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We all know how important link building is. It is not the funnest part of SEO, but it is a prominent cornerstone. Despite all its significance, building links is not easy. 65% of digital marketers state that link building is the hardest part of SEO, according to SEO Tribunal. This is why most people struggle to build needle-moving links to their site, regardless of the strategies they employ.
Link Building is a gradual process. It doesn’t just happen overnight. It is also reliant on several strategies that vary in terms of efficiency, expertise, and required resources. For starters, the quality and authority of the pages where you build links play a key role in determining how high you’ll rank in search engine results.
If you are new to link building, or you are just looking to grow your site, you most likely need some insights on what you should do, shouldn’t do, and what strategies are available. If Link Building is done right, it can help your rankings. Done wrong, and your rankings disappear.
In this post, we will go over some of the most successful strategies for link building from professional marketers. They’re especially helpful for busy marketers who have a lot on their plate and want to stay mindful of their rankings. They are Link building strategies that you’ll be able to use with ease.
Guest blogging is one of the oldest tactics in the link building book.
But how exactly does it work? You write an article for another website in your niche, link to yourself from that article, and publish it on their website. It’s as simple as that.
In a survey by Semrush, an overwhelming majority of specialists consider Guest blogging to be one of the most effective ways to grow a backlink portfolio. However, there is an old way of mass guest blogging just for links, and that is long dead. You don’t want to post an article on a website that’s not even relevant to your niche and has zero authority, just because you want to get a backlink. That style of guest blogging won’t cut it. Search engines are getting smarter, more advanced and can tell when you’re not guest blogging to add value.
To reap the rewards of guest blogging, you need to be strategic and authentic in your content creation. Make sure that you’re creating unique content for the other site, and ensure that the site is relevant to your niche, authoritative, and attracts your audience.
Guest blogging is a sure way of building links. Just find the right site, create quality content, and join up with the 90% of marketers who utilize content pieces as their main way to generate more backlinks, according to Userp.
Not all link building tactics are outreach-based. It’s very possible to build links by merely changing content to fit in appropriate places such as infographic directories and video-sharing sites.
First of all, your content needs to be in an appropriate format for you to be able to do that. This is where content repurposing comes in.
For instance, let’s say you have an amazing interactive infographic that you’ve poured your heart and soul into creating, and you wish it had a wider audience. Well, why not transform that content into a different format, such as an infographic or video? Then can submit that content to infographic or video-sharing websites.
Using infographics results in the exposure of your content to a broader audience. This is good because more eyeballs equal more links. Articles with infographics actually earn 178 percent more links than those without, according to Venngage.
Every industry has important key players, and taking steps to grow influence will encourage backlinks from other websites. Posting and sharing relevant case studies are helpful tools in this strategy.
Cultivating influence requires a company or brand to provide value to other members of their industry. Once a brand has established an authoritative or expert image amongst its community, it’s more likely that others will cite or link out to their content.
Utilizing influencers is another way to increase brand awareness. The right influencers provide a bridge to new traffic, and this introduction can lead to conversions and future backlinking.
Building a relationship with the webmaster and decision-making figures of a website is not as easy as it sounds, but it is key for this tactic to work and the results are often worth the effort on both sides. As Join notes, the influencer will gain more credibility because they included some references, and you will become the valuable reference that they made.
So how do you know the right influencers to approach? To find strong potential leads for both industry influencers and guest blogging sites that have proven themselves in your niche, a keyword search will prove pivotal.
Being inactive on social media is doing your brand website a disservice. Social media has revolutionized the marketing space and can be a welcome boon for your link building plan and guest posting efforts.
In an industry survey by Link-assistant on how SEO professionals build links, the results showed that most specialists use social media for link building, with 88% using links on social media profiles and 81% sharing their social media content.
After creating your website, become active on social media by sharing new posts, images, and updates. There’s no better way of helping your fans find what they want to see than by sharing it on multiple social media platforms.
Social media does not require any form of experience, just know your audience better, and you can easily boost engagement. Consequently, you’ll expose your brand and site to more people who could share your best posts with their target audience.
The exposure that social media creates is unmatched. Creating a website without accompanying it with a Social media page is equivalent to not creating it at all.
