8 Important Lessons You'll Learn from Failed Link Building Campaigns

Although it is impossible to predict if your online content is going to perform well, it can be easier to learn from the mistakes of others so you don't travel down that same road. Avoid the following link building disasters and you will be on the right path to making fewer mistakes and finally seeing eventual success.

1. Too Much Information

If you think you need to upload every data point you have ever collected, you are going to present copy that lacks cohesive narrative and provides unfocused content. Less is certainly more in this instance. If the reader can't figure out the meaning of the data in ten seconds, trim it down.

2. Published Data Doesn't Guarantee Links

If you are trying to publish information already available on the web, you better have a unique spin or twist or your content will never convert. You need to get creative and say something new about the data while making it interesting for the reader to stay engaged with your content.

3. Building Links & Videos

Using a video in the content is excellent for viral sharing, but for links it might not be the way to go. Publishers are rarely going to give your video any attention, they can simply go to YouTube and link to it their or embed it, cutting you out of the equation.

4. Getting in the Political Ring

If you decide to tackle politics, just remember that you may be turning off half your audience before they even read a word. Many brands won't touch political topics for that reason, but if you can walk the fine line in between you have the potential to evoke emotional reactions and get a lot of attention in the process.

5. The Big Risk with Hyper-Local

Even if you focus on the biggest city in the country, you run the risk of limiting the publishers who might be interested. If the content can cover multiple cities across a larger region, you may pick up national publishers who want to reach a wider audience.

6. Multiple Visual Assets

Start with one asset that will be a simple and static image, due to the fact many websites have limits on the media types they can publish. While the majority of them can certainly grab the static graphic, many may pass if there is a more complex format as the only visual asset in the piece.

7. Avoiding Cool New Tools

You may have discovered a new tool that allows your content to spring off the page, but that might not be what publishers are looking for. While you think it is the coolest thing to happen to your content, the meat of the information may be too boring to get any real responses. Content first, then worry about the shiny new things.

8. Super Niche No No

Don't think that because you drilled down to a very specific niche that you are going to reach a target audience who will set your content ablaze. The more you keep drilling down, the smaller the audience you can find and the publishers who care about the content.

By avoiding these 8 link building campaign mistakes, you have a better chance of your content getting picked up and going viral.