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Most people know better than to do some of these things now, but you can still get confused if you look at spammer blogs and spammer forums where they still advocate these methods. If it seems like everyone else is doing it, you don't question it and then end up ruining your sites. A little common sense goes a long way, but it's just as easy to put the car in drive and put the pedal to the metal.
What are some link building mistakes we should warn the newcomers about? Please add to this list if you can think up anything you've done in the past that hurt you instead of helped.
Low Quality Link Spam
Blog comments, forum profiles, blog trackbacks, social bookmarks, social signals, guestbook posts, wiki edits, .asp footprints, web 2.0 accounts, article directories, site directories, image galleries... the list can go on forever. Most were devalued by Google or have become entirely no-follow. They're worthless for you if you take whatever you can get, and if you take them in the 10,000's like the old days you will be in trouble. There are tons of good, moderated sites you should get links like these on if they are relevant and clean.
Guest Posting Footprints
I saw this in @Steve Brownlie 's signature. He talks about it at length here. The point is that the sites you find in the SERPs by searching for "guest posts + niche" usually don't get traffic for anything but those phrases and will accept any old garbage. A lot of them turn around and ask you for money too. If a site is actively asking for guest posts, you can bet it's a bad deal. Pitch sites that aren't asking, pitch tips to sites asking for them, and make friends on social media then ask them.
Not Filtering Your Outreach List
There are a ton of agencies and sites that automate their outreach and if you don't respond they keep re-emailing you some "hey not sure if you saw this" emails every week. That's a great way to get your main email accounts flagged as spam and put on blacklists. Following up might boost your conversion rate a tiny bit, but following up more than once is going to burn bridges. I don't recommend following up ever, just reach out to more sites if you know you're hitting an active email account. Don't chase down their whois information or start pestering them on social too. It becomes stalkerish.
Forum Signatures, Sitewide Links, Press Releases
These aren't "bad" unless you use them wrong. You need to really think about the anchor you're about to use on your forum account with 5,000 posts and on that footer with 10,000 indexed pages. If you distribute a theme for people to use and include a link, you shouldn't risk it at all. Use no-follow. Same for press releases. Your best bet on any of these is to use a branded anchor, but don't use any kind of exact match you hope to rank for. You can use something broad related to your site aimed at the hompage, like "computer information," if you're brave and want to force that signal. But don't get too specific.
Worrying about Page Rank, Domain Authority, Trust Flow, etc.
There are people who still think you should only get links from sites with one of these metrics that are higher than your own. But what happens when you surpass them? Do you ask for the link to be removed? That's how dumb this is. Don't worry about metrics. You might ignore the Domain Rank 23 site when they would have given you a link, and a year later they become Domain Rank 78. Take what is relevant and clean and free of spam. Worry more about high quality site builds, content, and being free from spam. Relevancy is more important than anything else. You can and should take links on good general sites too, though.
Anchor Text Ratios
Don't use the same anchor text over and over again or you'll lose your ability to rank for those phrases. The safest thing is to only use the exact match anchor text a few times, and then dilute with URLs, brands, generics, random long phrases, and LSI terms. Be careful not to over use any set of one words that make up your main phrase too. Use them enough, but not too much.
Widget Links, Site Badges, Inclusion for Links
This is kind of like the sitewide links in the footer or sidebars, but there's no real good way of doing this that won't have Google coming down on your site eventually. It's a links scheme. Building or buying a widget and putting a dofollow link on it back to your site and pinging an update across the blogosphere is manipulation. Building a "Top 10 Fashion Blogger Award" badge to give out to mommy bloggers that links back to your site is a link scheme. Directories that will let you in if you link back... scheme. The same goes for "web rings, link carousels" and all of that stuff that was useful in the late 90's before search engines were around and decent will get you in trouble now.
Public / Private Blog Networks
This is a heads up. These links are pretty effective, but not for a long time. So if you don't want to get a penalty or lose the links you spent money on, don't deal with these. When they come crashing down, so will your rankings to a certain degree, and often times you will catch a manual penalty for having used a PBN. Sometimes you'll get deindexed. If you care for your sites, don't do it.
