If you've done any research into search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, you know that one of the most important keys to getting good placement in search engines is to get other websites to link to your site. And, if you've ever tried getting other sites to link to yours, you know it's a whole lot easier to talk about the importance of link building than it is to acquire relevant, high-quality inbound links.

In fact, looking for appropriate sites to ask for links, trying to convince them to link to you, and tracking the whole process, is a tedious, time-consuming task.

Not surprisingly, many small business owners look for ways to save time or cut corners in their link building campaign. But doing so, in most cases, is counterproductive. Instead of building links and online relationships, some of the techniques being used by online marketers and unscrupulous link-building "businesses" will build nothing but animosity for your business. And since many of the lazy link-building techniques use spam to solicit links, poorly planned and executed link-building campaigns could get you pegged as a spammer.

Whether you do your own link-building, have one of your employees do it, or outsource it to a link-building or SEO firm, make sure your link-building campaign steers clear of these five deadly link-building sins.

Using form letters to solicit links. Whether you write your form letter yourself or copy someone else's it's still going to sound like a form letter – especially when you send the same letter to multiple sites managed by the same webmaster. One dead giveaway that the email is a form letter: using a trite opening such as "Warm Greetings" (Hey, would you send cold greetings?) Another: gushing with non-specific praise for a site. Don't waste anyone's time or internet bandwidth by sending link requests that start off like these:

"Today I visited your site and found it to be really informative. I'm highly pleased to see the comprehensive resources being offered by your site."

"Out of all of these sites I came across,
yours really stood out to me,”

Buying links from any company that spams publishers with canned pitches telling them they’ll make thousands of dollars by placing paid links on their website. No one likes a canned pitch. More importantly, selling links is something search engines don't like. Here's an example of one spammy pitch that regularly drops into my inbox (and just as regularly gets deleted.):

"I've visited your website http://www.pluginasitename.com/ We see that your traffic rank is xxxxx and your link popularity is xxxx. Also, you have been online since 8/18/xxxx. With that kind of traffic, we will pay you up to $x,xxx to advertise our links on your website.

Trying to "sell" your page rank in a link swap request. Yes, links from sites with page rank are important, but trying to leverage your own page rank to encourage someone you don't know to swap links is a bad idea. While you might get some takers, link swapping for the sake of link swapping is yet another type of manipulations search engines don’t like. Pitches like this that claim you will soon have a high page rank are just laughable:

"I’ve got several PR6 and 7 websites, so I expect this site to become at least a PR5 within 1 month and will eventually become a 6 or 7 in 2-3 months."

Soliciting links from sites that have nothing in common with yours. Businessknowhow.com won't link to your gambling site, and won't link to the website for your bicycle repair shop just because it's a small business and wants inbound links.

Soliciting links from sites that are in a different country, and then asking them to run a geographically specific text ad with your link. It's pointless, for instance, to ask a US-based site like BusinessKnowHow.com to link to your personal trainer business with a text ad telling readers, "We are easily commutable from Battersea, Chelsea and Clapham."

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