How Outdated Link Building Techniques Can Harm Your Business

The term ‘link building’ is critical to your SEO strategy. There are a few important things to keep in mind when it comes to link building. Some of them are:

  • Using the right kind of thought process to build links – inbound and outbound.
  • Keeping up with the latest Google updates as far as algorithms are concerned.
  • Doing away with outdated link building techniques.

 Why stay current?

In the world of SEO, the landscape is constantly shifting. The changes in the algorithms by leading search engines also change the strategy that you need to deploy for high visibility. So it does make sense to keep abreast of link building techniques as well.

Outdated techniques can:

  • Cause a dip in your rankings.
  • Harm your online reputation.
  • Decrease your customer base.
  • Cause irreparable damage to your website.

Earn your links

Link farms offer large numbers of links to businesses who are willing to pay for the same. At one point of time, great numbers of links may have helped catapult your site to top rankings but today it is a question of earning your links.

Relevant links mean:

  • The websites that you are linking to or linked to you are relevant to you.
  • Your products and services or information is complementary.
  • There should be some connection in content or context.
  • You link to high-quality websites.

For instance, if you have a website dedicated to wedding dresses, you can link to a website that deals with wedding floral arrangements.

Links to avoid

You can cause damage to your business when you go in for the following, because they are either becoming outdated or have already been ‘disqualified’ by Google:

  • Artificial link building schemes – link wheels and link pyramids to name a couple.
  • Paid links.
  • Poor quality directory links.
  • Reciprocal link schemes.
  • Free press release submission sites.

You may feel that your website is generating a lot of links or using a lot of links when you go in for these practices but the truth probably is that it is all hurting your business.

It is also good to stay away from content farms. Submitting low value articles to such content farms will devalue what you have to offer.

Building links

Treat links like business relationships – they have to be cultivated. Whether you need links from related, high quality websites, industry leaders, influential bloggers or even other brand ambassadors – you need to forge a conversation with them. Chat with them on social forums, visit their offices – if that is possible, reach out to them via their blogs and this will give you and them the opportunity to know one another. Here the reciprocity of links happens because of trust and not merely due to commercial or SEO considerations.

Finally, it is good to remember these maxims of

  • ‘quality over quantity’ when it comes to modern link building techniques.
  • Authority sites rather than articles or links directories.
  • Relevance rather than indiscriminate numbers.

The reward of such solid link building techniques will be increased traffic and increased customer base.