Business entrepreneurs, marketers and everyone in the digital world say SEO is important. Search engine optimization is a must-have tool, it improves both the quality and quantity of organic traffic to a website or blog through search results. Apart from web traffic, there are several reasons to focus on SEO such as trustworthiness, user experience, growth and more. When your website appears higher on Google, you can gain the trust of potential customers. When your website is web-optimized, you can communicate with customers clearly. Introducing how-to guides on your website or blog will increase search users.
In addition to improving traffic and visibility, search engine optimization will contribute to an authoritative brand voice in the niche. This authority will lead to brand loyalty.
A person might ask you why search engine optimization is important for your business? Without a second thought, you might answer with a straightforward answer. SEO attracts new users and over time it enables businesses to strengthen their relationships with their potential users.
How does SEO work?
Search engine optimization has almost everything to perform with the quality and quantity of your website. When your website or blog looks best in front and backend, you can generate a good amount of traffic. Ultimately, you can improve your ranking positions on the search engines. Building search engine optimization works amazing by combining multiple elements such as keyword analysis, creating curated content and backlink building.
Let’s have a quick look at how these elements are strengthening your optimization techniques for better digital marketing.
- Keyword Analysis
It’s no surprise that words are definitely powerful. There are few words that will have the capability to control search engines rankings. Yes, you’ve heard it right! There are two types of keywords such as primary keywords and secondary keywords. These keywords are used by the users when they’re planning to find out something. Spend some time researching the keywords and strategically placing them in your website content. This way, your content quality gets improved. Keywords can be key reasons why any business should use SEO. Target customers will be using certain phrases while searching for a product or service to purchase. Let’s consider, when a customer is looking to purchase a mobile phone, they might search for “Best deals on a mobile phone”, if your website content consists of this phrase, you can improve your visibility on search engine ranking. Because you have a solution or answer for the customer. If you want an effective SEO keyword then you need to spend time on research, analyzing and adding them to your content.
- Curated content
Creating curated content is important. The content that you create should communicate a message clearly, educate customers and convince them to buy your product or service. When you create curated content, customers will purchase from you over your competitors. Keeping it simple, offering quality content should be your top priority to attract your customers or clients to your brand.
With quality and engaging content, you can communicate with your new or existing customers directly. Keywords will come into the picture, place the keywords whenever you’re writing the content. This will improve engagement, and trust in authority. Your content can be anything that the target audience can view or hear, it includes webpage text, blogs, videos, podcasts, social media posts, newsletters, infographics and more. It is said that content has the power to drive SEO by engaging with new and existing customers, thereby increasing traffic. The content will tell your customers everything about you.
- Backlink Building
A backlink can be a link that is created when you want to link from one website to another. These backlinks are popularly known as inbound links. Backlinks play a prominent role in SEO.
If you’re new to the digital marketing world, you might be wondering what is link building in SEO, what are link building strategies and how to do link building.
What is link building in SEO?
As mentioned earlier, link building is an effective way to acquire hyperlinks to your website from other niche websites. In simple words, a hyperlink is nothing more than a link. This hyperlink is used to navigate from one webpage to another. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, use these links to crawl your website. Search engines will examine every link on your website. They crawl all the internal and external links.
Internal links – These links will help your website users stay connected with you for a longer time. These links can provide a good user experience and encourage to convert from viewers to potential customers. On any website, internal links are used as CTA buttons (call-to-action).
External links – External links’ quantity and quality really matter. When you add authoritative or educational links, you can improve your brand credibility. Keep a note that adding untrusted or poor-quality links will hurt overall rankings on search engines. External links can be valuable when the link is through relevant or popular web pages. These external links act as references to your users or viewers.
Building a backlink will increase your rankings over the long run. Every digital marketer needs to put effort into making their website look link-worthy and trustworthy, whether it can be through an excellent product or by offering quality content as a reference by other related websites.
Alongside this long-term approach, you can also leverage a range of link building techniques that allow you to build your authority and increase your chances of ranking well and getting traffic from organic searches.
Types of links
Are you looking to build an effective link building technique or strategy? Yes! It’s vital to know about the types of links available in SEO.
Generally, there are three different types of links. Let’s have a look at it.
Nofollow vs Follow
As the name suggests Nofollow, these links are used when a website owner needs to link to another website or blog but tells search engines not to crawl those websites. You should add an attribute for nofollow link i.e rel=”nofollow” for your link code.
Nofollow links can help you when you want a link to your website but don’t need to endorse the site. Nofollow links are profitable. Keep note, that these links don’t pass any domain authority. But, they can generate referral traffic and improve brand recognition.
