What NOT to Do in Link Building
Let me save us all a little bit of trouble, as I know we are all in the race together to get our sites and keywords ranked the highest. I want to give you a few tips on what not to do in link building- meaning that you won’t be wasting your valuable time, or the time of your users for that matter. Be cautioned that using the wrong link building methods can give a bad name to your brand and even get you banned or filtered from some search engines. Not what you are going for in your internet marketing strategies, as it is pretty much shooting yourself in the foot! Agreed?
Now that we are on the same page, picture these link building ‘Don’ts’ as the slick traveling salesman with the bad comb over- ie. so not who you want to be. The first link building misstep to avoid is submitting your site to hundreds of corny directories that will not only bill you around $15 a submission, but will also send you zero traffic and sell off topic run-of-site links. This is a complete money and time waster that would just be much easier to avoid all together.
Moving along, another way not to link build is to assume several identities in a forum to attempt to promote your site. This can also be called forum spamming, so don’t do it! An example of this would be to begin to ask questions on a forum about where one could find the ‘best non-stick pans to cook with that don’t get ruined after one use’. What you would not want to do is to create another forum account from the same IP address to answer your own question and plug how great your cooking accessory site is. Not a good idea because that is pure forum spam, folks. Another bad example would be to become a new member to various forums and then ask the same question relating to your site on all 15 or so forums within the same day.
The next forum spamming method to bad link building than you can avoid is posting on forums only when you can add links to your site in the post area. These forums are all about connecting to your clientele and generating real return traffic to your site. If you begin to attempt to ‘beat the system’, so to speak, then the system will in turn beat you as users can smell a rat a mile away. If you are spending your time flooding the forums you visit with spam content, then you will not have any credibility or personality to draw people to link to your site. On the flip side, if readers begin to see that you are an authority on your products, then they will look to you to provide them useful information and resources and want to link to your site as a result. Also, please try to resist posting your links to forum threads that are years outdated just to link to your vaguely related site and concept.
These are just a few things to avoid when looking to create some solid link building and rank your page even higher. The best advice I have for you would be to get in there (or hire someone to do it for you) and make forums a part of building your online community that will naturally link to your site as you get the word out there. Internet forums are full of people that want to relate, chat, and get their burning questions answered, so who better than you- a genuine site owner that can give them informed answers and comments on all they would like to know about non-stick pans and the like? Kick the traveling sales man to the curb.
