I worried you would be penalized.
Interest in my Link Exchange was growing.
I mentioned in passing that Google could get mad if participants donât add quality links to their posts.
Should I emphasize that there are penalties or will I sound like a nagging mom?
Then, my guest blogger Abdul Kabir Khan offered to write a post for Mostly Bloggingâs readers about backlinking mistakes!
The timing could not be more perfect. Â Abdul, take it away!
8 Backlinking Mistakes That Every Blogger Should Avoid
One of the good pieces of advice that an SEO guru or expert will give you is to build backlinks. Backlinks are important as they have very great value and make your website rank in search engines.
What are backlinks?
If you are new to SEO and blogging, you might ask, âWhat are backlinks?â Basically, backlinks are the links back to your website, and they give your website a vote in search engines. That tells the search engines how popular your website or blog actually is.
You might also ask, âHow can I build backlinks?â Well, there are many ways one can build backlinks, but one of the best ways is guest posting and commenting on other blogs.
Guest Posting gives you a natural backlink and search engines like Google donât consider it as spam. There are plenty of other ways to build backlinks like posting on forums, doing social bookmarking, and submitting your websites to web directories and articles to article directories respectively.
What are the penalties?
Now you would ask, âAre these methods legal?â and âDoes Google treat it as spam?â
Well, if you ask me, Google treats everything in its own way, and as Matt Cutts [the former head of the web spam team at Google] has said, you should not try to make your backlinks natural, rather they should be natural.
But Iâll tell you whatâyou should diversify your link-building strategy and include nofollow and dofollow backlinks.
Itâs really difficult nowadays, to make your backlinking natural (from natural, I mean naturally developed), though many big blogs get natural backlinks, but, if you canât,  you have to get backlinks from a variety of sites not just high pr [page rank], or it will destroy your link-building campaign.
Now enough talking, letâs come to the real topic now, and itâs What are the backlinking mistakes that you should avoid?
Below is the list of link-building mistakes one should avoid. You should read it carefully. Also, check whether you are one of those guys who are doing these mistakes.
What are the mistakes?
1. Linking to bad reputation websites:
You should never link to those websites that have a bad reputation. Google treats it as spam. By the bad reputation websites I mean porn websites, illegal websites, and links-generated automatic blogging.
Google really wonât like this act of yours, and that would count in having negative SEO. Sometimes, many companies use this trick to bring negative SEO to other companies.
2. Backlinking from High PR domains:
You should not only link to domains which have a high PR. As I said earlier, you should diversify your links and include links from low to high pr websites. Also, you have to include nofollow links along with the dofollow ones. So if you only build high PR links, that wonât sound right to the search engines.
Thereâs a no straight follow thing from Google about it, but you should better include links from PR 1, 2, 3Â websites as well. PR 0 and 1 are too low but you should consider links from PR 1 as well.
(Itâs Me, Janice, I am going to interrupt Abdulâs article. Â The bottom line is the higher the page rank, the more valuable the link in increasing your blogâs SEO ranking. Abdul did give a disclaimer that a variety of relevant links, not just those with a high page rank, is preferable. If youâd like more information on page ranking, check out this easy-to-understand two-minute video.)
3. Backlinks from other niche websites:
You should also not include backlinks from other niche websites. A good quality link is one from the same niche with high PR.
4. Links having no keywords as anchor text:
As you might know, anchor text plays a key role for your ranking in search engines. If you have anchor text as your keywords, it helps to rank well in search engines. Also, rememberâdonât use âclick hereâ as anchor text.
5. Getting a lot of links in a short span:
Remember that Rome was not built in a day, so donât try to make links in a short span of time as it would tell search engines that your site is a link farm, and it might even make search engines stop from indexing your blog, i.e. ban it.
6. Site wide link:
You should avoid site-wide footer or sidebar links and never build backlinks such as âWeb Developing Companyâ on other websites (if they are clients or other blogs). If you do, you will be hit by a Penguin update. (Me: Google implemented a Penguin update in 2012, a new way of catching spammers.)
7. Buying or selling links:
Thatâs a really bad practice. Google had made it clear that itâll consider it as spam. Your links should be natural, and they should not be paid or links from other buying and selling links websites.
8. Adding all links as dofollow:
As I said earlier, you should diversify your links when you are building them. They need to be high quality and should include dofollow links along with nofollow links so make sure you build other nofollow links along with dofollow.
Speak Your Mind:
Tell us about what you think about backlinks mistakes that we should avoid. If you have anything to add to this list, kindly please do it. Iâll be more than happy to read your thoughts.
Thanks.
This is a guest post by Abdul Kabir Khan. He writes on his blog AndroidsRoot about rooting android phones and the latest android apps that people need. He is a technology geek and likes blogging a lot.
Me again: Abdul did a thorough job preparing this for us. Please share his article, so others learn about SEO penalties.  Many bloggers have heard of Google penalties, but know nothing about them.  Thanks to Abdulâs article, now they can.
After you share, go show my guest author some blog love, and visit Abdulâs site.
Note: If you subscribe to Mostly Blogging, and you would like to join the Mostly Blogging Link Exchange, put your blog link and your blogging niche in the comments section.
If you would also like to guest author for Mostly Blogging, click the link for the criteria and submission instructions.
Related Posts:
7 Warning Signs That Google Canât Find You
Source:
Video Credit:Â https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qw1HsIzGO8