Why Are Low-Quality Backlinks a Waste of Money?

When you’re trying to boost your SEO, you’re likely looking to buy quality backlinks cheap. However, before you enter your credit card number and spend those precious marketing dollars, you need to be sure that the backlinks you are getting are actually going to boost your rank. In the end, low-quality links are a waste of money and do more harm than good.

How Low-Quality Backlinks Hurt Your Ranking

Backlinks are a tool that search engines use to determine the relevancy of your page and gauge whether outside sources believe your page is a good resource. In other words, if many links to your site appear across multiple places on the web, search engines see that other people believe your page is relevant and worth boosting. The goal of link building is to increase the number of external sites that refer to your site as a reference point and source of valuable information.

A low-quality backlink is one that does not get much attention or engagement or one that is not directly related to your field or industry. Having your site linked to another site that has few visitors is ultimately not helpful to you at all. The search engine will know right away that the link is not generating activity and that the link is not relevant to readers.

Low-Quality Backlinks Don’t Generate Activity

Oftentimes companies pay for backlinks assuming that having their page associated with a multitude of places across the web will automatically help their ranking. In truth, only links that actually get clicks will help improve your standing in the search engine’s ranking. Links that appear on dead sites or are embedded in irrelevant content will not drive anyone to your site and will ultimately hurt your ranking.

Proper backlinks should be ones that enhance your standing with both the search engine and your audience as a whole. You want backlinks on sites where people are likely to click through and explore your page.

Low-Quality Backlinks May Not Be Visible At All

One problem we have seen in recent years is a number of companies offering low-cost backlinks through link farms. These pages are basically long lists of links all mashed together with no rhyme or reason. While technically you have added a link to your site to your roster, and someone could click through to your page, Google and other search engines spot these link farms quickly and can downgrade your ranking for being a part of them.

Companies selling these kinds of backlinks believe that posting your link all over the web is enough to trick the search engine, but that is not the case and has not been for many years. Google’s bots can spot a spammy page in an instant and know that every link on that page is irrelevant and worthless. Worst of all, your customers may find your link on one of these spam pages and believe that your brand is untrustworthy.

Quality Over Quantity

As with most things, the real benefit of backlinks comes from quality, not quantity, and your link-building strategy has to encompass more than just buying links. If you want your site linked to by quality sites, it needs to come in the form of high-quality content that readers naturally want to engage with. You also need to have a good handle on your keywords and audience demographics to make sure that you are connecting with the right sites in the right places.

A handful of top-notch backlinks will take you much further than a hundred low-quality links. Every time a customer clicks through a link from a site that is already ranking well and getting plenty of activity, your site will see a boost in relevancy scores. There is no shortcut to this process, especially if you haven’t done your homework ahead of time.

How to Buy Quality Backlinks Cheap

After you have developed quality content on your page and you turn your attention to link building, your first priority should be to find quality backlink providers. Finding the right service to build your backlink catalog can take time, but the research you do upfront will be worth its weight in gold. Here are a few things you should look for in your search for quality links:

Is It Too Good to Be True? 

It should go without saying that any company promising you instant results and thousands of links is probably a scam. Quality links take time to build and reinforce. Don’t just jump on the first service offering you high rankings for a few dollars a month.

Quality backlinks cost more, but they also deliver real returns instead of throwing your money out the window. Don’t jump on the first backlink offer you get until you understand how the process works in the long run.

Understand Their Content Creation Process

Quality backlinks are the ones that come from trusted and relevant sites, often in the form of blogs and other web content that establishes you as a leader in your industry. Make sure you ask where that content is coming from and ensure that the quality of blogs and posts you receive aligns with how you want your company to be perceived. Remember, these blogs and posts will be distributed across the web and encourage readers to click through to your page, so you want to be sure they are creating a positive association.

We have all visited a site that uses cheap content like AI-generated blogs, which are often grammatically incorrect and difficult to read. As a consumer, we can spot these shortcuts in an instant and we know that the company cut corners. Your consumers will think exactly the same thing if your links start appearing in low-quality blog posts riddled with errors.

Learn How Your Keywords Will Come Into Play

One area that many companies overlook during the backlink-building process is keyword rotation. In order to spread your links far and wide, you really need a variety of keywords and anchor text options at your disposal. Not surprisingly, using the same keyword over and over each month will ultimately cost you because you will see lower returns each time the keyword is repeated in succession.

By rotating keywords over three to six-month intervals, a quality backlink service will ensure that your content is reaching a wider audience and not suffering from over-saturation. This will also allow you to appear in a wider range of searches and help build your content base into a true library of valuable insight for your customers.

As you can see, low-quality backlinks are not just a waste of money but also a hindrance to your overall SEO goals. If you are trying to grow your backlink list and engagement, you need a trustworthy link-building service at your side that can guide you through the process of content creation and acquisition, as well as placement and keyword rotation. To learn more about how this process works, visit Better Backlinks today and learn how we use the content pyramid to get great results.

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Matt Gerchow

CEO at Betterbacklinks