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You are here: Home / Links / Why Inbound Links Might Not Improve Your SEO

Why Inbound Links Might Not Improve Your SEO

October 25, 2017 //  by Jen Currier//  Leave a Comment

Last Updated on July 31, 2020

Why Aren’t We Going Anywhere?

Link building forms the bedrock of any good SEO foundation and it seems it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Recently we’ve written about how to build inbound links, and how to stop your links looking like paid links. But we haven’t discussed that if even if your inbound links are solid, and you’re getting a steady amount of them, you still might not see your site shoot up the rankings. Here’s why…

Ready to Talk?

You’re Picking the Wrong Targets

The sites you’re building inbound links with aren’t high enough quality for Google to increase your ranking. In fact, they may even be damaging your ranking. How do you make sure that you’re building links in the right places?

  1. Is the site relevant to your business?
  2. Authoritative and trustworthy (this is obviously a subjective judgment, but just look for a quality site that regularly updates its blog and site with interesting content).
  3. Do they link to other sites that you respect or businesses you compete with?

The question of relevance can be difficult to interpret. For example, as a digital agency, we have helped many clients create their own websites. These clients are not all marketing agencies themselves, but some have links to our site as we created their website. A kind of artists signature if you will. So will Google penalize us for these links, thinking they are a kind of paid link? Or does it understand that they’re relevant to our business? The way we get around this, is we ask the client to create a page adding context to why there is a link to an agency on their otherwise related site.

But even this doesn’t provide a clear result and you need to be checking your Google Analytics and Search Console to see what impact they have. But you will never know for sure and you run the risk of receiving a link penalty.

Your Links Go To Bad Pages

The links you create are not going to good enough quality content on your site. If someone’s linking to your site then they need to be given a link that takes them to original, detailed, engaging content. Not just a link to your homepage, or Contact Us page.inbound links

If they’re linking your site to an article talking about SEO practices, then give them a link where you talk in depth about SEO practices. Don’t send them to a landing page for your new eBook on how to design a great company logo. Google needs to be able to connect the dots on why the link is there. So if it can’t see why the content on your page is similar to the page that you’ve been linked from then it’s going to think it’s a bad link.

Consistency and Anchor Text

Another thing that Google looks for is the number of links you’re generating. Put simply, if you go from 0 links a month to 100 links a month, Google is going to think something is up. So when you’re creating links make sure you’re doing it regularly and at a rate that is realistic. Otherwise, Google may think you’re paying for links.

Another way Google will check this is by looking at the anchor text of the link. Anchor text is the term for the blue underlined text that is the visible link to your website on the other companies site. If the anchor text is the same for many different links, all leading to the same page, Google will suspect that the links are spammy.

They’re Just Better Than You

Another reason you might not be shooting up the rankings is that your competitors are building better links than you. They might be creating better content, or linking to higher quality sites. This is why you need to check your rival’s websites often to see what their backlink profile shows.

This can help give you an idea of what you’re missing in your content, or other sites you can target for your own link building. As well as giving you an idea of what’s going on in your industry.

Fixing Inbound Links

What results have you noticed from your inbound link efforts? Have you seen an increase in traffic and ranking, or have you noticed any anomalies? We’d like to hear how companies build their own organic inbound link programs.

Photo credit – Top: Public Domain Pictures
Photo credit – Bottom: Site Fox

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Category: Links

About Jen Currier

Jen has a passion for helping businesses succeed with their online marketing goals. She has deep SEO knowledge, using her years of hands-on experience to help improve organic visibility, website traffic and lead conversions. She has a solid history of creating link management strategies -- including scrubbing link profiles of irrelevant and harmful links -- that produce tangible results and business relationships. Keeping up to date with the latest Google Algo updates, she’s a stickler for following Google’s Quality Search Guidelines. She specializes in Local SEO, Google Penalty Recovery and Google My Business Suspensions.

Betty Kaufman
Betty Kaufman
2020-12-27
I have nothing but great things to say about the team at The Spectrum Group Online. For years, they've been managing my website, making sure it's up to date and that there are no issues. In the last 4 months, they've been running Facebook ads for me, and I'm thrilled with the results. Great ads. Tons of leads. A steady effort to improve the leads. Very responsive. If you want to be seen on social media, you should definitely talk to The Spectrum Group Online.
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Alison Salisbury
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Mark Feldstein
2018-05-09
Our business grew, greatly due to the efforts of the Spectrum team. They are a focused company with great experience and plenty of talent to support their process. Jen Currier, in particular, is an excellent PM, who helped us every step of the way. They helped us re-design our website from the ground up and used tools such as Keyword Research and Heatmaps to help drive leads to our company. We had the best year in the history of our company, in part due to Spectrum's efforts. I do not hesitate to highly recommend them.
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SantaCruz NonForceChiropractors
2017-07-14
Massimo and The Spectrum Group Online have been very effective at sending quality traffic to our website and generating phone calls for appointments. Massimo has always been professional, responsive, and ready to make useful suggestions as well as explain the many ins and outs of search advertising. I highly recommend him to any business wishing to use a skilled and professional search marketing expert to increase their leads and grow their revenues.
Google rating score: 5 of 5,
based on 6 reviews.
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