Link building

 

What is link building?

     Link building is the process of creating hyperlinks to the site from an external site. Link building helps the users to navigate between the sites on the internet. Google search engine considers link building an important ranking factor and quality link-building is essential for your brand awareness. There are many ways for quality link building and varies from expert to expert. But there are few ground rules one should know before jumping into this field. While link building may be a difficult task, it is also essential for your Google ranking. 

Why is link building important?

     Google uses the E-A-T strategy for ranking the websites. Expert, Authoritative, and Trustworthy are the important pillars for Google to rank their websites. So it is important to master the art of quality link building for your site to stay ahead of its competitors. Many SEO spend major time in link building, but if your link is not from a quality authoritative site, then all your link building goes in vain. Good content is necessary for good link building but good content only is not enough. That’s just the first step. There’s a lot more to do for an effective link building process.

Link building strategies:

     We know that there are like a million ways to link building out on the internet. But we are not going to confuse you with them. To get your site to rank at the top, you need to follow a few strategies. These are the key strategies for anyone who wants to use link building for their site. Know that link building alone won’t help your page’s ranking. For more information check our Google ranking factors of 2020.

The key strategies are:

  1. Guest blogging
  2. Outreach
  3. Broken link building
  4. Backlinks
  5. Paid promotion with contents
  6. Link building with community
  7. Research and data
  8. List your site in trustworthy directories 

1. Guest blogging:

     For those who thought “guest posting” is outdated, jokes on you. Guest posting is still done by many sites worldwide to generate backlinks from authoritative sites. But make sure you write guest posts for your niche market and not just any random pages. Let’s say you own a gadgets review site and you write a guest post for a movie review site.

     Now in the eyes of Google, this post will look like spam, because your blog has nothing to do with that movie site. That’s why you should choose the best sites in your field and analyze them. If you are a new site, guest posting will be a great way to help you boost the site’s organic traffic. 

2. Outreach:

     If you are a new site and want some quality backlinks, the first thing you do is “outreach”. What is outreach?. It’s the process of asking some external site to link back to your site’s content. But here’s the thing. You necessarily need word content like blogs and articles. You just need something that they can link back to. Even a product, a business, or a personality would do. 

     Outreach will work better if you have “linkable assets”. A linkable asset can be a blog, post, video, or an article that people can link to. Linkable assets should also be a great piece of content so that the other websites will be willing to link them. You can use tools like ahrefs to check the other sites which link to the keywords that you use. The content explorer from ahrefs is a great tool for finding them. 

3. Broken link building:

      Another way to gain backlinks is by building the broken links on other sites. Let me explain it with an example. Imagining Wikipedia has content about SEO management and it has linked one of its keywords to another site. But the other site has expired or no longer in function. This link is called a broken link. 

     Now you have a site and have a linkable asset where you have a blog about SEO management. Now you can contact/email Wikipedia and tell them about their broken link and you can pitch your site’s link. If the content is relevant and credible, Wikipedia will give a backlink to your site. Now you have an authoritative backlink. You can use ahrefs’s broken link checker for the task. 

4. Backlinks:

     Backlinks are also called inbound links. Google investigates the number of backlinks your site must rank your website. The backlinks determine how authoritative and relevant your website’s content is. A backlink is a relevant link given by a trustworthy site in their content. Having several Backlinks by authoritative sites helps Google to understand your page better and know your site’s relevance. 

     Google considers backlinks as “votes” given by the site and the backlinks determine how relevant and credible the site is. The higher number of backlinks can generator higher organic traffic and ranking for your site. Google’s algorithm changes every few months and backlinks played a vital role in developing Google’s “PageRank”. Google has also confirmed that backlinks are one of the top 3 important factors in ranking factor.

5. Should you buy “paid links”?

     Google has made it clear that “paid links” breaches their guidelines but still more people opt for paid links. This is because it is easy to generate them from quality websites. But according to ahrefs experts, paid links have been proved effective but also has a risk factor for penalty. But why does Google object buying links when it is considered breaching their guidelines? Whats the reason behind it?

     Google considers links as “votes”. Since paying money for votes is unethical, you are bound for penalty. Instead of buying cheap quality paid links, you can create high quality content for backlinks. If you still have some paid backlinks you might as well get rid of them. Instead generate quality content and promote your content to get high quality links. This procedure is easy and risk free.

6. Link building with community:

     If your site deals with a local business, then it is good for you to join the community to outreach valuable links. You can be a part of your local community, thus it will be influential for your site. You can do any of the following for a strong community bonding:

  1. Help any local cause that benefits the business community. 
  2. Conduct local events and workshops to create a social cause with your brand awareness. 
  3. Donate for scholarship thus gaining peoples trust. 
  4. Join the local business association and be friends with them in the real world and boost your local economy. 
  5. Create jobs for your locals and internshgips for students. 

     These community relationships are not just for links. By creating a strong relationship, you boost your company’s revenue and your partnering company as well. These bonding can give you some quality links which boosts your site’s ranking. 

7. Research and data:

     By providing research and data you become the authority of the content and can get quality links for your site. Know for a fact that data helps your blog or article to stand out. If you opt for the same research and data, you end up getting less links because people know about those statistics because there are already many links out there. But if you do a new research and give those data in a blog, you will get many link in a quick time. 

     You can do things like research papers, case studies, comparison to get your data and facts. First select the topic because the content is everything. By deciding your niche market you can easily get the datas. Know that new and fresh content are always in demand and make sure your datas are authentic. Some researches are done mainly for quality backlinks. But keeping the audience in mind and providing the content they need, you gain more links for your site. 

8. List your site in trustworthy directories

   Not all directories are bad. The online directories is of no useful to Google if they have no information to put. Thats why you need to go for trustworthy directories is you want your site to remain on the internet. Dont think that directory is only for link building. Rather if you are keen on producing quality content for your visitors, your directory will always be listed by Google. 

     Know your brand’s niche and enroll in the specific directory. And listing your websites in such directories will boost your site’s ranking. Some directory gives you low quality backlinks but are still worth considering for a long run. It is not possible for any site to gain just quality backlinks. Sometimes low quality backlinks helps too. 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.