Author: Ryan Walsh

Date: 09/06/2025

 

 

Link-building mistakes you should avoid

Link building can be tedious, it’s slow and demands a lot of attention.

We would also say it’s the most time-consuming aspect of search engine optimisation.

However, there is a reason why agencies spend thousands of hours per year sourcing high-quality links for their clients. The reason is that, even since the early days of Google’s PageRank, through to today, backlinks are still referred to as “votes of confidence”.

 

Why are backlinks often referred to as votes of confidence?

In short, if a company links to another, this is like a thumbs-up on a social media post.

It’s a vote of confidence in your business.

A nod of approval if you like.

Therefore, if globally recognised brands were to link to you and you accumulate several high-quality links, this can significantly improve the company’s organic SEO.

Therefore, if you don’t want to read this entire blog post, here’s what you need to look for when building links.

– The links being built should be relevant to your business sector
– The links should come from websites with a very high DA score
– You should pay for links; you should earn them
– The anchor text needs to be naturally written
– You have to consider link velocity when building links, so don’t build links too fast
– You should create content marketing that other businesses will want to link to

 

Google’s Ranking Factors- How important are backlinks?

Businesses globally that occupy the number one spot in the SERP typically share one thing in common.
Those businesses in the number one position usually have powerful backlinks. The backlink profile, therefore, of the companies that rank number one on Google typically has a long list of websites with high Domain Authority (DA) scores. Suppose you can manage to get a long list of websites linking to your website that have very high domain authority scores. In that case, this can massively help improve your business’s search engine optimisation.

The problem many businesses encounter when building links is that they make too many low-quality links. As we shall explain and elaborate more later on, these spam links can weaken your SEO, forcing your company to drop down Google’s ranks and not move up.

 

How do you know which backlinks to build?

Unpicking another business’s backlinks is a skill set that backlink builders often take many years to master. It’s not just a matter of subscribing to Moz Pro and checking your competitors’ main backlinks. The reason is that it’s a skill set knowing which backlinks you can obtain for your business, which backlinks a company cannot build, so they should not waste their time.

For example, a business may have a backlink from a website with a domain authority above 90. This means that the backlink is powerful and should send a lot of link equity through to the domain name it connects to. However, perhaps it’s from a supplier that exclusively supplies that business with a product, so another company will not be able to replicate that link.

 

What is link juice?

Some refer to this as link equity. In simple terms, “link juice” is the power of a backlink, helping to improve the domain authority of another business when it’s linked to. Having high-quality links means that connecting to you can accelerate your ranking in Google’s SERPs.

 

Quality vs quantity

There are numerous pitfalls that businesses can fall into when building links.

The most common mistake is this: “more is always better”.

When it comes to something like chocolate or having annual leave at work, yes, more is always better.

However, when it comes to building links, sometimes more is not better. Let’s summarise this quickly: you need links to get to the top of Google. However, it’s like playing a game of Snakes and Ladders.

Some links (backlinks) will help you move up, while others will help you move down. However, businesses, and even some novice SEO agencies, often think that the more links, the better.

However, having a backlink profile full of spam links will damage your business’s search engine optimisation. Additionally, consider that you have a few powerful links from websites with high domain authority. However, these can be diluted by spam links. Therefore, it’s far better to have a few quality links than to focus on quantity.

Don’t set your agency link-building targets!

Businesses globally naturally want to quantify everything – from the volume of sales to the number of shoppers who visited your website last month. This stands to reason; however, when it comes to backlink building, we don’t think you should set targets if this comes at the cost of the quality of those backlinks.

The reason is precisely what we stated earlier: you could build, say, 20 new backlinks that week; however, they could dilute the power of the existing backlinks you have already built.

Therefore, it’s far better to use a backlink checking tool, such as Ahrefs, and see a small number of backlinks yet with high domain authority.

If you then start building links solely to increase the number of backlinks, but the links are spam, this will cause you to drop in Google’s organic rankings.

 

But what about high-competition industries? Is quantity important?

Imagine a super competitive industry, a business sector where businesses are fiercely fighting with each other for the top spot on Google’s organic results.

Sometimes, when you use a backlink checker like Majestic, Ahrefs, or our favourite Moz Pro, you’ll find that some businesses have 30,000 links. So, you’re probably wondering, have they prioritised quantity over quality?

But the answer is often no.

Businesses in hyper-competitive sectors must focus on both quantity and quality. The reason is that companies operating in these highly competitive sectors commonly employ huge marketing agencies or in-house marketing teams. This means they can strike a balance between quality and quantity.

 

Does the content marketing help solve a problem?

The problem businesses and marketing companies globally face at the moment is that AI is helping businesses write content marketing in seconds. But you have to take a step back for a second and ask these questions:

Is the content marketing quality?

Does it help the shopper solve a problem?

Is it original?

It shows that the author/businesses are absolute experts at what they are writing about
Sure, the AI can write, say, 600 words about what you want, but what it can’t do is show real-life experience. So, therefore, this is where you, as a business, need to write the best quality content marketing you can, to help people solve a problem.

This then creates an “in-bound link building strategy”.
Meaning rather than you banging on doors (sending e-mails typically) to ask other businesses to link to you, well, other websites may choose to link to you without even asking.

Why would they do that?

Well, because the content marketing is so good, well-produced, and offers such clear advice, it’s an asset; it’s worth linking to because it helps people.

 

Relevant

The backlinks your business will want the most are links from high DA (Domain Authority) websites. Yet, the backlinks should also be relevant. For example, if you are in the catering/hospitality business, then you should obtain backlinks from other websites in the same business sector. The links should be of high quality, have a high Domain Authority (DA), and be relevant to the content.

