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Do you use link building to improve your website rankings but don't see your rank budge an inch?
Or worse, see the traffic dropping instead of even staying.
The problem is that you might be committing these link-building mistakes that are silently killing your SEO.
Because link building isn’t just about quantity, it’s about strategy. And if you’re not careful, your efforts could be doing more harm than good.
From choosing the wrong websites for backlinks to anchor text over-optimization, small missteps can lead to Google penalties, lost rankings, and wasted efforts.
In this blog, we’re exposing 7 link building mistakes that sabotage your SEO. Avoid these, and you’ll see the difference in your rankings in 2025.
Link building is an excellent way of driving organic traffic to your website. There are multiple ways how you can do this.
However, the problem is that the same backlinks, when placed wrongly, can bring you lousy traffic, harm your website's reputation, and cause some link building mistakes to cost you a severe Google penalty. Let’s dig into some of them below
Basics first, always!
Great creators always boil down all technicalities into one simple point – high-quality content!
When you create high-quality content, you make an editorial link for other websites. This automatically saves you from the stress of earning backlinks through shortcut methods that spoil your ranking later.
The unique achievement here is that you haven't approached any blogger for backlinks, nor have you sponsored it. Instead, you earned the link on the authority of your article.
Google sees link-worthy content as a vote because this is the ideal content it expects from bloggers. Every time someone links to your content, it's a +1 vote ( call it +100 if it's a website with a high DA)
You might be curious, "How do you create one?"
When other websites link to your page, it’s because they find it credible, informative, or useful to their audience. If your content lacks depth, originality, or a compelling reason to be referenced, your outreach efforts will hit a wall.
Here are the basic elements to cross-check whether your content is linkable for the audience.
Offering free guides or tools is a highly effective way to create link-worthy content
Let's say that you run a finance website, and providing a free calculator or a simple Excel sheet that will help your readers calculate the exact amount they need to save to enjoy a financial freedom future will undoubtedly earn you visitors like hot cake.
In fact, other websites will find their work quickly done with such offerings, and they will want to link to your content.
Infographics and research are the best way to stand out in the content sea and the best methods that save you from committing link-building mistakes.
Pro Tip: Before asking for backlinks, ask yourself: “Would I link to this content if I weren’t the author?”. If the answer is no, fix your content first.
As I mentioned in the introduction, backlinks are as good as the website they come from.
A good website with quality visitors gives you good traffic. But a poor website will spoil your domain authority.
Therefore, it's important to choose the right website, or else you might spoil your SEO despite implementing the right backlinking methods.
If you consider fetching a backlink from a website that caters to all niches (news websites can be exceptions), that's a red flag for Google. Most websites catering to multiple niches – finance, sports, technology – often do so for selling backlinks to various websites to help them earn a quick top ranking on search engines.
Therefore, when you look for a website for backlinking strategies, check its content first – is it serving a generic or a specific niche?
And here are a few more factors to consider when to save yourself from any future consequences:
Imagine the potential you are missing by fishing using a fish rod while you have a fish net beside you.
That's the same as using one backlinking strategy for your SEO ranking when you have various methods for gaining multiple backlinks with varying potential.
When you focus on one backlinking strategy and replicate it, you risk being marked as a spammer by Google.
However, when you use multiple strategies, Google finds that natural.
Because overusing one failed strategy with the hope of earning good backlinks traps you further.
Instead, when you utilize multiple backlink strategies, such as guest blogging, fixing broken links, brand mentions, captivating infographics, and other reliable link-building techniques, you are creating numerous opportunities.
After all, variety is the necessary spice to keep things interesting.
With multiple backlink opportunities, you also attract varying qualities of backlinks, which one method may fail to earn.
Lastly, the best advantage of relying on multiple strategies is that some strategies instantly fail the moment the source drops out. This could be the source site's domain change or deleted page.
But with alternative strategies in place, your SEO juice doesn't risk dropping to nil.
Google values originality, authenticity, and valuable content that solves its user's problems and then spoils their experience further.
This makes high-quality original content a key to ranking your website on any search engine.
This also means that to receive a high-quality backlink, you need to approach websites with high domain authority and stellar content.
But what if your backlinks are successfully placed on multiple websites, but these websites are red flags? That’s a clear warning sign of a link-building mistake because backlinks from such sites transfer the same link juice to your website, putting your SEO ranking in danger.
While choosing any website, it's important to look for the following red-flag content:
Multiple agencies commit these link-building mistakes as a shortcut to rank your articles quickly, and it's important to be wary of them.
Everyone knows that haste leads to waste. Any instant expectations for your website to rank will undoubtedly tempt you to adopt the wrong strategies that Google labels as shady.
The best antidote to quick growth is to adopt a strategic approach with your experts, which ViralChilly always shares with their clients before executing the planned SEO strategies for their improved visibility.
Choosing consistent and shareworthy content for sustainable growth is always wise.
Natural tactics indeed take time to show results and result in continuous exponential growth in the long run, which only brings great results once they trigger.
Collaboration is one top-notch technique that top websites adopt to achieve good traffic and visibility in the shortest time without buzzing any alarms.
By collaborating with different bloggers and creators, you earn credible backlinks and an audience who revisit your site long-term.
Another core technique to be mindful of when building links is adding links with an intention.
At ViralChilly, we strategize backlink building to avoid common link-building mistakes. We categorize backlinks into factors such as SEO, authority, traffic, etc.
This ensures clarity while building content and builds consistent traffic in the long run.
But suppose your SEO experts avoid these core tactics. In that case, they will invite penalties for your websites, which will not only waste your time later but also cost additional money to rectify these mistakes.
It's best to plan your link-building strategies wisely with SEO experts.
There are different types of backlink attributes, of which dofollow and nofollow are the most common ones.
You might be thinking, wouldn't adding multiple dofollow links boost your visibility?
No, Google finds this suspicious and spammy because websites with black hat practices often use it to gain quick visibility.
When you don't balance dofollows with some nofollows, you invite a problem instead of traffic.
That's not it; if you choose to place backlinks on one such website that's populated with dofollows, you are set to invite a low-quality juice for your website.
How does balancing with nofollow help?
You need to ensure the same throughout your pages on the website that it uses a good balance to avoid making a link-building mistake.
There are various types of anchor texts.
Anchor texts are texts that link to another website and direct the readers. You can read more about them here.
However, exact match anchor texts are those where the linked text is the same as the referred page.
It could be a text that links to a page with the same name.
These anchor types are mainly used for keyword ran, king there it's natural.
But it's unnatural to overuse it throughout the blog to rank for that keyword. Google finds this fishy, and before you know it, you will be penalized by Google, which will directly impact your ranking.
It's not easy to rank sustainably by adding multiple exact-match anchor texts on the same page.
Here are the disadvantages of overusing anchor texts:
Here's how you can deal with the overuse of such anchor texts:
Backlinking strategies are often overlooked for SEO ranking factors. But even when utilized for ranking the websites, it's important to do it in the right way. Without implementing it correctly, your backlinking methods will backfire on your website and do more harm than good.