Follow links are used when you want to link from your website to another and mention search engines to crawl those sites. These are mostly considered as the regular links informing Google or other search engines to pass PageRank. The follow link works better when you want to pass on the domain authority to an authoritative website. Additionally, you’re helping Google understand what exactly the content is all about.
Link from users
These are nothing but user-generated links. This is another strategy for building a link. But, this cannot be an ideal way when you want to keep up your SEO strategy. A few years earlier, search engines penalized people who used user-generated links. Because these links are created with an intention to promote your brand. When compared to other link building strategies, user links are poor in quality.
User-generated links can be
- Unmoderated comment on a blog post
- Embedded widget, infographic or other visuals
- Advertisements
- Press release
- Profile page of a dedicated user
Though the links from such sources don’t affect your website, it’s not an effective approach to spend on this link strategy as these links don’t pass authority.
Natural links
Google loves natural links as these occur naturally from users who prefer your site and include a link on their website without asking you. Most natural or organic links don’t appear in paid content or sponsored ads. These links don’t contain any tracking parameters. These links are added to other web bloggers with a strong intention to provide additional useful information to their audience. You can find natural links in a blog post, videos or images on someone else website or blog. Natural links are considered a good link, and this is the safest approach for building a quality backlink. Simply put, natural links are an efficient approach to promoting your website.
Hope you got an answer for what is link building in SEO, the types of links. Now let’s discuss popular link building strategies that exist in digital marketing.
A few years ago, link building strategies were highly concentrated on the quantity, not the quality of the backlink.
Now, link building is all a different game.
When you’re planning to build a set of link building strategies, it’s essential to know if it’s a time taking process or a gradual process when you do it in the right way. The webpage that you link will specifically the trusted and authority of linked web pages, play an important role in defining how well you can rank in SERP results.
Beyond everything, a link to a website will help your users or viewers to find your website and can improve your traffic. Also, readers would trust you when you link them to authoritative websites for additional reference or extra information.
Popular link building strategies
It’s an undeniable fact that backlinks are the popular elements on websites or blogs that will link back to high-quality or relevant websites. These backlinks will have the power to increase the credibility of your website.
Building quality backlinks will help you to improve your website credibility, trustworthiness and organic traffic. Let’s consider, if you write a blog on “tips to lose weight”, you can add a link that is related to “healthy food”. This way you’re providing useful information to your readers.
Always make sure your backlink must be built in a strategic way, your content will stand unique in the competition. While posting your guest blog, don’t forget to check plagiarism. Because search engines will spam your website when you present other blog content. Advanced backlink building will enhance SEO techniques when you do it ethically.
A question for you. How do businesses get high-quality backlinks from trusted or related websites?
There are several link building strategies that exist in the digital world. If you’re a newbie to link building techniques, you need to keep an eye on the below-mentioned link building strategies. The following strategies have been used by digital marketers for the past few decades to grow their business.
Have a look at all the strategies, experiment with them and choose the link building strategies that are suitable for your business.
Guest blogging
Many people assume guest blogging is dead. Do you think the same?
A few decades ago, guest blogging was all about adding the link to your website, the link can be relevant or irrelevant. Now, the game is different! Marketers are not posting their content on the website that is irrelevant to their niche.
Search engines such as Google or Yahoo are smart enough to identify whether your backlinks are from authoritative and related websites. If you’re planning to reap the guest blogging rewards, you should plan strategically. Create unique content for the relevant or authoritative website to attract your target audience. Choose the guest blogging websites wisely to better ranking, increase website traffic and generate qualified leads.
Create & distribute attractive infographics
Never underestimate the power of infographics. This is absolutely true! Infographics work perfectly when you’re planning to acquire a quality backlink. Infographics will play a prominent role in the link building technique.
Digital marketers choose infographics as they generate good organic traffic and lead to your website. One should not ignore the infographics in your link building strategy. Infographics are probably used to engage your visuals to easily communicate your information to target users. Infographics are an excellent way of communicating your idea. Research, findings and statistics work well.
Get engaged on social media
It’s important to keep an eye on your social media platforms. These networks can be of great benefit for advanced link building plans. Always be active on your social media platforms. Because these platforms enable you to connect with your target customers directly. If you’re not considering social media platforms seriously then you will be missing something great.
All you have to do is share images, latest updates and blog posts frequently on social media. This will help your users or followers to know more about your brand. For example, if you’ve launched a new product or service, create an attractive image and post it on your social media platforms. With social media, you can boost user engagement with ease. This is applicable for newbies as well. Consequently, you get a chance to expose brand products or services to global users. Don’t forget to add a backlink while posting content on social media, it can be an image, video or any post.
