The importance of having a good link-building strategy has never been more important than it is today. Whether you are a new business who is encountering link building for the first time or you are an established brand that needs help building high-quality links, this guide can help you to create the perfect link-building strategy to grow your audience online and help you rise in the ranks of Google.
Discover what link building is, how it can benefit your brand and how to build the right backlink strategy for your business below, all of which will bring you one step closer to that elusive first page on Google.
What is Link Building?
Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own site. A hyperlink, often referred to as simply a ‘link’, offers a way for users to navigate between pages online.
In terms of search engines, links are invaluable, allowing them to crawl the web and the pages on your site.
Although it may sound simple enough, link building is actually one of the hardest jobs for marketers and SEO experts alike, as the world of link building is constantly evolving. That being said, once you have mastered the basics, as long as you continue to put in both the time and effort, you can use link building to massively increase the volume of traffic to your website and, in turn, vastly improve your conversion rate.
Unfortunately, the majority of businesses do not have an effective link-building strategy, with many incorrectly believing that the key to success lies in simply creating as many links on external sites as possible. However, the key to successful link building actually lies in finding high-quality links that will impress Google.
As you are probably all too aware, getting on the first page of Google is the ultimate goal for most businesses, yet it can prove to be tricky to achieve. Enabling you to be seen as a trusted and reliable brand, link building can help you get one step closer to that elusive first page.
Keep reading to find out how you can create the perfect link-building strategy for your brand. Plus, why you need one in the first place.
Why do I Need a Link Building Strategy?
Now that you fully understand what link building is, you probably want to know why it is important for your business.
You may already be aware that link building can help boost your SEO ranking, but it also has many other advantages for your brand, including:
To build relationships
A more long-term benefit, the process of building links involves reaching out to other businesses within your niche, which can result in a sharing of information that helps both parties. For example, guest posting has surged in popularity in recent years, allowing you to create a buzz around your business and increase your site authority.
To increase referrals
High-domain links are known for driving traffic to your site and helping to improve your ranking but did you know that they can also directly help boost sales? When you are linked to a relevant and popular site, users are much more likely to make a purchase with you and remain loyal customers in the future.
To build brand awareness
Building a solid link-building strategy is also great for promoting your brand and the expertise of your company, and the products or services you provide. By aligning your content with trusted and reputable publishing sites, you can improve your authority within your niche and boost your overall brand awareness.
How Can I Build an Effective Backlink Strategy?
Creating a link-building strategy for your business is also known as building a backlink campaign. When creating your own backlink strategy, there are several different approaches that you can try but four main areas of focus that you cannot overlook. These are as follows:
1. Know your audience
As with any element of SEO, if you want to attract your target audience, you need to make sure that you know everything about them. Find out who they are, what are their likes and dislikes and, most importantly, how you can best reach and engage with them. This will help ensure that you include links from services and products that are directly relevant to your audience, improving their overall user experience and impressing Google at the same time.
2. Conduct keyword research
As well as choosing the right links, you also need to use the right keywords as this is how Google and other popular search engines identify which websites offer relevancy for a particular search.
For example, if someone is looking for “best link building strategies,” even if you offer this service, without using the right keywords, Google will not know this, and the searcher is likely to be directed towards one of your competitors.
Therefore, you need to conduct keyword research if you are serious about building your backlink strategy. Fortunately, there are a lot of free online tools to help you do this, including Google Ads Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and Google Search Console.
3. Find publishing sites
This task will be a lot easier once you have completed step one, knowing your audience, as this will enable you to choose publishing sites that your customers will find useful.
However, even if you know what sites you want to post on, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will accept you. To increase your chance of success, you may want to enlist the services of a blogger outreach team who can help you find high-authority domain sites that will benefit rather than hinder your link-building strategy and ensure you gain high-quality backlinks.
4. Focus on great content
The final step in your link-building efforts, once you have your link, keyword, and preferred publishing site, you now need to make sure you produce amazing content.
To create content that your audience will love to read and share, follow the below simple tips:
- Focus on relevancy. Your content needs to provide something that the target audience wants or needs.
- Ensure structure. Your content needs to be easy to consume with clear headings, subheadings, and tags.
- Provide quality. It goes without saying that your content needs to be of high quality if you want it to be successful. If writing is not your forte, find a content writer to produce content for you.
- Check for errors. Even simple spelling and grammatical errors can have a hugely detrimental effect on your link-building strategy, putting off both Google and users alike.
Conclusion
Always remember that the structure of link building is organic and, therefore, changes constantly. Although this may seem like a bad thing, meaning you have to do more work to achieve good backlinks, this can actually be beneficial for your business.
Think about it this way. Now that you know the importance of having a strong link-building strategy, plus how to build an effective one, you are already one step ahead of your competitors.
Still not sure you want to take the time to build an effective backlink strategy?
We will leave you with the below two eye-opening facts:
- Links impact search ranking more than any other factor
- Backlinks are one of Google’s top three ranking signals
Now, are you ready to take link building seriously?
