SEO is about a lot of things especially building the right type of links to your site. Before it was as easy as building links from irrelevant websites which had no value or relevance however the focus has changed due to updates in search algorithms. With that said, I often get the question why linking building hasn’t been producing the results your looking for. I have put together a few reasons why your link building isn’t producing results and what you can do going forward to ensure quality and relevance. Let’s get started.
No Domain Authority
Some websites have been around longer than others and have built a reputation for providing value. This also means over the years their domain authority has increased so getting a link from these sites will be more valuable than others. If your building links then it’s important to focus on these websites and build a relationship with them. I believe many people don’t see a difference in their rankings because they simply don’t focus on authority links especially those which are relevant. You’ll read about relevance later however it’s important to make sure your links come from authority blogs so the value trickles down to your blog.
If you head over to OpenSiteExplorer.org or Ahrefs.com you can type in a domain URL and find out the authority of the domain. Focus on domains above 20+ and nothing below.
Accessibility
If you have a website then I recommend setting up Google Webmaster Tools to find out how accessible your website is. I’m not talking about for traffic because you can easily go to your URL to make sure there are NO server issues. I’m referring to accessibility as it refers to indexing, etc. If Google bots cannot access your website then they won’t be able to index your pages, links, sitemap.xml, etc. The backend of GWT will also give you a list of other issues like sitemap.xml, crawl and robots.txt.
The funny thing about rankings is that you can have everything else in order, but if your website can’t be accessed then it’ll stop it dead in the tracks.
Wrong Anchor Links
Above I discussed the importance of relevance and how they play a crucial role in rankings. Google over the years has made enormous tweaks to the way they evaluate a website. For example, relevance matters way more than it did in the early days of the search engine. This change was due to the way people search for products, information and services. People are more targeted and use long-tail keywords to find EXACTLY what they are looking for. Google understood this change and wanted to incorporate a system to improve user engagement.
First, they put more emphasis on long-tail and LSI (related) keywords within the title, description and body. Secondly, they have put enormous emphasis on the way people are building links these days. You have to build a mix of different links which include URL, long-tail, related and targeted. This shows a wide link profile and relates well to the search patterns of users.
What does this do for Google?
Simple, it helps them rank websites which have domain authority and provide value. However, it helps them organize the website information to better fit the search pattern of users. Keep in mind the job for search engines is to organize information so people can find it easily. They will continue to make tweaks so they can provide this to their users and continue to grow as a search engine.
What you can do is start implementing these changes and tracking how they make a difference going forward. Testing and tweaking is the way to get things done no matter what your niche.
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