 

It’s a skill

Picture this scenario: it’s a cold Monday morning, and you turn to someone in your company and say, ‘We need to build 50 links this month.’

Now, do you think that person will be focused on quality link building? Probably not.

Now, the reason many businesses struggle with link building is that they examine other businesses’ backlink profiles and choose the wrong links to build.

The business may have experienced a “negative SEO attack,” resulting in spam links being built. It may have then taken steps to resolve that problem. For example, using Google’s Link Disavow tool.

However, if you go in and build the same spam links, thinking they will help you, well, all you could be doing is replicating a problem that the business has, which it has to overcome.

The point we are making here is straightforward: link building, when done correctly, requires considerable skill. Therefore, choose a digital marketing agency which has vast experience in building quality links for well-known businesses.

The last thing you want is someone new to SEO being tasked with building your links, not knowing what they are doing. As we mentioned earlier, they could end up replicating spam or low-value links that the other business has in its backlink profile due to a past negative SEO attack.

 

Link velocity and the problem with building links too fast

So, we understand; you want to reach the top of Google as quickly as possible.

And when you log into a backlink checking tool, such as Moz Pro, you may spot that some of your direct competitors have, say, 10,000 links.

You feel slightly panicked because you’re a start-up business.
And you think, ‘Well, we have to build links quickly.’

However, this can be a problem because of something called “link velocity.” Quite simply, if you build too many links too quickly, it can negatively impact your business’s SEO.

The reason is that Google wants you to build links steadily, over a long period. If you make too many links too quickly, it looks spammy. It

can even appear as if you’ve paid someone a one-off fee for building links, which results in too many links being built too quickly.

This looks spammy.

And by spammy, we mean you could be trying to fool Google into thinking the SEO is better than what it is. However, there’s no fooling Google; it will know if the links are of use to shoppers or if you’re building spam links to try and fool Google.

 

Anchor text

It’s an SEO technique that’s very outdated; if used now, it could lead to a Google Penguin penalty.

That is cramming the keywords you want your website to rank for in the anchor text (don’t do this).

Businesses, many moons ago, when the Google PageRank formula was in use, would obsessively place keywords they wanted to rank for in the anchor text.

If this method were used today, it would almost certainly trigger a link penalty, so don’t use this method of optimisation.

For those who don’t know what anchor text means.

Well, anchor text is simply the text, the text that’s usually highlighted from the rest of the text as being bold, to click on to follow a link. Now, businesses, before, and we are talking near enough 20 years back, found a loophole that during, say, the 2000s, you could place keywords in the anchor text, and back then, it may have given your businesses rankings on Google a bit of an uplift in the Google organic rankings.

However, that method is now obsolete and will trigger a link penalty, such as a Google Penguin penalty, so it is best not to use it.

 

Pace yourself

What you often find, because link building is such hard work, is that businesses go through phases of building links, then leave it for a long time before they return to building links again.

However, this is not the best method. If you do want to use outreach to contact other businesses and build links, then try to make your link-building efforts more consistent. Pace yourself; don’t build too many links at once. Instead, ensure that you put in place a marketing strategy that allows you to pace yourself.

 

Shouldn’t be once and done

Sometimes businesses work on improving their SEO, then leave a significant amount of time before returning to it.

However, it’s far better to be consistent with your efforts when it comes to improving your SEO.

This involves utilising various backlink checking tools, such as Ahrefs, to monitor your competitors’ backlinks regularly. The problem is that if you don’t check your competitors’ backlinks regularly, then what could happen is that they gain some powerful backlinks, which give those businesses a strong upper hand.

Therefore, you should check your competitors’ backlinks regularly.

 

Don’t build low domain authority/spam backlinks.

If you’re starting work on improving your business’s organic search engine optimisation, you may think, ‘Well, can’t I just buy links?’

You may also notice some websites selling links at a very low price.

However, these links, which you can buy, can damage your business’s organic SEO. The website can then incur a link penalty later on. A link penalty, such as a Google algorithmic Penguin Penalty, can be disastrous for a business’s SEO. It can mean that the company either substantially drops in Google’s rankings or gets de-indexed. For those who are aware, de-indexed implies that the company is completely removed from Google’s search results.

Try to get links from pages with not too many links on

Let’s say you manufacture tools; another business with a high DA mentions your website. It’s generally thought that the best links are when the link, that is, the anchor text, is written into a paragraph at the “top of the fold”-this means higher up the page. Many SEO experts also believe that the best links, in terms of their ability to improve your SEO, come when the link is on a page with no other, or very few, external links.

 

Check for broken links.

Has your website dropped down Google’s ranks recently?

It could be due to a loss of powerful links. For example, you could have links that have a very high domain authority score. Let’s say your local business has a bunch of links from BBC News, for an award your company has won. If, for any reason, those links break, then this can cause a drop in terms of where your business ranks. Therefore, always use quality tools, such as Screaming Frog, to check for broken links. Then use a backlink link checking tool on top of that to check for any other broken links.

 

Location matters

If your business is located in Wales and you only serve local businesses, such as those in Cardiff, then you should look to build local links.

Now, the backlinks you make don’t need to be from companies just down the road; we don’t mean that local.

However, generally speaking, the businesses from which you obtain links should be in the same country.

Therefore, if your business is based here in Britain and you have a .co.uk domain name, for example, then look to build links from other British companies.

 

Google Disavow

Finally, don’t use the Google Disavow tool unless you know what you’re doing. Some businesses use Google’s Disavow tool and end up cancelling good quality links. The company may have established good links, including backlinks with high domain authority. Yet, the person uploading the disavow file to Google Disavow may end up cancelling good quality links.