Now that you understand
the DO's of successful linking, let's take a lot at the flip side of the coin, the DON'TS of linking.
The Linking DON'TS
- DON'T exchange links with link farms or anything that remotely appears to be a link farm! This cannot be stressed enough as doing so will only get your site devalued in the search engine algorithms. Sites that harvest link farms are usually easy to distinguish and should be avoided at all costs.
- DON'T use irrelevant text in your links. NEVER use "click here" as the text for ANY link! The idea when creating a link is to keep it relevant to your website content so the search engines know what it's linking to. If your site is about Online Casino Strategies, make sure the link text reads "Online Casino Strategies". Also, if you are directing users in your site to a contact us page, favor structuring the link as "Contact Us" vs. "Click here" to contact us!
- DON'T exchange links with sites that are completely irrelevant to your own. Avoid the temptation to exchange your link with any and every site you come across. In the long run it is simply going to cause more harm than good.
- DON'T hide relevant links unless there is reason to do so! Hiding a link from a link exchange is in essence cheating the webmaster you've exchanged links with. Integrity and honesty are very much tied to link exchanges and webmasters need to treat each other fairly by ensuring Google and other search engines will value their partners links.
- DON'T use a program to auto-generate your links. Google may penalize a site that is generating links on the fly.
- DON'T use the NOFOLLOW tag unless there is legitimate reason to. The NOFOLLOW tag is used to prevent Google from following the link, essentially de-valuing the link completely.
It is important to understand the Do's and Don'ts of linking and to follow a certain code of ethics. May all your link campaigns be meet with great success.