Omikron Media

Common SEO Mistakes – The Bad Link

There is nothing better for a website than a high authority link. A couple great links can lift a website from obscurity to ranking well in the serps in a very short amount of time. Although links can be a great thing, it’s important to remember that bad links can harm your website as much as good ones can help them.

As search engines get smarter, the serps become more and more filtered with quality results. It’s no longer a viable option to just buy a bunch of links and hope for good results. The most powerful links today are gained organically and bring a good amount of quality traffic to your site. Remember the word quality because it’s the most important thing about your web traffic. You could get 100s or 1,000s of visits a day but unless those visits are coming from quality sources and actual people, they don’t mean anything. Search engines are looking more and more at the quality, consistency, and longevity of traffic to a website when they compile their results.

Most Bad Links Are Paid for.
It’s sad but true. You will want to avoid bad links like the plague and the most common place to find them is by paying for them. There is an awesome article by randfish from SEOmoz that explains how link building has changed. While I don’t agree with him that buying links is entirely a bad thing; it definitely pays to be cautious.

Don’t use link building services
It’s so tempting. There’s a site offering hundreds, possibly thousands of links for a mere $100. They promise you the links aren’t bad, they even claim most of the sites have a PR between 1 and 4. Sounds too good to be true; that’s because it is. What these services don’t tell you is that some (if not most) of the places your link will end up are in the bad part of town – the javascript-trojan-spam-fest part of the web.

Submit to Directories but be Cautious
Directories can be a great source of high quality back links but you’ll want to avoid submitting haphazardly to any directory you come across. Long term SEO goals should not rely on directory submissions, they are however, a good way to build page strength and quality back links quickly. Here are a few great tips to remember when submitting to directories:

What Makes a Good Directory?
Here are some quick things to keep in mind when looking at a directory for a potential back link.

What’s the Page and Domain Strength
Check the strength of the page your link will be appearing, is it worth having a back link? Is it worth paying for that link? Check the page and domain strength (I recommend Linkscape) and find out whether or not this link will be valuable.

Is the Site Indexed?
Always make sure your link will be indexed by search engines. If it’s not, don’t submit. If they don’t recognize it, the link is pretty much worthless; especially if you paying for it. Here’s a simple trick to find out whether or not your link will be indexed:

Type site:http://www.yourwebsite.com in any search engine and find out if it’s being indexed.

How much Advertising do they have?
Directories with so many ads that it becomes cumbersome to navigate (there are tons of these) are not worth links. You’ll find that the best directories online (free and paid) don’t have that many ads; sometimes they have none. It’s not a coincidence.

Do they List Adult Sites?
If a directory lists adult sites (unless it’s a large and prominent directory) don’t list your site there; unless of course you’re promoting an adult site. It’s always a good idea to remain in family friendly directories, the links are typically worth more and there is no possible guilt by association.

Avoid Auto Approval Directories
A good rule of thumb when submitting to directories is to make sure that they are human edited. If all sites are accepted, chances are your link won’t be worth much. Search Engines put more emphasis on directories which are human edited and actually try to avoid auto-submit directories.

Avoid Free Directories
In my experience, most free directories are not well edited. Most are used in hopes of generating traffic to click on their ads and make a few dollars for the webmaster; they’re mostly junk sites. But that’s not to say that there aren’t great free directories online, they’re just usually hard to find. The truth is, I’ve probably spent more time removing bad free directory links then I’ve ever had gaining good free directory links.

Here are some great free directories I’ve come across:

DMOZ

Simply put, this is the best directory online. If you can actually manage to secure a link here, it will significantly boost your page and domain strength. Be aware, the wait for link approval is beyond long and it’s highly political. So don’t count on your site being linked here, but if it is, be happy.

Pegasus Directory

This is a great human edited free and paid directory. They have almost no advertising and have great domain and page strength. Their free approvals can be very long (up to 6 months) but they only list quality sites.

Web World

No advertising, human edited, great page strength.

Little Web Directory

No ads, human edited decent page strength.

Best Web Directories provides a great list of free directories online.

Listen to the Search Engines
Google, Bing, and Yahoo constantly give out information in interviews, blogs, and other sources which explains parts of their ranking process. In a great article by Chris Crum over at WebProNews, he talks about the dos and don’ts of link building for Bing with Rick DeJarnette of Bing’s Webmaster Center. The interview provides a great layout of what makes a website successful in today’s serps.

Be in Control of Your Links
The easiest way to avoid bad links is to know where your site is being linked. Keeping a constant watch of your back links is a great way to make sure your site isn’t ending up in the wrong part of town.

Google Webmaster Tools provides a great free service for your website which can check your back links recognized by Google.

Domain Inbound Links Checker is a really great tool that picks up on links a lot of other services don’t. (no anchor text in the results).

Backlink Watch is another great tool and picks up a lot of backlinks other tools don’t, but they have a lot of ads and the results are kind of slow (they display the anchor text).

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