While most all of us certainly set out with only the best intentions and motives when building our website through organic SEO and link building, we may inadvertently stumble and fall along the way. Whether these falls are due to inexperience, sheer carelessness or simple short-sightedness, they all have the same end result—they short-circuit our efforts to move our site up the ranks in an ethical manner.
Haste Really Can Makes Waste
The old adage is especially true in this context, and rushing around to add as many links as possible in the shortest amount of time can end up causing you serious grief. Sometimes we may simply be short of time or in a hurry—after all nearly everyone is overbooked and overly busy, and finding time to take care of our website may be difficult to do. Even so, the primary thing we should remember when building links to our site is that “any links are better than no links” is really just not true. We must remain focused on getting the crucial, relevant, high-quality links our site needs, and if this will not happen immediately—and it likely won’t—then patience is required. In other words, any old links just won’t do, and can hurt you much more than they may help you, so slow down, take a breath, and map out a realistic strategy for exception link-building SEO.
No Bad Behaviors Allowed
Even in our technology-filled world, politeness and consideration is still highly valued. Even though your goal may be to contact as many other webmasters as possible in an attempt to build links to your site, mass e-mails are an immediate turn-off to most of us. E-mails which are short on politeness and finesse are equally frowned upon, and worse, others will have a mental black mark against both you and your website from now on. All of this can be avoided simply by not approaching other web owners in a cold or generic fashion. Just as you build relationships in the real world, so should you do online. Introduce yourself, provide some quality interaction, show that you have actually read the other person’s website by detailing some key points about it, then persuasively show the advantages of the linking to your site. Building strong networks can pay off handsomely in the future, so take the time, and remember your manners.
Don’t Waste Valuable Time and Energy Targeting the Wrong Sites
By “wrong” sites, I mean those that we agree to even though in our gut we know they are like the fruitcake under the Christmas tree—something we don’t really want, like or need, but we accept anyhow. That fruitcake likely sits on a shelf, taking up space and collecting dust, effectively wasting valuable resources until we finally have a cleaning frenzy and throw it out. Links which have little value or quality can seriously undermine our website while also taking up valuable resources. Expending your precious energy getting links which are not relevant to yours, and may actually drag your site down is just not smart. Don’t wind up with a stable full of useless links, rather prioritize your goals and go for a handful of quality links instead.
Patience is Mandatory
Link building takes time, like it or not, and a mistake which is seen often involves premature link promotion. Whether we are too impatient, or we are trying to cut corner in order to meet the demands of clients, getting links from other sites which just don’t meet quality standards is one of the reasons many people end up abandoning the entire SEO process completely. In other words, if you hurry to get your site ranked before it’s really ready, your return on investment probably just won’t happen. Your site absolutely must project credibility or users will fail to be impressed no matter how highly you are ranked. It can save you tons of wasted time to simply get it right in the beginning, and that generally means taking it slow, and building quality links which are highly relevant to your site. In most of life, the things which are truly worth having are neither easy nor fast, yet hard work and patience generally pay off in the end. So it is with link-building.
