In theory, link building is super simple. You just get other websites to link to yours and bam! Your rankings are up. If you’ve ever tried it, though, you know there’s more to it than that and it’s not nearly as easy as it seems. How do you find quality sites? How to avoid spammy backlinks? How to keep track of those Google algorithm updates that never end? And what about waiting on responses to outreach emails?
You spend hours working on that perfect email and then nobody pays any attention to it. Or maybe you’ve built a whole bunch of links but your rankings seem to be stuck no matter what you do. Or, the worst of all – you ended up with backlinks that are actually toxic and they’ve hurt your SEO.
So, where’s the shortcut? How do you do this right without spending an eternity on it? Well, there’s no shortcut. Link building is pretty tough, but it’s far from impossible. Before you start, it’s good to know the biggest problems you might face and how to get around them.
5 Most Common Challenges
The only viable shortcut would be to pay for white label link building services and have an agency (a professional) do this for you. If you still insist on doing it yourself, then arm yourself with patience, and let’s see what obstacles you might run into; and how to solve them.
1. Not Being Able to Find High-Quality Link Opportunities
This is one of the biggest issues – figuring out where to even get the links from. If you have any experience with link building, you know some backlinks are better than others and if you get a link from a random site, it won’t do you much (if any) good. A lot of people either don’t know what makes a backlink good or they don’t have a system for finding the right ones.
The solution? Research and strategy. You first use advanced search operators within Google to find the sites relevant to your niche. Then, check out your competitors’ backlink profiles with tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to see where they’re getting their links. You want sites that are authoritative, relevant to what you do, and that have strong organic traffic.
2. Outreach Emails Getting Ignored
Everyone has sent outreach emails at least once, it’s one of the most common strategies for link building. But the problem is, you don’t always get a response or, if you do, you wait forever for it. Most people won’t give out links for free and if your email looks like another template, it’s going straight to the trash.
The key is to personalize your email. Do some research on the person you’re contacting and mention something specific about their website that you like. Maybe it’s a recent article, maybe it’s a mutual connection… Make it clear why they’ll benefit from linking to your content.
3. Getting Backlinks Without Paying for Them
A lot of websites want you to pay them for backlinks, but that has its risks. Google really doesn’t like paid links, but you also might notice that they become really expensive really fast. The good news? There are a bunch of opportunities to earn backlinks without your wallet taking a hit.
One of the best ways to do it is to create content that attracts links naturally, like in-depth guides, unique data studies, or industry insights.
The HARO (Help a Reporter Out) platform by Connectively was unfortunately discontinued, however, it was an ingenious method of connecting writers and journalists where journalists would easily connect with expert sources.
4. Google’s Changing Algorithms
You just figured out what works but one Google update messed the whole thing up overnight and now you need to start again. This is the reality of SEO; there’s no guarantee that what works today will work tomorrow. This means that many great backlink strategies get outdated, so you’ll want to focus on long-term, white-hat strategies.
Don’t go around chasing quick wins. Instead, try to build backlinks from diverse, high-quality sources. Stay up to date on Google’s guidelines and follow established SEO blogs to try to see what changes are coming in the future.
5. Avoiding Spammy, Toxic Backlinks
If you stumble upon harmful links, use Google’s Disavow Tool to tell search engines to ignore them.
Conclusion
Link building will always be a bit of a headache, but it works so well so you’re probably okay with sacrificing a bit of time and effort for it. You’ll have to work hard, but there’s no need to go above and beyond.
Get familiar with the most common challenges and the most effective ways around them and you’ll never have to work harder than what’s necessary.
