Link building is an important part of any site’s SEO effort. However, there are various myths that surround link building thanks to all the wrong information that is available. These myths have only increased after the release of Google Penguin.
What are the causes of link building myths?
There may not be any guidelines for proper link building though most search engines will be able to tell you about what not to do while doing link building. Most of the times, people will misread what the webmaster tools say and will use that for their own benefit. As a result, many myths about link building are formed. Given below are some of the common myths about link building.
This is one of the most common myths about link building. Directories are the most effective link building channels even today. However, when submitting the sites to these directories, it is important to remember that both the quality and quantity of links submitted can make a lot of difference. Directory submissions are a very good way of increasing the quantity of links. However, there are certain things that you need to make sure before submitting the site to any of the directories. You need to ensure that the directory is not a part of any link network, it is not spammy and has not been penalized.
Reciprocal links can add SEO value to both the sites that are a part of the link building effort if it is done in an ethical and right way. What can have a negative impact on your site is if the site from which you get a reciprocal link is meaningless and is in no way connected to your site or field of business.
In today’s world, it is important for you to be a part of a community than being the destination of incoming links itself. Different websites will be encouraged to link to you if you will offer high quality links to anyone who visits your site. A part of this is to recommend other quality sites to people who visit your site. It is important for search engines that you are a part of the right cluster and add value to your visitor’s experience by providing the right kind of links.
Link building is not as simple as getting links from sites with a high page rank. There are various factors that can affect the performance of your site. Things like the number of incoming links, the anchor text, how relevant the linking site is to your site etc will make a difference. You also need to make sure that the page that you link to on the site has a high page rank. Sometimes, only the homepage will have a high page rank. You also have to ensure that the link is not a no follow link as that will be of no use.
There are many people who will say that links from irrelevant websites will not help your site. However, they fail to realize that directory submissions and social bookmarking also make a big difference to the performance of the site. However, you should realize that all the websites that are there on the internet are not directories, social sites or news related websites. And linking to such sites will make no difference to your website.
This is not true at all. There are various examples of sites with zero indexed incoming links doing well in search results. Similarly, you should realize that just because a link is indexed does not mean it will help your site perform better. Whether the link is indexed or not will not matter. What will matter is the quality of the links that you get to your site.
There are many good quality directories like Yahoo! Directory that require you to pay in order get included in the directory. Similarly, you may have to pay to become a member of various business forums. These instances of buying links are completely legitimate and cannot be considered to be unethical. However, you should be very careful while buying links. It is OK to buy a small amount of high quality links for your site. What you should not do is to buy a large amount of links and then disguise them to be organic links.
Many SEOs may recommend link solicitation to get links to your site. However, this may not be in the best interest of your site. Given below are the various reasons why link solicitation is considered to be bad.
· You will be spamming a site and can get penalized or even flagged for this.
· You need to think about how many times you will reply to unsolicited emails. If you don’t respond to these mails, you cannot expect others to respond to your mails either.
· You need to think about why a person may not expect a link or a payment if they agree to link to your site.
· Try and make the site interactive and give your customers a chance to engage.
suraz is a Entrepreneur and author of several publications of Business and books and experiences in life. He is a regular contributor to online article sites on the topics of life experiences like Business, Marketing and Digital Marketing as well.