Most people spend time and money to get new links, but they don’t track their status. This comes as a result of commitment or just laziness.
Without tracking your backlinks, how will you know whether to build more or pause? You may have over 1000 links pointing to your web pages right now, but when you check it after two or three months, some of the links might be gone.
You don’t have control over the blogs and authority sites that link to you. The site owners can easily remove your link from their post or resource page without notifying you.
This is why it’s important to monitor your backlinks and make sure that you maintain steady levels of traffic and higher rankings.
As the internet gradually expands in reach and value, the conventional methods of link building and SEO are progressively transforming along with it.
Indeed, it has become a priority for any business today to learn the subtleties around creating and executing a high-quality campaign if they hope to thrive in an increasingly competitive online sphere.
A concrete definition of link building eludes most businesses the first time they venture into the field. To set things straight, link building is the process by which a business retrieves hyperlinks from other websites in a bid to improve the quality of their own backlinks and increase user engagement.
Usually, an internet user clicks on a hyperlink to easily from one website to another in search of more information, or information related to the content that they are currently consuming.
Before understanding the vital connection between link building and SEO, you first need to go back to the basics. How does one create a link|? And how do search engines interpret them in text?
To do this, we will begin by first studying the structure of a hyperlink.
That being said, link vital for search engines because:
When assigning an index to the page, the search engine will then analyze the text, as well as the quantity and quality of links that are directed to an external website.
As a rule of thumb, having a large number of quality websites linking back to you means an improved ranking for your website. And a greater ranking translates to more exposure for your business.
As a matter of fact, linking was the predominant factor that Google used in the 1990s to proliferate their influence as the apex search engine in the late 90s. The idea around this business model was to calculate the quality of a particular page depending on the volume of links directed towards it. The metric proved to be a success, and it was adopted as one of the primary signals used by Google to determine a page’s ranking.
Unfortunately, due to unscrupulous link building methods used by some online companies to improve their ranking, Google opted to regularly release Penguin updates to penalize any companies that relied on these underhand tactics to top rankings. When choosing to use a service for link building its important to evaluate what type of links are going to be built.
That being said, it is widely accepted that if all factors remain constant among website pages, links are the final feature used by Google to determine page rankings.
Despite the lucrativeness around link building, not all links are deemed of high quality. In response, search engines created the option of non-follow as shown below:
<a href=”http: //www.concept.com”
rel=”nofollow”>Example</a>
The addition of non-follow by websites is used to tell Google not to include certain links while calculating their page ranking. It is an effective method used to discredit certain links that might tarnish the ranking and reputation of a particular business and its website.
One of the primary reasons why a website adopts non-follow is when it does not have complete control over the websites that are directing their links back to them. This can be in cases such as:
In such scenarios, users have the freedom to add links. And because of the high volume of forums and blogs on the internet, it is impractical to determine each and every link and determine its authenticity.
Hence, the non-follow attribute is employed to deter any spammy links from being considered in Google’s algorithmic ranking. Only familiar links affiliated with the company will be whitelisted.
As we mentioned earlier, link building is extremely important when it comes to search ranking. That being said, here are the other added advantages of link building:
Conventionally, link building requires a business to reach out to relevant blogs and websites pertaining to their industry.
Referral traffic is a great way to boost engagement with new clients. A good link, especially one associated with a high-quality website is surefire to increase interactions with potential clients and advertise your services.
Not only is link building essential for organic traffic proliferation, but also plays an important role in enhancing your brand. When your business is associated with trusted and professional websites online, it is deemed reliable by your target audience, and thus translating to more engagements.
ClickSlice is an agency, where you can find the best SEO services in london. We specialise in boosting the search engine rankings of company websites. We take an individualistic approach to SEO and work with businesses to develop a plan that works best for their specific situation.
For more information on how we transform businesses through the power of organic internet traffic, contact ClickSlice today on 020 3287 3638 or email us at hello@clickslice.co.uk.
We all know just how important backlinks are to an SEO campaign. What remains unclear though is just how many backlinks you need to have on your website.
Today, we’ll be seeking to answer the age-old question of quality vs. quantity. To some degree, both these options offer valid reasons as to why you need to back them.
However, for the sake of clarity, we’ll be imploring further into the topic in today’s discussion.
