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Link building is an effective SEO strategy with significant history online. Before Google became the massive force it is today, link-building existed. However, it was used to drive visitors to your website rather than improve your search engine results.
Today, link-building remains an integral part of any successful SEO strategy. Let’s discuss the importance of link-building and the techniques you can use to increase your online presence.
What Is Link Building?
Link building is acquiring backlinks from other websites to your own. Backlinks can be pointed to a specific page on your website, from blog posts, product pages, press releases, and other online sources. In terms of search engine optimization, the process aims to increase the number of quality inbound links to a webpage, which increases the search engine rankings of that page.
Ultimately, link building should focus on websites relevant to your business and your niche industry. Links that come from irrelevant or spammy websites will negatively impact your website, even penalizing you in a way that negatively impacts your search engine rankings.
Why Are Backlinks Essential to Effective SEO Strategies?
Backlinks are essential to an effective SEO strategy. They help your business gain authority online. Earning a backlink from a trusted source sends a message to potential customers that your business can be trusted. You can think of backlinks as a qualified business referral.
Regarding your search engine rankings, backlinks increase your website authority in the eyes of the most dominant search engines. The more qualified the backlinks are, the more trustworthy your website appears. Since Google sets high standards for businesses to rank on the first page of the search engine results, qualified backlinks give your business a leg up on your competition.
A quality backlink strategy can increase organic traffic to your website. This helps your search engine rankings, bringing you more attention online and initiating more unpaid clicks. How can you create a link-building strategy that maximizes SEO results?
Let’s discuss:
Creating an Effective Link-Building Strategy One Link at a Time
As with anything good, earning quality backlinks will take time and effort. First, you’ll need to look at your current backlink profile. Then, you can analyze the quality of links your website earns and identify new sources to target. Your team can use simple strategies, such as improving your on-page content to contain relevant, valuable information. However, you should hire a professional digital marketing agency to handle more complex strategies.
When it comes to link building, it’s not the number of links you have that matters. Google looks at the value of the links over the quantity. For example, your website will rank higher with three or four links on pages that generate thousands of views over several links on websites that bring in only a few views. Here are some strategies to improve your backlink profile and increase your search engine rankings.
- Create Quality Content
Creating valuable, relevant content is the most crucial step in improving your backlink profile. Your success depends on the quality of the content shared to help your brand build long-lasting relationships. If you offer quality to buzzworthy websites, they’ll be more willing to feature your brand in the future. This content is also necessary to rank at the top of the search engine results. Additionally, your content needs to engage and resonate with audiences to keep their interest. This is the only way backlinks will drive traffic to your website. Remember, quality over quantity wins every time with link building.
- Analyze Your Competitors
If you want to outrank your competitors, it’s best to analyze their current success and build upon those strategies. You can use your competitors to create a quality backlink profile in two ways. First, take advantage of natural transitions that lead to broken links. As businesses update their blogs or websites, you’ll typically find defunct pages that can be used to build your own strategy. Browse through your competitor’s websites to find opportunities to deliver updated, detailed content to authoritative websites. Create new pages with engaging, valuable content these businesses can use in place of the defunct pages.
A second strategy you can use is finding content that other websites are already linking to and then creating quality content on the same topic. You can promote this content to high-traffic websites in your market, encouraging them to use your new, valuable content instead of your competitors. Talk to your digital marketing agency about initiating competitor research. They will use backlink tools to compare and analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles and identify areas for you to improve. Since SEO professionals have tools that manage multiple link-building campaigns simultaneously, they can save you a lot of time and work.
- Invest Your Time in Guest Posting
Guest posting has been a popular link-building strategy for years. It continues to bring success to businesses throughout many industries. Identify popular, authoritative websites in your niche and discuss the opportunity for guest posting. Use online tools to review potential guest posting opportunities and compare traffic, authority scores, and organic search results. When creating guest posts, make sure you don’t create spammy content. You should only reference your website when relevant, no more than once in shorter and twice in longer posts. Guest content should focus on being engaging, accurate, and valuable to your readers. Since you’ll likely be writing to a new audience, take the time to browse through other content to identify the writing style that fits the website.
- Look for Unlinked Brand Mentions
A simple strategy is searching for brands that mention you but haven’t linked to your website or social media profiles. Digital agencies can use a brand monitoring tool to keep track of social media mentions. You can also find mentions by doing a Google search. If you find unlinked brand mentions, reach out to the site’s owners and ask them to link to your preferred website page. - Reclaim Broken Backlinks
If you have previously invested in link building, either independently or with a professional agency, look for any broken links that used to point to your website. Backlink audit tools can be beneficial with these strategies. Once you find broken links, figure out why they are broken. Have you updated your website? Has the referral domain made changes that resulted in a broken link? Reach out to the website owner and ask them to update the broken link. Since they don’t want to have broken links on their site, they will thank you for reaching out. You can even offer updated content as an opportunity to reach new visitors.
- Become a Guest on Interviews and Podcasts
Video and audio content is much more popular today. Like guest posting, participating in online interviews and podcasts is a great link-building strategy. These platforms allow you to reach a new audience, increase brand awareness, and earn backlinks.The goal of all businesses should be to establish themselves as an expert in their industry. Online interviews and podcasts are a great way to do this. Plus, they’re usually posted on websites, YouTube, and other social media platforms with brand mentions, bios, descriptions, and backlinks. Although this method may be more time-consuming, and you’ll need to pitch yourself as an expert, this strategy brings significant results. By pitching to the right websites and podcasts, you can create a snowball effect that requests your appearance on several other sites, building your backlink profile even further.
- Take Advantage of Digital PR
Well, we certainly didn’t save the most straightforward strategy for last. Digital PR is an incredibly valuable link-building strategy but is also the most complex. Digital PR uses positive news stories to highlight your brand, founders, and products and services in the media. Finding success in digital PR undoubtedly requires professional help.Press releases can be written about various topics. Maybe you’re hosting a significant event or developing a new product. Your digital marketing agency can identify many press release topics related to your brand. They also have the resources and connections to collaborate with media websites and journalists that put out content in your market.
Some of these strategies come with an additional cost. For example, some sites may require you to pay for a subscription before posting, or it might be best to post to a site that requires payment for PR. All press releases should include backlinks to the most relevant webpage on your site. Once you build quality relationships with journalists and other media professionals, you can establish long-term results from this strategy.
Increase Search Engine Rankings with an Improved Backlink Profile
Improving your backlink profile is an excellent way to climb search engine rankings—the more authoritative and trustworthy the referral domains, the better. Focus on earning backlinks from reputable websites to achieve the best results. Work with a digital marketing agency experienced in link-building strategies, and you will be one step closer to your SEO goals.
Keyword Performance is a team of SEO experts who can help with your link building efforts. Get in touch today to learn more!
