Good Vs Bad Link Building Strategies

Any good SEO company in Malaysia will tell you that link building is one of the most important parts of your SEO efforts. Link building is the procedure of acquiring backlinks to your website from another site. Backlinks are crucial in determining a website’s search engine rankings.

When a reputable website has links pointing to your website, it tells search engines that your website is valuable and credible, which in turn improves your rankings. 

However, not all link building tactics are created equal. Some tactics, such as creating high-quality content and guest blogging can improve a website’s rankings and increase its visibility. Other tactics, such as buying links or link farming can have the opposite effect and even result in penalties from search engines.

In this blog post, we will explore the differences between good and bad link building practices, and provide tips for building effective, natural backlinks that will boost your website’s search results ranking.

Good Link Building Strategies

Improve Your Search Engine Ranking With Ethical Link Building

Source: Freepik

Outreach Content

Outreach content, also known as guest blogging, is a fantastic link building tactic that can benefit both parties involved. Essentially, it’s when you write a piece of content and publish it on someone else’s website, in exchange for a link back to your own website. This is a win-win situation because you get a high-quality backlink, and the other website gets valuable content to share with its audience.

But why is it so great? Well, first of all, it allows you to reach a new audience and gain exposure for your brand. But more importantly, it helps you build relationships with other websites in your industry. These relationships can lead to future opportunities for guest blogging, collaborations, and even partnerships. Plus, it’s a great way to show off your expertise in your industry and establish yourself as a thought leader.

Broken Link Building

Broken link building is an effective tactic that can boost your backlink profile in no time. It’s essentially the process of finding broken links on other websites and offering to replace them with a link to your own website. This might sound too good to be true, but trust us, it’s a real thing!

You see, when a website has a broken link, it’s not only frustrating for users, but it also harms the website’s SEO performance. So, when you come along and offer a fix, you’re doing them a favour, and they’ll be more than happy to give you a link in return.

It’s an easy way to get high-quality backlinks from reputable websites. And, since you’re essentially fixing something that’s broken, it’s a natural and organic way to start building links.

High-Quality Content

High-quality content marketing is the ultimate link building tactic, and it’s something that you should be doing regardless of your link building goals. It’s all about creating valuable, informative, and engaging content that is worth linking to.

When you consistently create high-quality content, other websites will naturally want to link to it, share it, and cite it as a valuable resource (if it is relevant to their audience) without you having to ask. And the best part is, it’s not just good for link building, it’s also great for attracting new visitors, building brand awareness, and establishing your brand as an authority in your industry.

This is a long-term strategy that will continue to pay off in the form of backlinks, long after you stop promoting the content. 

High-quality content can also help you to get featured on high-authority websites, improving your online presence. So, instead of focusing on quick-win link building tactics, put your energy into creating the best content possible, and watch the outgoing links roll in!

Bad Link Building Strategies

Bad Link Building Tactics Can Harm Your SEO Performance

Source: Freepik

Google can penalise your website if it detects bad link building strategies through an algorithm called Google Spambrain. This machine learning algorithm is used to detect and penalise websites that engage in bad linking strategies such as the following:

Link Buying

Link buying, also known as “paid links”, is when you pay someone to add a link to your website on their website. This might sound like a quick and easy way to boost your backlink profile, but it’s actually a risky idea. 

Link buying violates Google’s guidelines – on top of that, if they catch you, they will penalise your website, which can result in decreased visibility and lower search rankings.

Buying links is a short-term strategy that can come with long-term consequences. Once you stop paying for links, they will eventually disappear and you’ll be back to square one. Plus, buying links can also put you at risk of getting associated with low-quality or spam websites, harming your reputation.

Don’t create your link building campaigns around building unnatural links. Instead, focus on keyword research and creating valuable content based on those keywords.

Link Farming

Link farming is a tactic some website owners use to artificially inflate the number of links pointing to their site. This is typically done by getting a large number of low-quality spam websites and linking them to the main site to boost its search engine rankings.

However, search engines highly discourage this tactic as it goes against their guidelines for webmasters. 

Don’t think you won’t get punished for it – search engines are intelligent and can easily identify link farms. In their eyes, these sites are  low-quality, irrelevant sites with no value to users.

Spamming

Everyone hates spam. Hence, it comes as no surprise that spammy link building techniques are another way to ruin your website’s search rankings. 

Spamming is a tactic used to quickly and excessively build links to sites. This is typically done by sending out unsolicited emails, comments, or messages containing links to a website by bulk to increase its visibility.

Again, search engines highly discourage this tactic. In fact, doing this is an easy ticket to a penalty, or even a complete ban from the search engine’s index.

You probably won’t get away with this – Google has a complex algorithm to detect spam by analysing various signals on a website, such as the quality and number of links pointing to the website, the website content, and the overall user experience. 

Increase Your Website’s Search Rankings With Ethical Link Building Strategies

Increase Your Website’s Search Rankings With Ethical Link Building Strategies

Source: Freepik

Link building is an essential aspect of any successful digital marketing strategy. However, it’s important to know the difference between good and bad link building tactics. Buying links, link farming, and spamming are all considered bad tactics and can result in penalties or even a complete ban from search engines. 

On the contrary, building good-quality, relevant links from authoritative sites through natural and white hat link building tactics can catapult your SERP ranking.

It’s also worth noting that creating high-quality content that’s valuable to users is key to attracting natural links. By providing valuable information, resources, or entertainment, you’ll attract more visitors – indirectly, some of them may have their own sites and pages that would link to you.

If you’re looking to improve your website’s visibility and search engine rankings, we recommend working with a reputable SEO Agency in Kuala Lumpur like Primal. Our award-winning SEO services will help you create a comprehensive link building strategy that prioritises high-quality content and natural link building tactics. Contact us today to start seeing real results for your business.