Backlinks are essentially the hyperlinks from your site to other sites. If you happen to be an authority in your industry, then, it’s not uncommon to find websites linking to yours for the sake of credibility.
Those who are renowned for achievements in their industry are oft-referenced in articles by others. The more backlinks you receive, the better your odds of registering increased traffic and seeing a boost in search engine rankings.
Search engines love backlinks since they serve as an indication that other people love your website. Aware of this stance, there are some unscrupulous entrepreneurs who seek to use underhand methods to rank highly.
Such back hat practices usually involve the payment of money for links to your website across various other sites. While this may see you gain some ground over your competition, in the long term, Google and other search engines are bound to discover your exploits. This usually happens because when backlinks are purchased, some emphasis is usually placed on the quantity aspect. The poor sources where your links originate from usually sound the warning bells for Google to respond.
To avoid getting penalised by Google, try steering away from such link schemes. In the worst case scenario, your website may be de-indexed. When this happens, search engines may choose not to display your website completely in search results.
Age plays a key role in determining just how many backlinks you need.
New websites typically little link building activity. Instead, most of the work needs to go into building branded links. If you’re working on local SEO, you need to put more emphasis on developing your social profiles, local citations and branded web 2.0s.
Ideally, you need to wait at least a month building your social profiles and setting up content for your site. Once the groundwork is done, it easy for you to justify just why you’re doing link building.
There’s some wiggle room for you to flex here. You can come up with as many links as you’d wish in this scenario. Having said that, it’s best to wait for a while for the content you post to simmer. Once sufficient traffic is recorded, you can get back to building backlinks. A good waiting period is about a week’s time.
You can play with your options on such websites. The fact that you can come up with as many backlinks as you want however doesn’t mean that you can compromise on the quality.
Setting backlink targets is not the most prudent thing. The best ways to go about is to build steadily and naturally go into building links.
Rather than being an instantaneous activity, link building needs to happen on a consistent basis. As an ongoing process, it doesn’t make sense to include targets and deadlines into the mix. A steady development is the only sure fire way for you to have an edge over your competition.
You should not stop pursuing your SEO targets even once you manage to break into the first page of search results, monthly link building services are offered by multiple companies for a reason.. its an ongoing task and is not a one off thing.
Many people make the mistake of focusing on the number of backlinks instead of quality. 1 high-quality backlink can be just as effective as 100 low-quality backlinks. As such, it’s not a pure numbers game.
You need to strike a perfect balance between the number of backlinks you generate and their quality. If you’re unsure how to do this, you need to ensure that the backlinks you create conform to at least half of these qualities:
You require fewer backlinks if you’ve done due diligence and properly optimised your website. If you have a poorly optimised site, the odds are that the backlinks you share will have zero effect on your audience. This is because you don’t have grounds for prospects to trust your website and regard you as an authority in your field.
Some recommended optimisation steps are:
As you look into your competition, be sure to take note of how many links are pointing to each of their pages on search engine results. While at it, be sure to ignore the numbers from the webpage containing the most backlinks and the webpage with least number of backlinks.
Once you have the numbers right, ensure that you develop high-quality content (whitepapers, infographics, blog posts, and landing pages). Providing in-depth coverage about your industry is likely going to put you in good books with your audience.
With the content sorted out, it’s necessary to come up with smart sharing initiatives, not just to your audience, but also to other industry titans. Striking a rapport with some of the top brass in your field may be a masterstroke on your part since you’ll be able to promote your business on a person-to-person basis.
Directory listings are basically niche/general directories. Their main purpose is to function as an online phonebook for the storage of important information like NAP data (name, address, and phone number), map listing, and website address.
Notably, some directory listings are customised to allow you to share photos of your business, the hours of operation, and other valid data.
It’s also worth documenting that there are various other directory listing types out there which are dependent on how long you’d like your listing to remain active.
You have the option of having your business permanently listed in the directory listing, or over a short period like 1 year. Thanks to the options available in the market, you can choose to use directory listings free of charge or part with a small fee. ClickDo offers a local citation service which will get your business listed on the top 100 directories in the UK, we’ve personally used this service ourselves and highly recommend it to any local business owner in the UK.
