Link building remains an effective method of getting ranked highly in Google. But as you build links, you ought to work with others in a suitable way to achieve success.

Below are seven common mistakes you should avoid. 

Failing to Follow Up

When you’d like someone to link to your site, you have to make solid contact with them. A frequent error is failing to approach the person more than once. Some folks, especially the busy and successful ones, receive many texts and emails, so they may not respond until you’ve contacted them two or three times. 

SEO companies say that about 20% of the links they landed required follow-up with website owners. In some situations, you may need to contact the person as many as four or five times.

Not Vetting a Website

Let’s say you emailed a contact to request a link to your site and the site owner said they would. But when you took another look at their site, and you decided that you didn’t want the link after all.

Maybe the metrics looked solid, but the writing was terrible. All the posts read like someone paid for them. There might even be hacked pages. It pays to check out a site thoroughly before you start to negotiate with the webmaster for a link.
Not Listening to the Webmasters

Link builders are usually good at what they do, but web admins may know more. They know what their readers want, and they know what they’ll like and dislike. 

If the webmaster says you’re wrong to have approached them, and their readers won’t appreciate a link to a particular article, you should listen. Remember, the site owner or webmaster probably knows their content and audience better than you do.

Focusing Only on Metrics

Getting a link on a website with a 60-domain authority is terrific, but it doesn’t always mean your content is appropriate for that site. 

On the other hand, a new site that talks about making a healthier lunch could be an excellent fit for a company that focuses on promoting better food in schools, even if that site has no authority yet. So don’t rely only on metrics, because they can mislead you. 

Not Knowing the Person

You can’t always get the name of the person you want when trying to make contact. However, it’s not a professional method to make connections if you send a lot of emails to websites that say, “I don’t know if you’re the right person to speak to….”

It may be the case that you don’t know the name of the person, but the name of the contact may be somewhere on their site. Just do a bit more research so you can look suitably professional when you make initial contact.

Not Knowing Google and FTC Rules

It’s one thing to know the rules and another to follow them. At least be sure you know them.

Of course, ideally you shouldn’t violate or ignore any of the rules. But if you try to convince another person that nothing bad can happen if they sell you a link, you don’t make anyone look good.

There’s a lot of readily available information, so it’s not acceptable to remain ignorant when you might harm another person’s website. 

Not Caring About Relevance

This can be a tricky one because what one person thinks is relevant to a site might not accord with another’s assessment. But if you send out requests to site owners to contribute to a post about insurance plans simply because the person owns a business, it’s probably not relevant.

There needs to be a clearer connection between your content and the needs and interests of that site owner. Otherwise, you’ll just end up annoying people.