Is Link Building A Part Of Your Current SEO Strategy?
No matter if you are a small or local business owner it is important to realize that link building has always been an important part of a successful SEO strategy. However, link building is now more important than ever. It has become one of the biggest ranking factors for search engines.
Having high-quality backlinks connecting to your website is a 100 percent must to have good online rankings. To explain, the quality, as well as the number of backlinks connecting to your website, could be the determining factor of whether or not you outrank your competitor.
If you do not outrank your competitor, they will be the ones taking home the monthly profits and leads that should be yours!
Do not worry though, in today’s article we are going to go over not only what link building is. We will also discuss the different types of links and each of them will help your SEO strategy.
What Is Link Building?
To explain, the link-building process is simply building hyperlinks from another website back to your website. As a result, the search engines will then crawl the individual links on the pages of your website as well as the entire website that your pages are linking to.
The search engines will then determine if the pages on your website are relevant to the website that you are linking to. If everything is in fact relevant, a link to your webpage will then send a signal to Google letting it know that your website is a good and reliable source on the subject.
It is important to realize that the more relevant links you can get connecting to your website, the higher you will rank in the search engines. Another thing you should know about link building is that is one of the most time-consuming parts of a successful SEO strategy, as well as not all links, are created equal.
The Importance Of Link Building To Your SEO Strategy
One of the main reasons that link building is such an important part of SEO services is that it directs search engines to find new and relevant website pages. This as a result helps the search engines determine which websites should rank higher in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)
It is very important that when you are implementing your link building strategy you focus on creating relevant and informative high-quality content. This will drastically increase the chances of users wanting to share your content. Which in return will indicate to Google that users really like your content and as result, Google will reward your content with better online rankings.
Good VS Bad Link Building
Good Link Building
When it comes to a link building strategy it is important to understand that there is a good way to build links and a very bad way to build links. I want to make it very clear, that the bad way of building links could get you penalized or even kicked out of the search engines.
Good link building aka White Hat SEO is the only SEO strategy you should use in all honesty. While white hat SEO practices take a little longer compared to black hat practices to produce results in the search engines. Delayed results are still much better than having your site penalized or even banned from the search engines altogether.
In other words, using Black Hat SEO practices simply is not worth it!
To explain, White Hat SEO is simply the process of using organic link building tactics. The following list is of the 10 best white hat linking strategies available today.
10 Best White Hat Link Building Strategies Of Today
1. Directory Submission
2. Turn Brand Mentions into Backlinks
3. Reach Out To Friends and Partners & Ask For Links
4. List and Verify Online Business Listings
5. Research The Back Links Connecting To Your Competitors
6. Guest Blog
7. Write Testimonials For Other Companies
8. Start Social Bookmarking
9. Start A Blog
10. Use Content Like Videos & Infographics To Earn Backlinks
Bad Link Building
Now, bad link building aka Black Hat SEO which you should stay away from. In other words, do not perform or hire any SEO agency that practices black hat strategies. To explain, Black Hat SEO is the method of using unpractical strategies to manipulate the search engines to rank your website higher in the search engines.
As I mentioned earlier, using black hat SEO strategies may work quickly but they are way far too risky to use. Google as well as the other search engines have gotten much better at detecting Black Hat practices. The worst part is if you get caught it will be extremely difficult to get your website indexed once again in the search engines.
10 Black Hat SEO Practices To Avoid
1. Using Private Blog Networks (PBNs)
2. Leaving Your Link In Other Sites Blog Comments
3. Allowing Low-Quality Guests Posts
4. Cloaking
5. Using Devious Redirects
6. Buying Backlinks (This Can Get You Penalized Very Quickly)
7. Keyword Stuffing
8. Link Schemes
9. Hidden Links
10. Over Using An Anchor Text or Structured Data
The Difference Between Follow & No Follow Links
There is one important thing to understand about links and that is that you can actually give them attributes. For example, you can command the search engines to either follow a link or not follow a link. Do follow links will provide a show of confidence to the search engines.
No follow links on the other hand give the command to the search engines to not pass any link juice aka Page Authority on from this particular link. In other words, when implementing a no follow link command you are telling the search engines not to trust that particular link.
However, no follow links can in fact be used way to benefit your Search Engine Optimization strategy. To learn more on how to use No Follow links, give us a call today at (276) 207-9880.
4 Ways Link Building Will Help Your Business
As I mentioned earlier, link building is truly one of the most important parts of a successful SEO strategy. However, it is important to realize that there are in fact other benefits to a good link building strategy as well.
Listed below are the 4 benefits that your company will reap from a link building strategy.
1. Brand Awareness
It is only natural as a business owner to want your brand at the forefront of your industry. Well, when link building is performed properly it can do just that for you. To explain, creating high-quality content and blogging and then implementing that in your content marketing strategy will help your brand.
It shows that you obtain a lot of knowledge in your industry as a result giving you an authoritative voice in your niche. This as a result will have others wanting to link to your site earning you a natural backlink.
2. Increases Opportunities for Sales
With the proper link building strategy, you will receive referral traffic from websites that are relevant to yours. This as a result increases the chances of you engaging with more potential customers. By engaging with more customers you are increasing your chances of sales and higher profits.
3. Builds Relationships
A good link building strategy will require you to reach out to other relevant content creators. For example, website owners and blog authors who have produced content relevant to yours.
You would of course be reaching out to them to enquire about them linking to you as well as you linking back to them. However, often times when doing this you form a relationship with the website owner or blog author based on your expertise and interest in the same subject.
This often leads to a relationship allowing each of you to feed off of each other’s link juice as well as increases both of your company’s brand authority.
4. Gets You More Referral Traffic
When you gain a link from another high authority website you earn what is known as “link juice”. This as a result can also lead to an increase in website traffic. The key is, if you are linking to websites that are relevant to yours then most likely the web traffic they are receiving is relevant to the type of website traffic you are looking for as well.
It is important to realize that just linking to relevant websites is not the most beneficial. In fact, linking to blog posts that are relevant oftentimes converts better because blog posts usually draw a more engaged and passionate audience compared to website pages.
Conclusion
There you have it, you now obtain the knowledge to put together and implement a successful SEO link building strategy. If you have questions please feel free to contact us at (276) 207-9880 and receive a FREE Consultation.
To ensure that you do not miss out on our future informative marketing articles as well as Tips & Specials, be sure to sign up to our email list below.
Email Subscriber
Be sure to sign up for our email list so that you don't miss out on our Informative Digital Marketing articles as well as our Tips & Specials!
By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: . You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact
Related Articles
