Blue Wave Concept's Blog

Search Engine Optimization is a process where a website is designed and positioned to achieve higher rank for selected key words or keyword phrases when a query is made using one of the search engines, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. There are essentially two components that can be addressed to optimize a website -

1. What you can do on the page and
2. What you can do off the page

This article addresses the second part of SEO, and specifically link building, and the top 5 link building mistakes that can really hurt your website.

Yes, you read that correctly “hurt”.

In the algorithm that evaluates where your website will place when a query is done on Google or Bing or Yahoo, one of the factors is the credibility of your site. Just as in real life, where you are judged by the company that you keep, so it also goes with regard to the links you obtain. If you hang out with low-lifes (and sometimes you find this out too late) then you can expect that others will perceive you that way.

Try to find sites that have authority and credibility and that you are proud to have links with.

With that said, here are 5 ways your link building will hurt your website:

1. Pay for back links. Sometimes in the rush to get a website optimized and showing in search engines quickly, short cuts to organic optimization are made. Buying links or link building services is risky business. Ultimately this tactic can back fire and harm your site because the authority of a preponderance of the links are low. This is the ‘company’ that you are keeping and therefore your site will be held back to the level of these other low-ranking sites.

2. Use bad anchor text. Obviously, if the anchor text is ‘click here’ this provides little help for the search engines to understand what the link is about. Much better to use descriptive text to identify what the linked page is about.

3. Use an image for the link. Search engines don’t ‘see’ pictures, they can only ‘read’ text. If your link is a picture and you haven’t used ‘alt text’ that’s doubly poor optimization.

4. Get irrelevant back links. Obviously back links will help your site, however in the long run, the irrelevant back links will drain your ‘juice’ and pull your site down. It’s along the lines of the company that you are keeping. Irrelevant links may boost your site when your site is new and you have no rank at all, but, if you want to be a serious site and have true authority, slow and sure win over fast every time. (Yes, that’s the turtle and the hare).

5. Get link spam. I’ve been receiving a bunch of comments recently on my blog that are obviously spam. Anything from sneakers to diet aids and more – and yet the comments are glowing about the neat blog I’ve written. The greatest comments are for a blog that doesn’t have any posts yet, which really cracksFree SEO evaluation me up. Don’t fall for this nonsense.

Bottom line, the power and authority of your website are going to be best when you do things the right way. Follow Google best practices, Bing best practices, or Yahoo best practices in order to be sure that you won’t be penalized down the road.

It’s much easier to optimize your website correctly the first time than to attempt to correct penalties caused by black hat practices. Beware of anyone who is associated with Black Hat.