You have created a good brand that is in tune with consumers’ demands. Updated your website to make your target audience aware of the products and services you are providing. Created the necessary content to answer the common questions.
But you are not receiving many organic visitors. Nor do you rank high enough in the search engines. The issue may lie with your link-building strategies for SEO!
The quality of your content is important, but it does not translate into a higher rank in searches. You need to establish your authority in your field to outrank other sites with similar content. One way you can adopt to accomplish this is you need to earn links from other authoritative websites.
SEO and Link Building
SEO and link building go hand-in-hand. Google confirmed way back in 2016, that link building was one of the three most important ranking factors for SEO. Links and backlinks to and from trustworthy sites respectively will get your content higher ranks.
Subsequently, link-building strategies for SEO will help you to create a high-quality campaign to increase your online visibility.
So, what is a link?
Links are the internet’s version of currency. They are HTML hyperlinks that help connect one website to another. They act as votes deciding the popularity and thereby your relevance on the web.
Types of links
There are 3 types of links –
- An internal link is a link from one of your pages to another one of your pages.
- An external link is a link from one of your pages to somebody else’s page which could be their website or another resource online.
- And Inbound links (aka backlinks) are links from somebody else’s page coming into your page. These are the links that are most important for SEO as they are at the core of Google’s page rank algorithm.
What is link building?
The process of building one-way hyperlinks or backlinks from other websites to your own is called link building. The goal of this process is to improve your visibility for search engines.
To determine what counts as a good link, search engines will crawl through the backlinks present in your content. Not all backlinks are created equal. A backlink from a reputed newspaper will always hold more value than that from an unknown blogger. But a backlink will signal search engines that your content is of quality worthy of a citation. A higher number of backlinks translate into higher rankings on search engine pages. It is often referred to as “link juice” by SEOs.
Link building strategies for SEO is one of the most time-consuming jobs and varies in difficulty and complexity. Backlink building strategies often include email outreaches, broken link building, content marketing and public relations.
Importance of backlink building strategies for SEO
Backlinks help search engines to discover new web pages and determine their ranks in SERPs. Being one of the most important ranking factors for Google, this is what they have to say about link building:
This means you need to focus on getting links because you’ve created great content that your users want to share. Likewise, your link building should not be only for SEO.
Importance of backlink building strategies for business
We have already established the importance of backlink-building strategies for SEO, but how is it relevant to your brand and business?
Backlink-building strategies are a cornerstone of any SEO strategy. Its usage and interactions may have changed over the years but it has a deep impact on search engine rankings.
Outside the benefits created for your SEO performance, backlink-building strategies also have considerable benefits for your business and brand.
- Builds your brand – proper backlinks help to build your brand by establishing your authority in your market segment. High-quality content creation and guest posting can show your brand’s expertise. Also, your posts will stand out in the industry and you will be rewarded with authoritative inbound links.
- Referral traffic – when you have an authoritative backlink from a highly visited website, you earn link juice. It increases traffic to your website. But make sure that this traffic is relevant for you. This can also lead to more potential customers and greater sales.
- Building a relationship – Backlinks involve outreach to relevant websites through posts or engaging infographics you have created. It can also include promotions. Even if your main aim is to earn a backlink, the strategies allow you to build long-term relationships with key people in your industry. In the long run, it builds your network, builds your authority and establishes your brand.
Relevance of backlinks for SEO 2022
Backlinks are your vote of confidence from the internet. Authoritative sites utilize backlinks to get high ranks easily even for competitive keywords.
It may be 2022, but the main aim of search engines involves delivering the most relevant and helpful results for your searches in the least amount of time. And search engines manage to do so by including links as a ranking factor.
Marketers today have to be more selective regarding their backlink-building strategies to increase natural relevance. They have to ensure that the backlinks come from websites that have a healthy authority in their chosen sector. Ignorance of this can do more harm than good.
Read on to know the strategies that you can adopt to create awesome backlinks!
Bloggers and reporters are your best friends
To rank high on search engines pages you need to build authoritative backlinks from news sites and blogs.
The best way to do this is by using a free service called Help a Reporter Out (HARO). Connect people who need sources (bloggers and journalists) with people who want connections and exposure (you).
Try to get interviewed by well-known bloggers in your sector. This allows you to attract highly relevant backlinks while improving and promoting your brand. Interviews act as word-of-mouth online publicity which gets more traffic and also adds exposure to your site.
Quality Content is important
You need to create high-quality content to attract natural and organic backlinks. Choose a great topic and create in-depth content about that topic. Subsequently, don’t forget to frequently update it.
Try to publish ‘Skyscraper Content’
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, skyscraper content is created by:
- Finding successful content (typically from the top search results on Google, but also on social popularity)
- Reverse engineering that content’s success by looking at who linked to or shared it.
- Creating something better
- Replicating its distribution strategy by contacting those who linked to or shared the original, and letting them know about your “new” content.
Brian Dean at Backlinko is one of the good practitioners of this methodology. You can read more about it here.
This increases your visibility and builds relevant relations.
The moving man method
The moving man method is a term coined by Brian Dean at Backlinko – who is our go-to specialist for all things link-related. This method is an innovative new technique for building quality backlinks with relevant sites in your field or industry.
https://youtu.be/lVMaSvTVmGI
Here’s a video where Brian Dean explains the concept.
Your content format matters
Your content should be based on the following if you want to consistently get backlinks –
- “Why” Posts
- “What” posts
- Infographics
- Videos
These formats are starting points based on which you need to create amazing content.
Ultimate Guides
Another way in which you can score consistent and amazing backlinks is by providing Ultimate Guides relevant to your target audiences.
Ultimate guides are long-form contents that always tend to perform better in search engine rankings.
We published an Ultimate Guide for ageless branding techniques some time back. Do spare some time to read it.
Name your strategies and techniques
In case you create a unique brand-new strategy for backlinking, name it to own it. Publish it as part of your content under the name which should be memorable enough. This will ensure that if it gets popularized, people will quote it and backlink to your post.
Resource pages
Another way in which you can ensure quality backlinks is by harnessing the power of resource pages. Resource pages are a link builder’s dream as they exist solely to link out to other sites.
Read this article to understand link building from resource pages.
Conclusion
The importance of SEO and link building cannot be overlooked if you’re trying to build a brand name. This article is a preview of what is link building and what strategies you can adopt in 2022 to gain more traction.
At Sunnyday Consulting, we help clients gain higher rankings in search results with effective link-building strategies. Contact us at support@sunnydayconsulting.com!
