Although linking is an important aspect of any successful SEO strategy, it can be tricky and there are quite a few mistakes you might be missing in your linking strategy. Here are some of these common mistakes, how you can catch them, and what you should do instead to improve your linking strategy.
• Using just one keyword or phrase to build links
An Internet marketing expert knows that people will not always link to your site with the same keyword phrase or even keywords, but others may not be aware of this and, with each link, will try to use the same keywords as much as possible. This alone doesn’t work—focus on the surrounding content instead. Make sure you use other tactics like strong linking language, tell people where and why to click on a link, your website’s address or brand name. This will open the door for the use of secondary keywords and better interior linking.
• Striving for unrealistic numbers of links
How many links do you really want, or need, in order to beat the competition? Well, it all really depends on the competition. If your competition is averaging 1,500 links—aim to be somewhere above that range, but be realistic. Don’t aim for a million; maybe just strive to surpass their numbers of links by at least couple percent. If they have more, then you should aim to as well.
• Only having links to your own homepage
Linking, or attracting links, to just one page, even if it is the homepage, is a linking strategy mistake many underestimate. Good internal linking increases the overall pagerank of your site—a valuable commodity. Not only does linking to more pages strengthen the ranking of your site as a whole, it will also help you rank for a greater number of keywords and lower your bounce rate, by bringing more traffic to, and through, your site.
• Scrutinizing Competition that Isn’t Ranking
While it can be useful to track the marketing strategies and activities of your competition, both on and offline, there are limits. Analyzing the metrics of your online competition is important, but stick to those sites that are ranking in the top spots on search engines. Collecting data about your terms and understanding the linking strategies of sites that show up in the first 5 spots in the SERP is a great way to understand what they’re doing with their linking strategy that may be beneficial to you. But don’t concern yourself too much with the sites who are ranking poorly, or, who are not ranked for the same keywords—whatever their linking strategy, it may be best to steer clear of it, and in that case, what use are these metrics to your company?
