When backlinks fail to boost your rankings

Link building is an absolutely crucial part of any SEO campaign to boost traffic to your website, but your links need to conform to certain standards if they are to prove effective.

According to an article in Entrepreneur, industry insiders believe that search engine algorithms may give up to 80 per cent of their weight to backlinks, so it pays to get them right. If you’re finding that your website is failing to reap the benefit of your linking strategy, here are some points to consider.

Poor content associated with inbound links

Your inbound links need to direct traffic to pages filled with relevant and interesting content in order to satisfy incoming visitors. If your content is weak, irrelevant, or of poor quality then visitors will quickly depart your site, giving you a high bounce rate, which will mark your site down accordingly with the search engines. You should aim for the highest possible quality in all of your content, to ensure that visitors are enriched by, and engaged with your brand.

Low-quality inbound links

Inbound links are important, but that doesn’t mean that any old link will do. Google and other search engines are always on the lookout for links that appear ‘spammy’, and they may identify poor quality links as having been paid for, and mark your site down accordingly.

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Avoid link schemes

Google and other search engines rate links highly if they believe them to be honest, but will penalise links that they consider ‘spammy’. You may not have purchased your links or built them artificially, but if it appears that you might have done to the search engines, then they will mark your site down accordingly. It’s easy to fall foul of the search engine guidelines unless you are very experienced in link building and auditing, so consider hiring professional help from a reputable SEO services company, such as http://www.elevateuk.com/seo-services/.

Your competitors have a better strategy than you

No matter how good your link building strategy, if your competitors have a better approach then you will lag behind them. In order to raise your game, you need to understand exactly what your competitors are doing, and once again, this is a field best left to the experts. Professional SEO experts can undertake analysis to ensure that your site receives a higher market share.