Having pointed this out, the onus is therefore on your to ensure that your business is listed on at least a couple of directory listing on the web. By doing so, you’ll be helping your business take that next leap forward.
If you want to learn the ropes on directory listings, there’s a couple of websites that you can’t ignore.
These 10 directory listings serve as a great example of the options in the market. Acquainting yourself with them will help you comprehend the nature of directory listings and delve further into the field.
All the directories are structured differently. As you sample each of them, you may find yourself ranking higher in search engines and build trust with your clientele.
That said, it’s of the essence to comprehend that not all directory listings are created equal. Some of them can give you an edge over the rest. As such, it’s important that you carefully evaluate the nature of your business before zoning in on one.
The one trait you need to check out in when reviewing the quality of directory is whether the directory is monitored by a human, or if it has an open submission.
Human monitoring usually has an edge over open submission because there’s some cross-checking of submitted content. To stand out, you want to avoid having your information paired up with plenty of other spam listings.
As a rule of thumb, it’s important to stay away from directories that have a keyword anchor text, directories containing the text “add your link” or “suggest a site”, and low domain authorities.
The more accessible your business is online, the more likely people will be exposed to your product offering. As a consequence of this, you’re likely to realise that more people will be making utility of your services and willing to buy the items you’re selling. Brand Development plays a key role in your marketing strategy
On the flip side, if people are unable to locate your website or track it down over the web, there’s a very low chance that you’ll be able to unlock new clients.
Importantly, directory listings also serve as great tools to reach out to specific audiences and capture their imaginations. Who doesn’t want that?
With directory listings, you can choose to concentrate your efforts on a specific state, town, city, or zip code. Alternatively, you can decide to go big and advertise your products and services internationally. To get the most of your efforts, tools like Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Yellow Pages, and Yelp Advertising, are recommended.
Using these tools, you’ll be able to target specific prospects. Some of these platforms have mass appeal among entrepreneurs due to the fact that they offer free advertising capabilities.
Directory listings and SEO are a match made in heaven. Because listings get plenty of hits, it’s easy for businesses to rank higher on search engines. The backlinks from online directories are also high quality since they originate from recognised sources.
Having your business on the lips of everyone is no mean feat. For this to happen, you need to put the word out there in a number of listing directories, social platforms, review sites, and search engines.
The net result? Enhanced odds of customers finding your products and services on the web. Truthfully, there are hundreds of directory listings out there, this means that it may take an eternity for you to go solo. As such, we recommend hiring the services of an established company like ClickSlice to help you with your efforts.
Interestingly, you can have your business listed on a number of search engines, directories, review sites, and social platforms at no charge.
Before you commit to having your information displayed on such platforms, we advise that you first work on bolstering your profile. Once that is done, you’ll find it easy to make it to the top of search lists when people are seeking specific services and products.
A well-crafted strategy can effectively help you avoid annoying ad pop-ups and keep competitors looking for a slice of your business at bay.
If you want to have your business listed, you can do so for free. Since there’s a greater risk of getting things wrong with this approach, you need to carefully scan the information you provide to weed out the errors. Having a single dashboard from where you can review all the listings you’ve created is also recommended because it facilitates easy management.
Embracing a DIY approach sometimes leaves you vulnerable. In a bid to come up with an excel spreadsheet that lists out all the usernames and passwords of the various search engines, social media platforms, review sites and directories that you’ve come up with, you may find that the information is not accurate.
Having a single dashboard is a safer option because you can keep track of all the changes you make along the way without necessarily having to constantly perform password resets.
If you’ve dabbled in the world of Search Engine Optimisation, there’s a fairly good chance that you’ve encountered the term “backlink” at least once.
For those new to the SEO scene, it’s important for us to demystify what backlinks are and just essential they are.
In the current setup of SEO, backlinks play a pivotal role. With that in mind, we’ll invest some time trying to fully elaborate just what backlinks are why you need to embrace them in your marketing strategy. As we provide this in-depth analysis, we’ll be sure to mention a couple of pointers on what you can do to help gain them without going against the rules of play defined by search engine algorithms.
Backlinks refer to a link found on another website that directs visitors back to yours.
In a way, you can view backlinks as the resultant product from link building. So, what exactly is link building? Well, this refers to the process of getting hyperlinks from other websites to your own landing page.
