If you are a big fan of link building, I am sure you had tried a lot of kind of link building techniques to push your site to the first page of Google.
So, here’s the thing.
I don’t really recommend link building anymore since I believe that we should focus into creating good contents instead of building links.
However, if you still insist yourself in doing that, I have 5 tips for you to reduce your chance of being penalized by Google.
[Read: How advertising affects your Google PageRank]
The Forbidden SEO Techniques
1. Keyword Rich Anchor Text
Stop building links that only consists of your keywords in the anchor text.
Try to use anchor text like “Website Name”, “Author Name”, “Click Here”, “Full URL” and etc.
If you keep building links using your keyword, chances that you are being considered as a web spammer by Google is pretty high.
2. Guest Post On Low Authority Sites
If you follow closely to what Matt Cutts have to say about SEO, you will realize that the recent hot topic is about guest posting for SEO.
Basically, the thing here is, Matt Cutts claimed that guest post is no longer a technique for SEO link building anymore.
However, that should not stop you from doing so because me and many other bloggers out there still think that guest post is important if you do it right.
Thus, in order for you to avoid being slapped by Google, it is best that you avoid guest posting for sites that has a low Domain Authority and low Google PageRank.
If you need a number as a guidance, try to do on sites that has at least DA of 30 and above and Google PageRank of 3 and above.
These are not any magic numbers and they are purely personal opinion from me.
If you are not sure what Domain Authority is, you can check them at the Open Site Explorer.
3. Site Wide Links
Site wide links are links that comes from places like blog roll or footer that appears on every page of the website.
The problem with site wide links is when you practice get links from them, your site will gain a massive amount of backlinks from that site.
For example, if that website has 200 blog posts. This means that you are getting 200 backlinks from that website alone.
To Google, this is not the way to build links and you should avoid this at all time.
4. Keyword Spam
Spamming keyword on your blog post is also a bad SEO practice.
This is one a the very traditional SEO technique where it wasn’t popular couple of years ago.
I put this point up here is as a reminder to you that keyword spam does not bring any benefits to you and it probably make your content sounds like a piece of junk.
Since this does not bring benefit to both search engines and your content quality, avoid it at all costs.
[Read: Simple SEO setup for your blog post]
5. Article Spinning
Article spinning is an act of using one article and create multiple versions of it by replacing the words with synonyms or any word that can mean almost the same with the original one.
Article Spinning used to be very powerful where people spin article and put it on multiple article directories to gain backlinks.
However, as Google Panda evolves, it became smarter to check content quality where your spinned articles no longer add any weight to your backlinks.
If you had just purchased an Article Spinner software, I suggest you to cancel it and ask for refund while it is still early.
Don’t waste your investment into such software and invest into something more useful.
Conclusion
Today, people are talking about content marketing instead of building links and SEO.
The phrase “Content is King” became more important when search engine algorithm starts to take things seriously.
I wouldn’t recommend anyone to spend lots and lots of time into building links and instead, we should spend our time to create great contents instead.
Google has made the life of spammer miserable after the Panda and Penguin updates. Thanks for the tips. Keyword spamming and over optimization always makes it difficult for the blogger to blog his/her rank high.
Looking forward for more solid advice from you, Alan Tay.
Jay Patel recently posted..SBI Clerk Recruitment 2014
You are absolutely right. Recently after several updates its proves that Google make life horrible and as they firstly use the black hat technique it is very hard to work with white hat seo technique. Thanks for sharing this lovey information with us.:)
Regards!!!
Yash
Thanks for your comment there 😉
Alan Tay recently posted..7 terrible mistakes I did to my email list
Your always welcome. Looking for more good content from your side. Keep posting.. 🙂
Agree with most things but not so sure about site wide links. Site wide links can hugely benefit your domain authority, which is a factor when it comes to search engine rankings. It will be a problem if they are rich in anchor text, but for brand names I think it can be considered a good strategy.
Nishadha recently posted..UML Software
Hi Nishadha, thanks for dropping by.
I think you put the point into a better direction where they are not totally forbidden as long as it is used correctly. Rich anchor text is definitely a No-No thing in SEO especially in side wide links. In addition to that, I agree as well for brand names, it is quite a good strategy but I will still avoid doing it as I will never know what’s in the next penguin unless it is a nofollow side wide links.
Alan Tay recently posted..How to fix these 100 blogging mistakes and build a successful blog
Well actually I was looking for tech blogs to create some quantity backlinks and I stopped at this post of yours. After I completed reading it, I realized that some way or the other I was using some forbidden backlink creation method for my blog.
I really thank you for this great post as it helped me understand the real way to get backlinks. Bookmarked your site bro. 🙂
Avinash Kumar recently posted..Samsung Galaxy S7: Predicted Features | Release Date| Concept | Design | Price
Glad to be helpful here, Avinash.
And also thanks for dropping by.
Alan Tay recently posted..How to fix these 100 blogging mistakes and build a successful blog
Hey Alan Tay,.
This is my first comment on bloggingfever. Thank you for this post. After reading this post I have come to know about the steps I should stop using right now. I usually use blog commenting and social media sharing for promoting my new articles
Muminur recently posted..Top 5 Secure Dropbox Alternatives
Thanks for your comment there ~
Alan Tay recently posted..7 ways you can make money from the internet
I am agreed with you these are the main mistakes that the people made and it resulting into loosing up their rankings. Thanks for posting this article.
Allen recently posted..The Concept Search Engine Optimization
You are welcome and thanks for your comment there, Allen.
Alan Tay recently posted..10 Adsense income reports to motivate your Adsense niche site projects in 2015
i am glad atleast someone pointed out the common SEO mistakes that are casually practiced by every other SEO marketer. Thanks for sharing such an informative post! keep up the good work!