Check competitors’ backlinks
Do your competitors rank high in search engines? Yes! Don’t panic. Your competitors are a step ahead, they might understand the concepts clearly such as what is link building in SEO, the best link building strategies and how to do link building. Be patient! You can also rank high just like your competitors.
Spy on your niche competitors. Yes, you’ve heard it right. There is nothing wrong with keeping an eye on your competitors. Note down where your competitors are acquiring the backlinks from. When you spy on their backlink profile, you can get to know about better ranking keywords, backlink profile, how they are generating traffic and more. Performing competitive analysis can be the secret to your link building success.
If you’re new to digital marketing, you might be unaware of how to check the backlinks of your competitors. The process is simple, follow the below-mentioned steps.
Step 1 – Checkout Ubersuggest and enter the competitor’s domain and hit on the search button.
Step 2 – Now you will be redirected to your results page. Select backlink to know your competitor’s backlinks.
Step 3 – Scroll down and have a look at your competitor’s backlinks. You can find the list of competitors’ backlinks at a single glance.
When you know your competitor’s backlink, you’ve already won half of your battle. It’s time to concentrate on those websites to build a strong link building profile.
Track your backlinks
Have you successfully added your backlink? Great! Do you think your job is completed now? Not yet! You need to track all your backlinks. Most marketers spend their time acquiring new links to their website but don’t concentrate on track. It’s important to track your link status. This way, you will get to understand whether you need to build more backlinks or pause for some period. Keep a note, that when you track backlinks after a month, there might be broken links. Because you cannot control other websites that could provide backlinks to you. Website owners will have all the rights to remove links from their blog posts without even notifying you.
Hence, it’s essential to monitor every backlink. Follow the below-mentioned steps and get to know the total number of links that your website currently has.
Step 1 – Check out Ubersuggest. Enter your website URL and click on the search button.
Step 2 – Now, select backlinks.
Step 3 – You can watch out for a graph that is detailing all your backlinks that you currently have and lost.
Apart from knowing the backlink status, you can also check domain authority, page authority and more. This will help you while performing link building for your domain.
Content submission through a press release
As per analysis, 35% of marketers choose press releases to acquire a backlink. They believe that content submission through a press release, manual guides, research, news and another kind of content is an effective way to get a quality backlink.
There are a few platforms on which any business can submit its content. It includes aggregators, press releases, marketplace, article promotion sites, magazines, news portals, wikis, blogs, etc. Content submission can work perfectly for those who are willing to promote their new product or service, be it e-commerce or application. During content submission, you need to choose an interesting topic and contact the right person and later track answers with ease.
Hope you’ve got a clear understanding of what is link building in SEO and the best link building strategies. So, what next? Let’s have a look at how to do link building. Keep a close eye on how other digital marketers are performing link building techniques to improve their business. Though it’s not rocket science you need to focus completely on advanced link building. Choose the best SEO strategy and make your brand shine.
How to do link building?
Although an approach for proper and efficient link building can be a daunting task for any marketer to do, still there are several white hat strategies that will help you during link building. Starting from today, the approaches are simple and easy to follow, with no effort or no need to spend your money.
Request link
Requesting for a link doesn’t lower your standards. Outreach can be a time-consuming process, but with minimal effort, you can backlink to your website. For example, if you want to get a backlink from a relevant website that can help boost a website, you should contact the website or social media account owner directly.
Before requesting consider a few things
- Websites should be relevant to your niche.
- Check the website’s credibility and performance.
- Craft a well-formatted email for contacting the website owner for a backlink.
Add links manually
As the name suggests, you need to place a backlink yourself. No matter whether you’re placing the backlink in a guest post, blog comment section, press release or any other site. When you’re adding the link manually, the link will be under the control of another website or blog owner. Manual link building can generate better referral traffic and help you to get connected with other users with the relevant niche.
Earn links
If you want to gain competitive benefit through link building, you need to keep an eye on techniques that help to get editorially placed backlinks. Earning a link will definitely need an effort. When you put in great efforts, you can earn great rewards. Invest quality time and your resources while earning links.
An excellent way to earn links is to create engaging and high-quality content. This type of content will gain immense popularity over the internet. When you successfully earn a backlink, third-party websites will show interest in your website and they will link to make their content more valuable. As a result, your content will definitely gain trust and value among the audience.
Be active in the local community
If you’re running a local business, local community outreach is a valuable and excellent influential link for you.
How can you get involved with the local community? It is simple!
- Get engaged in scholarships and sponsorships.
- Participating in local community events, get-togethers, seminars, workshops, etc.
- Donate to a good cause and become a member of your local charity and business community.
- