10 Common SEO & Link Building Mistakes

SEO these days is big business. A lot of the time you will find that most people appearing on page one of Google has got there with a little help from search engine optimisation. For those of you who don’t really know much about SEO and it’s benefits there is a lot of information on our SEO page, we have also written an article on the top 10 SEO tips.

So in this article we are going to cover the 10 most common mistakes people make when link building:

1. Forgetting On-page Optimisation

People often forget the importance of optimising your actual website and web pages to help search engines to index them more easily. A lot more focus is put on keywords and link building, so it is common for people to stray away from seeing how their website and coding is actually structured. A few things to bear in mind when performing on-page SEO would be: keyword density & structure, internal linking, image titles & alt tags, how your pages are structured & how the user can find them, coding standards… the list goes on.

2. Panicking when you loose your ranking

You may have experienced this yourself, or you may have come across a similar complaint on an online forum (search hard enough and you will find lots!). You look at your website one day and your rankings are good, the next you are all the way on page 3!! This is usually down to what we call teh “Google Dance”. Most new websites will go through this in the beginning and you must remember that this is natural, Google can not determine an accurate rank overnight. If your websites have age and have dropped in rankings, you may need to work harder to get your position back. Look at your content, keyword structure and think about how often you are adding content. Another thing to think about would be building more backlinks to your site using online directories, blog comments or forum posts. You must remember that Google is constantly changing it’s algorithm, so results can often be inconsistent.

3. Writing your content for search engines
This is something that a lot of people do and can only have negative effects. Write keyword stuffed content that is pretty much unreadable and useless for anyone searching the net. Yes, it is important to be mindful of keywords when writing content, but Google wants natural content that is actually useful to your visitors. Maybe as a guide for every 100 words, you should have your keyword inserted once. So, if you have a 1000 word post, you will put your target keyword into the article 10 times. A good technique is to read your content out aloud and ensure that it reads naturally, and not like a robot.

4. Building low quality links
Low quality links hold no or little weight for search engines! In some cases it can actually have negative effects. If someone offers to build 10,000 backlinks to your website for $10, so no – it is not worth it. Google is looking for quality, relevant links from respectable sites. One PR5 backlink from a relevant site will be a lot more powerful than a million links from low quality, non-relevant websites.

5. Be aware of nofollow links
Many people when starting our optimising their site and building backlink do not know about the term “nofollow”. Basically a nofollow link holds no or very little weight for search engines, as the attribute nofollow tells the search engine to not follow that link. Take this advice and it could save you hours of wasted work!

6. Expecting results over night
Something that many people expect, but unfortunately it just doesn’t work that way. An SEO campaign in most cases can go on for 6 months before it starts to get really good results. We strongly advise our clients to a minimum of 3 months, and we think even that’s too short for any SEO campaign.

7. Failing to be consistent
If you really want a good ranking and are serious about giving it your best, you must be consistent and work every day to try and achieve results. This is something that I, myself struggle with as I have the attention span of a nat! But it is essential that you don’t give up, and this particularly applies to link building. Another thing to bear in mind is even when you have reached a good position for your desired keyword, it does not stop there. You must continue your efforts to ensure that you retain your ranking.

8. Not Diversifying Your Link Building
To make your link building look natural to search engines, it is essential important to gain backlinks from many different sources. Backlinks from just article directories and no other places for example, do not look natural and can hurt your rankings. You need to get links from social media sites, article directories, blogs, blog comments, forums etc. Diversifying your link building looks natural and can put you ahead of your competitors in the search results. A naturally good website will get links from many places, not just one or two.

9. Not Getting High Page Rank Links
Although Google now says that pagerank is not a ranking factor in its algorithm, you should still bear it in mind when building links back to your site as it can be a good signal of how “quality” a website is. Obviously it is harder to get a high PR link but that’s the point. The harder it is to get a link, the more valuable that link is likely to be.

10. Not updating your website’s content enough
It is essential to keep your website fresh!! We are constantly telling our clients to updates their blogs with some useful, keyword rich posts. Google wants to see that your site is useful to others searching the net. If your content is stagnant and rarely or never updated then Google will see it as not being relevant. It can sometimes be a chore thinking of what to write, and then actually sitting down to write it. But you will notice a difference and reap the benefits.

So there we have it! Our top 10 SEO & link building mistakes. Please if you have any questions on this article, or on general SEO. Do not hesitate to get in touch.