Content marketing remains one of the best ways to drive leads and conversions online.
Unfortunately, the internet today is full of content competition. For instance, 4 million new blog posts get published every single day!
The result? Ranking your content above the rest can be a serious challenge.
Effective search engine optimization holds the key to success.
Of all the seo strategies out there, building back-links remains one of the most important.
Alas, a host of link-building myths have arisen that can confuse and stymie your efforts. They can inhibit your rankings and, in worst-case scenarios, lead to damaging search engine penalties.
We want to dispel these myths and shed light on the reality of effective back-linking. Doing so should help you succeed in your online ranking endeavors.
Sound good?
Read on to discover the myths about link building to know about and avoid at all costs!
1. All Links Are Equal
This myth is one of the most important to keep in mind.
To succeed in SERPs, you need to attract the right kind of back-links. Some are more valuable than others; certain back-links can even damage your pursuit of better rankings.
It wasn’t always like this though.
Back-linking today is worlds apart from what it was in the wild-west days of the internet. Not so long ago, it was a case of quantity over quality. The more links you had, the better! It didn’t matter where they came from or how you acquired them.
Of course, this led to a host of shady link-acquisition tactics. You could pay for thousands of them and expect a spike in rankings.
The trouble was that low-quality content could get to the top spot.
In effect, with enough money you could cheat the system, causing users to suffer as a result.
These days, quality over quantity rules the roost. Back-links from high-authority sites are what’s going to see your rankings increase.
2. Link Placement Doesn’t Matter
Many people continue to believe that the placement of a back-link on a page doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s at the top, in the footer, in the body of the text, or an image caption. Either way, you get the link-juice flowing to your page and site.
Right?
Wrong.
Think about it. When was the last time you clicked on a link in the footer of a page? We’re guessing it was a while ago, if ever!
In reality, the placement of links DOES make a difference. If you can get yours higher on the page, then you’ll enjoy more juice and better rankings.
When you’re building your links, ask the webmaster to put the link as close to the top of the page as possible.
As an aside, ensure that you don’t have any broken backlinks. Nobody wins when they’re in the text but pointing to nowhere. Run a check for broken back-links and ensure everything’s up and running.
3. No Juice Comes from No-Follow Links
Here’s a quick one:
People have started to assume that no-follow links are worthless.
They aren’t.
Sure, in an ideal world you’d want it to be do-follow. That’s where the real link-juice comes from. All the same, no-follow links still have value.
For one thing, they direct traffic to your site. A webmaster has recognized your page as worth visiting, and actively given their users a means of visiting it.
It just so happens that traffic is a ranking factor!
As such, you can enjoy an indirect boost to your rankings in the form of new users.
More to the point, there remains a degree of juice that flows from no-follow links. They’re picked up by Google, which is always a positive.
4. Comments Sections Backlinks are Worthless
Let’s face it:
There are all sorts of ways to get backlinks.
You can use email outreach, guest posting, and collaborative posts. The downside is that most methods involve serious levels of time and effort.
That’s bad news when you’re looking to build links and boost rankings fast.
It’s for that reason that the comments section of blog posts were so highly-prized in the past. With a few lines at the end of someone’s article, you could acquire a brand new backlink.
Times changed, though and such back-linking methods fell out of favor.
The common assumption these days is that comment links are worthless.
It’s unlikely that Juice from no-follow comment links will get you to number one on Google. However, they count for something! Get enough of them and, compared to having no links at all, you’ll see improvements on SERPs.
You stand to gain, though, with do-follow opportunities in the comments of high-authority sites. Don’t ignore this quick and easy means of accruing links.
It might be the difference between you and the competition.
5. Permanent Links Live Up to Their Name
Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.
A webmaster might promise to provide a permanent backlink. Yet, as any marketer knows, it doesn’t necessarily happen that way.
They might update or even shut down their site. They might cull their underperforming posts. They might change their site structure and fail to realize the broken links they inadvertently create.
Whatever the reason, the result is the same: you lose that ‘permanent’ link.
This is why you should never cease your link-building endeavors. You can never afford to rest on your laurels and assume you have enough. Do so and it’s a recipe for disappointment.
Continuing to build links is the only way to assure your growth in search engines.
6. outbound links Are Bad News
Webmasters have become afraid of linking out to other sites.
We don’t blame them.
After all, why would you send your hard-earned traffic to another website? Surely, you want to do everything in your power to keep them on-page!?
Similarly, what if Google picks up on that link and assumes it’s reciprocal? In other words, what if they penalize you in search results?
They’re both very understandable concerns.
It just so happens that outbound links shouldn’t be a problem either.
In truth, your website only stands to gain. Remember, search engines want the best results for their users. They want content that’s well-researched, in-depth, and trustworthy.
Outbound links that provide value (such as to the scientific research you discuss in a post or a statistic you reference) do exactly that.
Also, imagine if the sites you link to find your post, see value in it, and provide you a link in return! You bolster your link-building attempts.
7. Guest Posting Isn’t Worth It
Guest posting is one of the very best ways of attaining backlinks.
Crucially, it’s also a way of attaining high-quality links that drive serious juice to your page(s)! Websites with high-authority are unlikely to link out to you for nothing (especially if yours is less well-known in the industry).
You can email them and beg for links all you want. Chances are high that your efforts will prove fruitless.
Write them a quality article that’s relevant to their audience, though, and you’re onto a winner.
It’s a win-win. The webmaster might be too busy to create as much content as they’d like to. Providing them a well-written post in exchange for a link (or two) satisfies both of your needs.
Start now by compiling a list of authority sites in your niche that accept guest posts (here are some tips on doing it). Send out a brief, personalized email to each one with a particular pitch. From there, it’s only a matter of writing the piece and waiting for someone to publish it.
8. Wikipedia Links Are All-Powerful
There was a time when a Wikipedia link was the holy grail of link-building.
Earn a backlink from such a high-authority site and you were winning at life online.
That was the popular perception anyway. To be fair, a Wikipedia link (or one from similar .edu sites) isn’t a bad thing. It definitely won’t hurt you.
However, it isn’t the be-all and end-all that people believe.
That link alone won’t get your page to the coveted top spot of SERPs.
The real goal should be to attract links from a whole spectrum of sites. In link building, as in investing, a diverse portfolio is important. Your link-profile should be natural.
This means you’ve gleaned linked from sites of every domain authority. Some, like Wikipedia, will be in the top percentiles. Others should be further down the list.
Don’t Believe These Link-Building Myths
Content marketing is a key source of leads for businesses over the globe.
Succeeding with it, though, is far from straight-forward. Of the different routes to glory, nailing your search engine optimization is essential.
In that endeavor, few processes are more important than building back-links.
The trouble is that many link-building myths exist out there. Heed them and your bid for better rankings can suffer. Hopefully, though, this post will help you avoid that eventuality.
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