Link building is a key component of search engine optimization. The top results on Google’s first SERP have almost four times more backlinks than the rest. Learn how to boost your website’s authority and create an effective link building strategy with BESTSEO.
Source: Moz
Determine Your Pages
Consider adding backlinks to relevant and impactful content, such as your FAQ page, about page, and product or service pages. A competitor analysis can help you assess how to better fill the link gap within your link building strategy. You may also review your website analytics to determine which pages receive the most traffic.
High page engagement signals quality content. By creating unique content, you may begin to earn links from authoritative sites. Remember to include a strong call to action on each page. This will help generate organic conversions and ensure readers know where they should be going next.
Utilize Social Media
Focus on engaging content that keeps visitors on your site and drives conversions. Find links that are trustworthy and provide readers with valuable resources.
Over 65% of web pages have zero backlinks. If you fit in this category, consider building backlinks on your brand’s social media account. Link to your website in the bio or send followers to specific pages linked in your posts. By utilizing social media in your link building strategy, you also have the opportunity to directly communicate with your audience and increase your brand awareness.
Identify Broken Links
Determine if your site has broken links as they can hurt SEO rank. You can use a tool such as Check My Links to identify if your site needs to repair broken links or redirect links to a similar page. Similarly, you can reach out to webmasters and bloggers if you notice that one of their pages containing your link is broken.
Create Backlink Opportunities
In order to gain backlinks for an effective link building strategy, you should gather information and content that’s attractive to others. Start by looking at your content and identifying what is most valuable. If you’re coming up short, spend time creating valuable material before you start reaching out to gain backlinks.
Long-form content tends to get more backlinks—approximately 77% more. Get your content team to focus on creating infographics, informational blog posts, guides, and other pieces that are hearty and relevant.
Another great way to attract a “yes” from your link building SEO strategy is to provide some type of unique quiz, tool, or other experience that’s relevant to your audience. It can be something as straightforward as showing where users can find a niche item that’s important to them or a quick way to calculate their savings using your product. These types of “one-of-a-kind” experiences bring value to your visitors and, in turn, to those visiting the sites from which you’re seeking links.
Reach Out to Build Links
Once you know which pages you want to promote, what you have to promote, and who you want to promote them to, it’s time to start reaching out to enact your link building strategy. All of the sites on your contact list should have high domain authority. That means Google ranks those pages as highly reputable. You should also consider looking for pages with high traffic. Any site with a good reputation in Google’s eyes will benefit your link building SEO.
When reaching out, you need to build the case for why it’s valuable for the site owners to link to your site specifically. Perhaps you can write a blog post that would bring them more page views or increase shares on their social media. Maybe it’s some proprietary content on your website that you don’t mind sharing with other sites. Whatever it is, you need to know how you can provide them value and do your research beforehand.
Make the backlink opportunity more attractive by offering to include backlinks to their site as well. Even if you don’t have a wildly impressive SEO rank, smart sites know any additional credible backlinks can help their search engine rank. Plus, reciprocal backlinking is found in almost 44% of all top-ranking pages on Google.
Source: Alexa
Link Building Best Practices
As you implement your link building strategy, there are a few best practices to keep in mind.
- Get a “do follow” link. When asking for backlinks, be sure you specify you want a “do follow” tag on the link. This is a tag that lets Google know the site wants to pass on its domain authority to you. If they use a “no follow” tag, you won’t get the boost that’s key to your link building.
- Pay attention to all your content. Adding quality backlinks to your site will improve your search engine ranking, but it will only take you so far. Your site’s content quality also affects your rank. Plus, when you’re asking for backlinks, site owners will likely look at more than just the page you sent. So with both Google and your potential backlink partner paying attention, you, too, need to give time and attention to your site’s content overall.
- Give suggestions on anchor text. Anchor text matters in your link building strategy. While you have complete control over what anchor text you use for links on your site, when asking for a backlink, you don’t have as much say. To increase the link’s impact, the related anchor text should say something relevant about the link’s content. Give some soft suggestions to help guide your contact, making less work for them and increasing the chances you have quality anchor text for your backlink.
- Don’t pay for your links. As it became known that backlinks helped with SEO, some site owners decided to take the “quick fix” route by paying for backlinks to highly ranked sites. However, Google caught on quickly and started penalizing sites that purchased links as their link building strategy. Don’t be tempted to fall into this trap, as it could end up hurting rather than helping your rank.
- Avoid stuffing links on a page. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, with link building SEO, it’s having too many links on one page. Just as Google can spot paid links, its crawlers don’t like to see multiple links stuffed in one area or one page. For the best link building strategy, spread out your backlinks to showcase all your high-value pages.
Start Investing in Your Link Building Strategy Today
For a quality link building strategy, investing time and effort are key to success. In the long run, that effort pays off in many ways by increasing your site’s exposure, boosting your traffic, and expanding your opportunities to monetize. It’s no secret that this link building SEO strategy works.
If you’re not sure how to get started or don’t have the resources needed to get a link building strategy, you can look into organizations that specialize in link building and other valuable SEO strategies. Regardless of how you start your link building strategy, what matters is that you do.