Anything else?
What are some link building mistakes we should warn the newcomers about? Please add to this list if you can think up anything you've done in the past that hurt you instead of helped.
Low Quality Link Spam
Blog comments, forum profiles, blog trackbacks, social bookmarks, social signals, guestbook posts, wiki edits, .asp footprints, web 2.0 accounts, article directories, site directories, image galleries... the list can go on forever. Most were devalued by Google or have become entirely no-follow. They're worthless for you if you take whatever you can get, and if you take them in the 10,000's like the old days you will be in trouble. There are tons of good, moderated sites you should get links like these on if they are relevant and clean.
Guest Posting Footprints
I saw this in @Steve Brownlie 's signature. He talks about it at length here. The point is that the sites you find in the SERPs by searching for "guest posts + niche" usually don't get traffic for anything but those phrases and will accept any old garbage. A lot of them turn around and ask you for money too. If a site is actively asking for guest posts, you can bet it's a bad deal. Pitch sites that aren't asking, pitch tips to sites asking for them, and make friends on social media then ask them.
Not Filtering Your Outreach List
There are a ton of agencies and sites that automate their outreach and if you don't respond they keep re-emailing you some "hey not sure if you saw this" emails every week. That's a great way to get your main email accounts flagged as spam and put on blacklists. Following up might boost your conversion rate a tiny bit, but following up more than once is going to burn bridges. I don't recommend following up ever, just reach out to more sites if you know you're hitting an active email account. Don't chase down their whois information or start pestering them on social too. It becomes stalkerish.
Forum Signatures, Sitewide Links, Press Releases
These aren't "bad" unless you use them wrong. You need to really think about the anchor you're about to use on your forum account with 5,000 posts and on that footer with 10,000 indexed pages. If you distribute a theme for people to use and include a link, you shouldn't risk it at all. Use no-follow. Same for press releases. Your best bet on any of these is to use a branded anchor, but don't use any kind of exact match you hope to rank for. You can use something broad related to your site aimed at the hompage, like "computer information," if you're brave and want to force that signal. But don't get too specific.
Worrying about Page Rank, Domain Authority, Trust Flow, etc.
There are people who still think you should only get links from sites with one of these metrics that are higher than your own. But what happens when you surpass them? Do you ask for the link to be removed? That's how dumb this is. Don't worry about metrics. You might ignore the Domain Rank 23 site when they would have given you a link, and a year later they become Domain Rank 78. Take what is relevant and clean and free of spam. Worry more about high quality site builds, content, and being free from spam. Relevancy is more important than anything else. You can and should take links on good general sites too, though.
Anchor Text Ratios
Don't use the same anchor text over and over again or you'll lose your ability to rank for those phrases. The safest thing is to only use the exact match anchor text a few times, and then dilute with URLs, brands, generics, random long phrases, and LSI terms. Be careful not to over use any set of one words that make up your main phrase too. Use them enough, but not too much.
Widget Links, Site Badges, Inclusion for Links
This is kind of like the sitewide links in the footer or sidebars, but there's no real good way of doing this that won't have Google coming down on your site eventually. It's a links scheme. Building or buying a widget and putting a dofollow link on it back to your site and pinging an update across the blogosphere is manipulation. Building a "Top 10 Fashion Blogger Award" badge to give out to mommy bloggers that links back to your site is a link scheme. Directories that will let you in if you link back... scheme. The same goes for "web rings, link carousels" and all of that stuff that was useful in the late 90's before search engines were around and decent will get you in trouble now.
Public / Private Blog Networks
This is a heads up. These links are pretty effective, but not for a long time. So if you don't want to get a penalty or lose the links you spent money on, don't deal with these. When they come crashing down, so will your rankings to a certain degree, and often times you will catch a manual penalty for having used a PBN. Sometimes you'll get deindexed. If you care for your sites, don't do it.
Anything else?
.
