are not liked by Google and this might make the search giant penalise your website. So, always ensure to have links that are of the highest quality and adhere to the regulations set by the search giant.
Random nofollow links
If you think that you can fool Google by randomising your footprint so that your spammy backlinks go undetected, you are highly mistaken. Google’s algorithms are constantly updated and they are getting smarter by the day. Also, it is easier said than done to randomise footprints and fool Google because the act of nofollowing a link is considered to be a footprint. If your website gets multiple links from websites that are nofollowed, it is an indicator that something is not right.
Even if you are using an automated programme, sooner or later, the search giant will discover your tactic and all your efforts will be in vain. You will even lose the links acquired through white hat link building techniques.
PBNs or private blog networks
PBNs are considered to be an amazing way to build links and get a good ranking in the SERPs. You can even randomise your footprint and everything will be well. By using this technique, you can continue to see good gains.
But, those days are gone. Today, if you rely on PBNs on a huge scale, you will end up getting your website penalised and you could even lose organic traffic. Google is capable of identifying, detecting and even punishing PBNs.
Directory submissions
Directory submission services will always try to convince you that you will receive fantastic traction from their links. They will also claim to help you boost your search engine rankings. But, sadly, this is not the truth. If you continue to submit to poor quality directories, you are only harming your rankings in the long run. You can make use of high-quality, relevant directories as that will even help your SEO efforts, but avoid low-quality directories.
Blog comments
Blog comments have been around for a very long time and they have also been abused. Comment spam is a technique that you must avoid at all costs. However, there is a way around it. You need to leave relevant comments on high-quality websites.
So, these are some of the bad link techniques that you must avoid. Make sure to only get links from high-quality websites that are relevant to your brand. If you need more help, Nhance Digital’s link building services are here for you.