A hyperlink (in simple terms known as a link), describes the way users are able to navigate the various pages on the web. Since search engines use links when crawling through the web, it’s important to come up with ways in which you can assist the algorithm to find a connection between your platform and others.
When it comes to building links, the difficulty is of varying degrees. That said, many analysts in the world of SEO tend to agree that link building is one of the most complex aspects of the job. Since many SEO experts invest heavily in devising ways of doing link building just right, it’s quite important to master the very art of developing high-quality links. Once you’re able to master this art down to a tee, then you can stand tall against the competition.
Since backlinks usually involve outreach to other relevant websites and blogs in your industry, there’s a fairly good chance you can establish a good rapport as you go about your business.
Having such partnerships with key influencers in your trade can lead to bolster your brand’s image. This means that backlinks are a valuable business strategy since it creates unpretentious believers and evangelists for your enterprise.
Already, we’ve referenced just important backlinking can help improve your search engine rankings. What we’ve not shared is that backlinking can also help improve the traffic to your website.
While being exposed to a large audience is a fantastic strategy, there’s also plenty of benefits to be found in being exposed to a smaller community of passionate supporters.
In essence, striking the right cords that resonate with keen supporters of a particular blog is where you should launch every backlinking campaign. Then, you can seek to grow further outwards.
Given just how important backlinks are in determining how your website performs in search results, it’s necessary to come up with a firm backlink foundation.
It’s worth noting that getting backlinks is often a lengthy and mind-numbing process. However, to save time you can can outsource the link building process to a dedicated link service like Linkplicity, who are known for delivering high quality backlinks across a wide spectrum of niches.
Thankfully, there are numerous ways for you to get backlinks if you would rather do it in house, all of which are helpful in building your website’s backlink portfolio.
Having your enterprise listed in online and local directories can benefit your cause with a strong backlink, despite the fact that they may be nofollow backlinks.
Despite this, having your business in directories like Yellow Pages, Yelp, and Four Square makes it relatively easy for prospects to find your website, check out the reviews and decide whether you’re the best option to handle their issues.
Notably, Google’s My Business pages give users the ability to have their businesses and website on Google Maps. This can massively help you connect with clients looking for your services. Should you decide to take this option, make sure that you’re listed with the correct name, phone number, and address unfailingly all through the online directory listings.
This has quickly gained prominence as one of the best ways for businesses to generate high-quality follow backlinks. Guest blogging on other websites within your niche usually helps build your brand reputation.
While it’s relatively more time consuming than the other options highlighted, it’s still regarded as the best way for enterprises to come up with high-quality backlinks. For you to start off as a guest blogger, you need to look up quality sites within your trade and discover which ones give you the freedom to guest blog.
After you note them down, you’ll need to make sure that the content you develop conforms to the provided guidelines and send it over to them for review. Before you dispatch it, ensure that you include a link back to your website somewhere in the copy. This is usually the key premise of guest blogging.
While it’s true that many websites aren’t usually interested in a guest blog, you’re sure to find a couple that wants to get such services, especially when they keep in mind the free content they’ll be receiving thanks to the backlinks.
This tactic can be quite rewarding to your website. You can register backlinks to your website by checking out a good number of authoritative websites, review the blogs shared and leave comments on them expressing just how wonderful the content was. Right before you leave, ensure that you pose a thoughtful question. While at it, also don’t forget to link back to your website.
While there’s a high chance these are likely to be nofollow backlinks, they can still help build a good rapport with influential companies and websites in your industry.
All the same, you need to ensure that you only comment on suitable and pertinent posts for your industry. Else, the comments you leave may be regarded as spammy and you may find your comment barred by the website administrator.
Having listed out a couple of backlinking manoeuvres to gain strong inbound links for your website, you should not forget that you still have to put emphasis on devising content that will need backlinks itself. This process is no different than the content you discover to comment and share a link of your platform. If you pen amazing content that’s beneficial to members of your industry, the odds are that they’ll start to link to it all on their own.
If you require help with any of the processes stated above then feel free to get in touch with our SEO Consultant Joshua George and he will be more than happy to offer some solid consulting services to help you get things in order.
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