Links from other good quality, relevant business websites are still extremely important for SEO, and every site owner wants to get a high rankings on Google.

Unfortunately, it can be very hard to get good quality backlinks. Sometimes, your business website itself is the reason why other people don’t want to link to it. Here are some of the most likely reasons why other businesses do not want to link to your site:

1.Your website looks like it’s still 2005! Ten years is an age on the Internet.

If your website was designed in 2005, it will look extremely outdated. The Internet is full of good looking websites with great functionality and interactivity. If your website cannot compete with them, people will go elsewhere.

Your web pages must be easy to read, contain content that adds value to the reader and is 100% relevant to the topic of that page. Use a modern website design, big headlines, sub headings as necessary and an easy to skim page structure.

2. Your website is bloated

If you have twenty different pages on your website that basically contain the same or substantially similar content, it is difficult for others to choose the right page for them to link to.

Make sure that your website has a clear focus and that it’s easy to find the right pages on your site. Having multiple pages with slightly changed content could even trigger Google’s Panda algorithm penalties resulting is a significant drop in your search engine rankings

3. Your website contains broken links and images

If the homepage of your website contains a big broken image or an image that fails to display correctly then people will think that your website isn’t updated regularly and that your attention to detail might not be that great. Nobody wants to link to dying pages or do business with another business that appears unprofessional.

Make sure someone is looking at all your website pages regularly to see if there are any errors and get them fixed as soon as you can.

4. Your website is just to slow – I give up!

People are impatient, especially when they are using the internet. If it takes too long for your web pages to download and display correctly most people will simply give up and go to another page. In addition, website page speed is a ranking signal for Google. Make sure that all pages of your website load quickly.

5. Your website content is outdated

Do you have a blog on your website or a ‘news’ page? When was the last item posted? Is it still news or is it now history?

Unless you can commit to producing a regular flow on content on you blog and news pages you would be better off taking those pages off your website. If you cannot maintain a blog, it can do more harm than good. Neither the search engines or web users want to visit or link to ‘abandoned websites’.

6. Your website has far too many ads

A website that contains too many ads often looks messy and unprofessional. People do not want to link to ads as this could infer that they are also recommending the products and services of the people advertising on your website. Website owners want to link to websites with content that will be of interest and value to their visitors.

7. The content of your website is unoriginal and boring

If your website only contains content that can be found elsewhere, it’s not likely that many people will want to link to your site. For example, there are more than 228 Million results on Google UK for the search term “how to train a dog”.

If your page is one of them then you must offer something special or different so that people link to your site and not to the other sites. What is the USP of your business? Does your web page content reflect this and make it clear why people should choose you?

Search engine optimisation requires some hard work. If you invest some time into optimising your website, you will get more website visitors, more customers, and more sales.

If you would like more information about our Professional SEO services please leave a comment below or use the contact form to get in touch.