Can Link Building Give You Or Your Client A Bad Reputation?

Your inbound links are one of the most important authority signals to search engines. However, indiscriminate link-building might harm your reputation. What you should know is as follows. 

In the era of internet reviews, the reputation of your brand is crucial.

Google reviews are consulted by 63.6% of customers before going to a store. And 35% of respondents cited “faith in brand” as one of the most important considerations when picking a retailer.

Reputation management has grown to be an essential component of any digital strategy since a bad review may cost you sales and a bad reputation can be devastating.

Additionally, poor backlinks can harm your reputation with search engines as well as people’s perceptions of you.

However, don’t worry; we are here to assist. In this article, we’ll examine how poor link-building may damage your reputation and offer some tips on how to maintain it pristine.

Let’s first examine how outside sources might affect the credibility and reputation of your website.

How Your Domain Authority Can Benefit from External Links?

The relationship between backlinks and search engine optimization is probably something you already know. If not, or if you want a quick reminder, read this (but come right back).

Additionally, the influence that external links have on domain authority is one way that they affect your SEO approach. This might have both good and bad effects.

A page’s PageRank could rise, for instance, if many inbound links are going to it.

As a result, Google can interpret this as evidence of the authority of your material and adjust your search engine ranking accordingly.

The rating of your domain is also improved by quality links. Depending on the website from which they come, incoming links are given varying weights by Google.

An inbound link from a respectable institution or government organization, for instance, informs the search engine that your information is legitimate, which is reflected in your rating.

Bad Reputation Building through Link Building

Sadly, life is not all rainbows, ice cream, and cute puppies with backlinks. Your rating and reputation may suffer if the inbound link is bad.

Let’s examine how your link-building strategy could harm you or your business.

1. Links in Undesirable Areas

Try not to acquire links in an undesirable area, we are constantly told. When constructing links, it could seem quite simple to stay away from poor areas, but occasionally it’s impossible to do so.

Let’s use blog comments as an illustration. You locate a blog and leave a comment there with a sly link to a website. At that point, everything is OK. But when you go back to check on your comment, you find that it has been followed by the next sentence.

When the potential customer saw these remarks, they would be reluctant to click on any link on the page because they would assume it was spam, just like the comments in question were.

Owners of WordPress blogs may take it a step further. Using spam filter tools, they can designate comments as spam if they find any that they believe to be such. By doing this, the website URL will be recorded in a database and kept out of comments on other WordPress blogs.

And as a result, if a client uses a service for link building and that service adds the client’s URL to the spam database, the customer will (often inadvertently) be prevented from leaving comments.

Imagine finding the ideal blog that the proper audience is reading and that a strategically placed remark may have a significant positive impact on your company.

Because a spammer added a tag to your remark, you can’t publish a comment with your URL, which means you lose out on the chance.

2. Using a Spam Agency or Being Identified as a Link Builder

This caution is particularly directed toward organizations that distribute impersonal, mass link requests.

The same website owners frequently receive several requests for different clients from the program that handles these sorts of link requests.

However, if the website owner becomes upset with them, they may do anything from adding the company’s details to a blog post (including the link requester’s name, agency name, and client’s name).

Webmasters who are displeased can also report companies to spam denylists.

Listed on websites like Domain Name Systems Blacklist, or DNSBL, are the agency and any clients connected to it. It doesn’t take long to go through their website to locate a list of well-known clients and agencies who work with them.

It will be difficult if your company’s whole model depends on generating links for customers and you get yourself on one of these denylists.

3. Giving the Client False Information

Alternately, if an agency receives an email from a client’s domain, that agency will now speak for the client in any correspondence or demands.

Can you imagine if you had a website and started receiving spam from your favorite business? Or if a brand you liked was spamming your blog through a person posing as a representative of the business? Your perception of the aforementioned brand would presumably fall, wouldn’t it?

4. Excessive Directory Submissions

Using web directories can help you improve your search engine rating.

Twenty years ago, they were more widespread and had a greater influence on SEO, but they still seem to be a minor ranking component now, especially for local search.

And a reliable, often sector-specific directory may be a reliable source of traffic and credibility. Of course, there are differences between different directories.

And if we’re being honest, many of them—possibly even the majority—are doing nothing—at best—or, at worst—actively harming—your ranking.

That’s because a lot of folders only contain spam.

And if we’re being honest, many of them—possibly even the majority—are doing nothing—at best—or, at worst—actively harming—your ranking.

That’s because a lot of folders only contain spam.

Search engines will lower the value of your website if you have submitted it to be listed in one of these spam sites.

Remember how I said terrible neighborhoods in the first point? It has gone through iteration.

5. Not Being a Good Community Member

People can discuss their hobbies and opinions in forums on the internet.

A URL in your signature may be used to draw attention and encourage clicks by facilitating interaction.

However, there are several ways that things may go wrong for you.

For instance, if you sign up for a forum and post the same thing in every subforum in the hopes of attracting attention, earning clicks, and enhancing your reputation.

The moderators will quickly find out what is going on and flag you as a spammer. You instantly established unfavorable links.

Damage to Your Search Evaluator Reputation

We have just covered thus far how having faulty links can get you into trouble with search engines. However, you also need to take into account another aspect of your website’s reputation: actual users’ experiences, particularly those of Google search assessors.

Your site’s external reputation is one of the factors they consider when assessing its E-A-T (expertise, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness).

These assessors keep an eye on client complaints and issues to gauge the authority of your website. They may learn more about the normal customer experience by visiting websites like Yelp, Amazon Customer Reviews, and Facebook Ratings and Reviews.

Even if Google’s algorithm has you rated well, if they deem your site has poor authority, they may flag it as a low-quality response to a search query.

How to Maintain Your Reputation?

How can you avoid developing a poor reputation when link building now that you are aware of the risks that low-quality backlinks may have on your online reputation?

Here are a few straightforward recommendations:

• Don’t spam in mass!
• Place your link somewhere than on severely spammed websites.
• Make each link request unique and make sure the link is appropriate for the website.
• Make insightful blog comments after reading blog content.
• Renounce poor connections.

Take No Shortcuts

Growing links requires effort, just as building your brand’s reputation does.

Remember that many people will discover your brand for the first time when you appear in search engine results; if you don’t appear, you won’t receive any exposure.

Therefore, please don’t be careless with your linking technique.

Be deliberate and diligent in your quest for high-quality backlinks that will boost rather than degrade your search ranking.

You may create the links you desire and preserve your reputation by exercising a little caution and making an effort.