Why your link building strategies are not working

Link building is one of the most important aspects of SEO. The rankings of your website will be heavily influenced by your links. Google’s algorithms are constantly changing, which means that link building campaigns have to be relevant and sophisticated. If you are employing link building strategies that aren’t getting the desired results, then keep reading to find out the possible causes.

Your Links Aren’t From Relevant Websites

For links, building quality is always more important than quantity. Google values links from websites that are relevant to your niche. For example, if your website is about real estate, then gaining links from a medical blog wouldn’t be as effective. The relevance of your links is just as important as the authority. You should get links from real websites that are already trusted by Google. It can be difficult to acquire these high-quality links, but they provide excellent value due to the rankings boost that you will get.

Many businesses will use an outreach strategy to acquire relevant guest posts or link insertions from real authority websites in their niche. If you do use this strategy, you can make it more effective by closely targeting relevant websites rather than mass emailing many websites. You should do some research to collect a list of authority websites that are highly relevant to your niche but aren’t directly in competition with you. These are the links that will provide the greatest value in a link building strategy.

Significance of Referral Traffic

The objective of an effective link building strategy should never be only to acquire links. If you have this mindset, then your strategy is not likely to bring the desired results. A link building strategy should be related to a general content marketing strategy. This means you should focus on creating valuable content that provides value for the reader, rather than providing filler content with the sole intention of adding a link. You need to ask yourself if you would personally click on the link if you saw it in the article.

The article must be engaging, and the link should be somewhere that people would actively click on it. The more someone clicks on the link, the more effective your strategy will be. You can check clicks by going to your Google Analytics dashboard. This will allow you to see which websites are getting links and which ones aren’t. You can then start to modify your strategy to create better content.

Importance of Referring Domains

Google highly values referring domains more than it values individual pages. This means that the value of 10 backlinks from the same domain will be much lower than 10 backlinks from 10 different domains. In the past, you would be able to get high value from a single domain; however, Google has since updated its algorithm to shift the importance to get links from separate domains. Forget about PBNs or link farms; there are no shortcuts to building an effective link building strategy. It requires effort in building relationships with the owners of websites in your niche.

Impact of Link Velocity

Another important concept to understand is link velocity. The timing of acquiring links will have an effect on rankings. In general, if you start losing links at a faster rate than you acquire links, this can lead to a drop in rankings. Additionally, a sudden upsurge in links can be suspicious for Google. A good link strategy should be that focuses on long-term growth, rather than a quick fix. You should naturally build links and focus on a strategy that is consistent. This will lead to the biggest gains in terms of rankings. Building hundreds of low-quality links in a month will harm your rankings. Instead, you should focus on getting 5-15 high-quality links a month.

Losing Backlinks

All link building strategies should consider the possibility of losing backlinks since this can have an effect on your rankings. Links can be lost for various reasons, which include; website closing, page deletion, and webmaster removal. You can use tools such as Ahrefs to check any lost backlinks. In general, you should try and contact the web owner to see if the link could possibly be restored. Additionally, you could ask if another backlink opportunity would be possible. If that is not possible, then you should accept the lost backlink.

Competitors have Higher-Quality Links

If your link-building strategy has been following all the correct guidelines, and it has remained consistent for months, then this could point to a competitor simply having higher-quality links. If you are in a competitive niche, then it wouldn’t be surprising for someone else to have a head start on you. It isn’t easy to catch up to a web owner who has been consistently acquiring high-quality links for years. Remember that quality is always more important than quantity. Take a look at the type of links your competitors are acquiring.

Website Not SEO-Optimized

Link-building is a key aspect of SEO, but it is not the only element. There are many factors involved in SEO. They must all be optimized for your strategy to be effective. If your website is not optimized for on-page SEO, then link building will not be effective. You should conduct a full SEO audit (using tools like CORA, SurferSEO or Pageoptimizer Pro) to start fixing these errors. SEO is an ongoing process; it is important to always focus on optimizing site speed, creating relevant content, using relevant keywords, ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly, and much more. All of these factors will influence how effective your link building strategies are.

Closing Thoughts

There can be a number of reasons why your link building strategies fall short. You should now have a better idea of which issues you can look to address. Once you have applied these fixes, you start seeing real results and an increase in your rankings. However, you should be aware that SEO is an ongoing process that requires consistency and patience. Link-building is always changing and evolving, which means you have to stay ahead of the competition. It may not be as easy or effective as it was before, but it still remains a viable tool to use. The best link building campaign is an organic one that follows all of Google’s guidelines and focuses on acquiring high-quality links.