Unless you work in the marketing field, you probably do not fully appreciate the amount of work that goes into creating traffic and visibility for a website. There are several complicated algorithms to figure out and numerous search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to implement to guarantee that your target customers know of your existence. One of the most common SEO strategies is link building, which refers to finding the most suitable websites where you can share your own web site’s link to gain a wider viewership and, hopefully, more engagement. When building links, the challenge lies in making it seem organic and unforced. Otherwise, your link can lose its value and search engines will have your website blacklisted
According to the type of business you are running, in each industry, there are a handful of elite websites that everyone wants to be associated with because of the amplified returns. That is why building links to these powerful websites are labeled as high-quality linking. Understandably, not all businesses will have access to high-quality linking opportunities, however, mastering your link building techniques will eventually get you there.
To help you do just that, here are some link building techniques that are proven effective.
Use Guest Blogging
If you want your link building strategy to be natural and more effective, you have to find relevant blogging websites to share links back to yours. However, it is important to note that not all blogs are created equal, there are a few criteria that you have to make sure before getting involved. First and foremost, you have to make sure that the blogging website you are targeting is legitimate and known for sharing quality content.
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Secondly, you need to research the demographics of the blog and confirm that they are in line with your target audience. Lastly, to ensure the success of your backlink strategy, you need to conduct thorough research, and study the feedback and reviews the users shared about their experience with this blog. You can do so by visiting relevant online forums and reading the blog’s own reviews section. Once the blog you are considering checks out on these fronts, you can go ahead and reach out to its owner to start sharing your posts. Shortly after, you will be able to see the effects on your own website’s ranking on search engine results pages resulting from the increased traffic.
Fortify Your Own Brand
As mentioned above, the most important characteristic of successful link building is for it to happen in a natural manner, and the best way to do so is to fortify your own brand. Strong brands that have a unique voice and share important content across its social media platforms, rarely have to direct any effort towards link building. Instead of focusing on beating their rivals in the game that they are all playing, they create a whole new one for themselves. Even if yours is still a small brand that doesn’t have much weight in the market, if you focus on creating a distinctive image, you will slowly but surely get to the point where your link is being shared left and right without you even intending it. A quality market research exercise will serve you greatly in singling out your brand, as you’ll be able to better understand what your target audience is looking for and you will be able to identify the kind of content that drives the highest engagement.
Take Cues from Your Competitors
While it is important to focus on building your brand and doing your own thing, it should go hand in hand with learning more about what your competitors are doing. Keeping yourself informed about the link building techniques and how you can benefit from updating your own will increase the efficacy of your techniques. Find your main competitors and start doing some analytical work to try to understand why they are ranking high on the search engine results’ pages. Study their content and try to find their hero keywords, then using the aid of available optimization tools you will be able to find out what their ‘secret sauce’ is. It could be a huge number of backlinks or a strong domain name, or maybe sponsored content is what is making their websites mainstream. Although this kind of information is easy to collect through eligible means, not everyone will spend the time to look at what their competitors are doing even though it is a straightforward and relatively easy way to advance your link building strategy.
Keep an Eye Out on Your Backlinks
Focusing on including your backlinks on multiple websites is one part of the equation, the other equally important one is to regularly go back and check which ones are still getting you traffic, and which ones aren’t. If you find out that some of the blogs you are working with are constantly removing your backlinks without giving you a heads up, then perhaps it is no longer worth it to work with them. This monitoring-based link building technique is as essential as all the others as it will ensure their validity and help you redirect your course if/when needed.
Give Attention to Blogs Similar to Yours
It might seem counterintuitive to share other blogs’ links to build yours. However, this technique is a rather common one known as building link love. The idea is to benefit from the fact that other bloggers and content creators are more likely to reciprocate and share your link if you initiated the same with theirs. Not only will this result in higher audience engagement, but it is also one of the easiest ways to build your network and will keep you in the clear when it comes to questioning the legitimacy of your link building strategies.
Link building can be a little confusing when you are new to the constantly-expanding world of digital marketing. However, when you focus on learning the basic rules and keeping track of the strategies that work versus those that have become obsolete, it will all start to make more sense. We strongly encourage you to use a mix of the above techniques if you want better and faster results.
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