We recently created an infographic to help businesses understand some of the most effective approaches to link building. Although search engines refer the majority of online traffic, businesses still lag behind in implementing techniques for attracting authoritative links that lead to high search engine rankings. Inbound links that come from blogs, directories, and other high-quality information sources can give your content a significant boost on search engine results pages.
Unfortunately, there is a widespread a mistaken belief among website owners that search engines penalize all link building campaigns. Search engines penalize programmatic link spam, but strategies for building links organically through relationships are still encouraged. To understand some of the link building techniques that your business can use to achieve growth, you should have a look at some of the ideas that we share in our infographic.
Outreach Strategies
Outreach is one of the main areas that we cover in our infographic. In our experience, we have found that outreach is the most effective way to build links from reputable information sources. Outreach involves reaching out to relevant blogs in your industry to encourage them to link back to your website. Writers, marketers, and entrepreneurs who are aware of your content are more likely to reference your work. Outreach is especially important when your website has limited visibility since major content creators in your industry are unlikely to link to content that they cannot find. There are a broad range of approaches that you can use to conduct an outreach campaign, and we cover the main techniques in our infographic.
Repairing Broken Links
Search engines give significant penalties when they find broken links on your website. If your business depends on search engine optimization, you probably monitor your website vigilantly to look out for broken links. Some website owners, on the other hand, do not know about the importance of broken links or fail to notice when a link breaks. When links pointing to your website become invalid, you can reach out to website owners to teach them how to correct these problems. In many cases, website owners are happy to fix broken links that you point out to avoid getting penalized by search engines.
Earning Links From Customers
Satisfied customers who implement their own content marketing campaigns can be an excellent source of new links. You can encourage customers to talk about their experiences with your brand online or to incorporate information about your company into their blog. Earning a link from a customer with an authoritative website can lead to a significant boost in your search engine rankings, so it can make sense to take the initiative to encourage customers to link to your content. In some cases, it can even be advantageous to give customers discounts or rewards for giving you a backlink.
Creating High-Quality Content
High-quality content is the key to attracting links because reputable publications only want to cite the best information. If your content is unoriginal or lacking in quality, you are unlikely to give authoritative blogs a reason to reference your work. Additionally, high-quality content is more likely to rank naturally on search engines, so exceptional content has a better chance of being found by content creators. When members of your industry can find your content, you have a significantly better chance of attracting the links you deserve.
Guest Blogging
Sometimes the best way to build links is to offer free or inexpensive content to reputable industry blogs. As long as you follow the rules that search engines have established for paid content placement, you can avoid search engine penalties when doing guest blogging. To get the best results from guest blogging, you should make sure that you do your research before selecting a publication for your content. You should make sure that a prospective blog has not been penalized by search engines and that it could not be construed as a link farm. Doing guest blogging in the right way can earn powerful links that can boost your rankings for the search terms that your customers are using.
Enhancing Content With the Skyscraper Technique
The first search result receives almost half of the inbound referral traffic. When your website is ranking at the bottom of the first page on a search engine, a bit of additional content can sometimes be enough to push you all the way to the top. You can add to your existing content to get it seen as even more authoritative by search engines and to do a second round of content promotions.
Content Submissions
We also extensively cover content submissions in our infographic because we have observed most websites lagging behind in this important area. Submissions compliment an outreach campaign by ensuring that your link portfolio is diversified. If all of your links come from authoritative industry blogs, search engines will start to penalize your website because it will become obvious that you are not building your links in an organic way. Submitting your website to high-quality information sources, such as directories, content aggregators, and infographic portals, is a powerful way to build additional links without becoming excessively dependent on outreach.
Directory Websites
Marketers often believe that directories can get their websites penalized, but the reality is that directories can still make your website appear more authoritative to search engines. When using directories, it is important to only submit your website to sources that comply with Google’s terms of service. Directories that accept any submission will get your website penalized because they are only useful to search engine specialists who are looking to game the system. In contrast, selective directories, such as Jasmine Directory and Alive Directory, are highly authoritative because they provide a directory of information that is useful to online readers.
The Best Approach to Building Links
When building links to your website, it is important to earn links from a broad range of sources. Website owners who focus only on links from blogs and social media will get limited results because link diversity is key. Make sure that you incorporate the skyscraper technique and directory submissions into your link building campaign to get optimal results.