One of the most integral parts of any SEO campaign is a link-building strategy. Very simply, search engines such as Google rate content and websites based on incoming links. The number and quality of the links is an indicator of the usefulness of the content. The greater number of links (and specifically high-quality links) that link back to content, the higher the domain authority and Page Rank of a website will be. But this does not mean that all link building practices are equal in their influence—far from it. If you have implemented a link building strategy but are yet to see any SEO benefits, these are some of the ways in which you might be going wrong.
Your links are “no-follow” links
There are two types of links that connect with content: do-follow and no-follow links. Do-follow links are useful in terms of SEO because they pass on a little bit of SEO power from the linking site. If you manage to score a do-follow link from a PR6 site, this is going to improve your domain authority and Page Rank. If you receive a no-follow link from that same PR6 website, you will not gain anything in terms of SEO. You might find that you have many no-follow links linking to your content if part of your link-building strategy is blog commenting, because the comments section of many sites and blogs only contain no-follow links. No-follow links can be useful if you are trying to connect with a wider blogging community and simply want your website to have presence across a portfolio of sites, but they add nothing to your SEO.
Your links are contextually irrelevant
Search engines are becoming smarter and smarter with each day, and it is no longer possible to purchase 1,000 do-follow links and expect this quick fix to lead to a transformation of your SEO. Your backlinks cannot just sit anywhere on the internet. In order for links to seem as though they are from sources that genuinely want to share your content with readers, your backlinks must be contextually relevant. If you are trying to improve the SEO of your travel business website but are placing links within many other niche areas, Google and other search engines will recognize that your links are not genuine and could even penalize you.
Your links are not diverse enough
If you can find a website of Page Rank 5 and above that is willing to post links to your website, this is a definite win. But focusing your back-link building strategy on just a few sites, even if they are powerful, is not going to have any dramatic effect on your SEO. Ten links on one PR5 site is not nearly as powerful as having one link across ten different PR5 websites. Why? Because this tells Google that your content is so useful and engaging that multiple influential sites want to share it with their readers.
You are not aiming high enough
Gaining a backlink from any site is great but gaining a backlink from a PR6 site is going to be much more valuable to you than gaining a link from a PR2 site. While it might be easier to gain links from sites with lower page ranks, it is worth spending some time thinking about how you can make sites with high Page Rank link through to your content.
Published: February 18, 2014
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