The Ultimate Cheat Sheet on Bad Link Building Habits!

Link building is crucial for the ranking and SEO of your website. Read on this blog post of mine to know about some of the bad link building habits we should not perform. Here is the ultimate cheat sheet on bad link building habits.

Exactly ten years back I joined SEO industry. The very first profile which I received was of link building only. That was the time when I was not even aware of the term link building, SEO, online marketing, etc.

Soon I realized it is the link building only which plays very crucial role in the ranking of a website in search engines. That was the time when MSN and Yahoo were also considered while doing SEO of the site.

But then soon, I became a master of building links. Though I was not getting the chance to perform the On Page SEO, but soon, I realized that future of SEO will not be the links, but still links will play a major role in this industry.

Slowly-slowly I started learning things related to On Page SEO as well, and when I realized the importance of link building, I tried myself to get only quality links. Links which will add some value to your website are considered as quality links in my opinion.

Within a few years, MSN and Yahoo became obsolete, and Google captured almost complete market share in search business. This was the time when Google started becoming tough towards sites doing low quality works, be it related with getting any links, or be it related with publishing any content on their website.

Honestly it was the time when people started crying that Google is going to kill SEO, and I was having a different feeling about it. I was sure enough that SEO is not going to die, though it will become tough in coming days. Literally I was happy about it, as I was sure that only quality people in this industry will be able to survive this phase.

And I was not wrong.

Recently I received a call from one of the company where I was working during last few years. As per the person, who was unfortunately made my reporting manager during last few months of my working over there; their website got some manual penalty of unnatural links, and the person wanted to discuss the same with me, if there is some way through which they can be able to remove all the links pointing to their website.

It really gave me the laugh, the best ever laugh of my life.

Do you know why?

Actually I am not a guy who laughs on other’s problem, but this was such an instant which gave me a good moment to smile and laugh. The reason behind this was the fact that he was the same guy who always forced me to ask my team to build those links. And now he is thinking how to get rid of those links.

That was the time when I strictly suggested them not to go ahead with such poor link building activities, but none of them of the top management hear me. They wanted to actually engage every team members of my team. They wants to get the numbers not the quality despite I informed the drawbacks of the same.

Anyways, the purpose of telling this story is not to tell them about those poor chaps, but I wanted to let you know that you people should not ever waste your time on doing things which can look easy for the moment, but might harm you in the long run.

You need to invest 10 times more your energy and time on rectifying the same. So why not to avoid doing such poor link building methods?

Bad Link Building Habits 

Link building as I said earlier is still the most important thing of search engine optimization. It is true that the focus these days is on the On Page factors, as far as SEO is concerned, but then links plays the vital role in influencing the ranking of your website.

Those who joined SEO recently, or within a few years only, must not have seen the glorifying days of link building when we use to submit our site or an article into many websites and soon we can come up with 100 plus links.

Although the quality of the links were very poor, but still since the clients were happy with the quantity, and not were anyhow interested with the quality, mostly SEO’s were doing so. Plus that was the time when search engines were also giving the positive impact on the sites for those, so people were also running towards it.

Here are some of the bad links building habits you should be careful of doing so:

Submitting Same Details 

If you are trying your hands in directory submissions, social bookmarking, article marketing, etc. the most basic thing which you are lacking is submitting the same details in different websites. Be it directories, you should prepare different set of keywords, descriptions for each web directories. Now it simply does not means that you should also use different sets of anchor text for submitting your website in different directories, this is again one of most popular and common bad link building habits.

Generally you should submit the name of your website as the title of your submissions. You should not use any anchor text in the title field of your directory submissions.

Similarly with social bookmarking, first you should not go with poor quality social bookmarking sites, and second if you do submit in multiple sites then you should not use the entire details similar on different bookmarking sites.

Even with article directory sites, try to write one article and one unique author bio set, for one article directory site. As we normally do with guest blogging.

So the most important thing in the field of SEO is that if you are going to create a new page for your website, either on your own website, or on someone else website, you should remember that it should be unique. It should always pass the CopyScape test.

Choosing Web Directories 

Honestly after Google Penguin update people in our industry started crying that don’t do directory submissions; they are not good, though I am always against this mentality.

Let me tell you one thing clearly, not all the web directories are of poor quality. Like in the world of blogging you can found some blogs of very poor quality and some blogs of very good quality, similarly you can analyze if a web directory is offering some value or a crap only.

Actually to be very honest, directories were not bad from the very beginning; it is we SEO are who literally made them bad. It was actually the fault of SEO’s who tried getting links from directories and submitted their site on any category. Thus the relevancy factor vanished from there.

Do check if the site is offering quality sites on each and every category, no matter if it can take one or even more than one full day of yours, but unless and until you became satisfied from the quality of sites which are listed there don’t try to submit your website on it.

Choosing Article Directories 

Similarly with article directories, make sure that you should offer unique articles along with unique author bio on each and every article directories you are going to submit your article. Other than this you also need to check their editorial preferences, if they are allowing any poor quality articles on their website, you should quit.

As I say that in guest blogging you should always be sure of the quality of blogs which your guest is publishing, and you should quite if you found them of poor quality.

Choosing Social Bookmarking Sites 

Gone are the days when we use to have a list of around thousands of social bookmarking websites and we use to submit the same link with almost similar title, description, keywords, etc. on all of them.

Now you should pick only a few relevant social bookmarking sites for your website. First try to build your image over there, and promote other’s quality websites, and then only start promoting your site over there. Do take care that the same set of details should not be repeated for each such websites.

If you ask me I would suggest you to be active on sites like Reddit, and StumbleUpon only for this purpose.

Blog Commenting 

Many people consider blog commenting as a way to build links to their website. Honestly there is no harm in doing so too, but as I said in one of my previous blog on how to do comments on blogs, you should always do it with full precaution and never leave any scope of being caught for doing malpractice.

Try to post relevant, genuine and informative comments. You should always use your own real name for the purpose of submitting comments, using the blog name, or using any anchor text is bad. Try to leave links on useful comments only. Plus you should also consider the blog where you are going to leave your comment.

Am I forgetting something?

Not remembering if I missed something, if you are getting something which I missed here, please do let me know in your comments. I will definitely add them into the post.

No matter what ways you build link for your website, you should remain aware of the value addition which it is giving to your website. If you consider it good only, then you should go for it, else you should not.

Anyways, do suggest me if I am lacking something in this post. Do share your opinion, feedbacks, comments, or anything which you want to, in the form of comments with us. I would be happy to hear your opinion on this blog post.