Obtaining links to your website is one of the most effective SEO techniques to improve the rank of your website on search engine results. However, there is more to link building than the total quantity of links pointing to your website. Not every link is equal, and the quality of links plays a very important role in determining your rank.

The recent updates to Google’s algorithm have targeted unnatural link building tactics heavily and have changed the way how Google determines the value of a link. This in-turn has had a big impact on link building in general. The more recent algorithm changes, referred to as the Panda and Penguin updates has led to significant falls in the ranking and traffic of thousands of websites.

As a result, web masters and marketers have been forced to rethink their link building strategy and are focusing on creating high quality content and resources that will result in natural links to a website.

In this article we take a look at the 9 types of links you should avoid to prevent your ranking from being hurt. You will find this particularly helpful if your website rankings have been negatively affected by the recent changes to Google algorithms.

1. Paid Links

In spite of common knowledge that paid links can hurt your ranking, many websites continue to make this mistake. Paid links should be avoided at all costs. If you do decide to purchase a text link on a popular site with the aim of driving traffic to your website, make sure your link has the no follow attribute. This will prevent you from being penalised.

2. Links From Spun Articles

Article spinning is a commonly used SEO technique where businesses rewrite parts of existing content and republish as unique content on several article directories to influence their ranking on search engines. This is typically done to mislead search engines and influence search engine ranking. This technique should be avoided for several reasons.

Spun articles are typically of poor quality and created specifically to mislead search engines into believing the content is unique. Search engine algorithm are becoming increasingly adept at recognising and penalising the use of spun articles.

3. Links From Comment Spam

Commenting on blog posts and articles is an effective link building technique used by web masters and SEO experts throughout the world. It is important to ensure your comments are genuine and add value to the discussion. Leaving irrelevant comments simply to obtain backlinks to your website are treated as comment spam and can hurt your rank on search engines. There are also many automated systems for posting comments on sites which should be avoided at all cost.

4. Backlinks From Low Quality Directories

Although article directories as well as online business directories offer a powerful way to obtain links, you should choose the sites on which you publish articles carefully. Recent changes to Google algorithm has resulted in the loss of ranking of many article and web directories and backlinks from these sites have been devalued. It is best to exercise caution and foccus on reputable directories only.

5. Links From Bad Neighbourhood Sites

The term ‘bad neighbourhood’ is used to describe poor quality sites that have been flagged as dangerous by search engines for a number of factors such as SEO malpractices or Malware. Any association with bad neighbourhood sites can be detrimental to your SEO efforts. Needless to say, it is very important to avoid obtaining a link from or linking to such site.

What is the effect of being associated with a bad neighbourhood? The first sign you will probably see is your ranking going down. Google often copes with bad neighbourhoods by sandboxing, or removing all associated sites from the index.

There are many tools that can help you to identify bad neighbourhood sites e.g. http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm

6. Links With Same Anchor Text

Until recently, web masters and SEO experts paid a lot of emphasis on obtaining links with primary keyword as the anchor text. As a result, most all websites with an active SEO strategy have ended up with countless links with identical anchor text. Google has started treating links with identical anchor text as unnatural i.e. obtained purely to influence search engine ranking.

Anchor text diversity has become critical to a successful SEO strategy today.

7. Site Wide Links

Site wide links i.e. links from all pages of a website are also treated as unnatural by search engines and should be avoided. The best example of this is links from footer or sidebar of a website.

8. Links From Irrelevant Sites

It is very important to obtain links only from sites whose content is relevant to your niche. Obtaining links from irrelevant sites will not add value and can have a negative effect on your ranking for desired keywords.

9. Links From Low Quality Blogs

Blogging offers many advantages. However links from low quality free blogs set-up purely to obtain links should also be avoided. This includes links from blogs on Blogger, WordPress or Tumblr that have very few posts and are rarely updated.

Conclusion

Link building is one of the most powerful and effective techniques for improving your rank on search engines. However, recent changes to Google algorithm have made it essential to focus on obtaining quality links only. Poor quality back links can have a negative effect on your SEO efforts and can hurt your ranking. Above are some examples of the types of links you should avoid. You should keep this in mind as part of your link building strategy.