Top 10 Myths about Link Building in SEO
TechsPlace | It is interesting how myths spread. Someone suggests something and it seems true, so another person shares that possibility with others and without checking the facts, a rumor runs around as truth and soon the internet citizens will start to believe it. This is indeed the case with some of these top 10 myths below about link building in SEO.
You may have come across these in discussion groups or comments shared in blogs; today we reveal these top 10 myths.
1- You Cannot Go Wrong With Links From Wikipedia
Despite the phenomenal ability of Wikipedia to improve ranking, it is not the silver bullet of backlinking. You will not end up at the top just because you created a few links from or to Wikipedia. Diligent link building in SEO over a wide range of websites is needed to succeed.
2- Domain Authority is a Measure of Quality Links
This is so common and many get trapped in the web of this myth. It is easy to see why one would think so, but what many who believe this fail to understand is that domain authority is simply an estimate of how a site ranks in comparison to its competition. True, the higher the score, the more likely the links will be quality, but it is no guarantee, there are many great links you could benefit from by linking to a site with lower domain authority. You need to look beyond this ranking to get quality links.
3- External Links should be given More Priority over Internal Links
If you believe this, you probably will have a high bounce rate and not know how to deal with that. In many cases, if you have a high bounce rate, internal links will help get people to stay longer on your site. By linking pages with great content on your site with pages that are receiving good Google ranking, you can improve the performance of the page with great content and your overall website performance.
4- Blog Comments are a Wasted Effort
The reason this myth is rife is the fact that some people misuse this gem. They simply comment for the sake of it because they were told commenting with a link to your site will attract attention. Well, if your comments are lost in the crowd of similar comments, then yes, commenting in blogs will be a waste. Thoughtful and meaningful comments that add to the discussion, however, are still very valuable and will contribute to your SEO. Give people a reason to take note of your presence and probably visit your site.
5- Google will penalize you for Getting Links too fast
There may be a bit of truth to this, but it is not the way it is presented here. Google penalizes unnatural links. If your links scream spam!!! Then Google is certainly going to take a look at them to find out the source and whether they are natural. However, if you produce content that goes viral in a few hours, you are going to have hundreds of backlinks to your site and that will not be penalized.
6- Do Not Ask for Links or Google Will Hear about it
Some people are involved in blackmailing or bribing other sites into including their links on other sites. That is wrong. However, if for example, a travel site mentions your site in their content, there is nothing wrong with asking them to add a link back to your site. It is purely based on mutual understanding and not any arm twisting or bribery involved. So, to some extent, this myth can be true but in most parts, you can ask for a link to be added and Google will not be mad at you.
7- You are Wasting Time Writing Guest Posts
Some people are going around bellowing that “guest posting is dead” those are people who are simply lazy or going about it the wrong way. If you carefully choose the site to include your guest post, write long and useful content as well as have a loyal audience, you will see great value from your guest posts. It is an easy and cost-free way to improve quality link building in SEO.
8- Get as Many Backlinks as You Can
No! In this industry, quality is what matters. If you have 100 backlinks but most of them are from sites that no one trusts or irrelevant to your industry, then you are doing your business a disservice and a site with five quality links is much better off than you. Always focus on the quality of the links.
9- Do not Link Out
This is an old SEO theory that no one should be following, you have a lot to gain by linking out and you have nothing to lose.
10- No-Follow Links Kill Link Juice
We can understand why this myth exists, but that is because people do not realize that Google is still aware of the existence of the link and therefore it will contribute to your SEO. You can still get traffic from no-follow links.
This article is contributed by guest author on techsplace.com.
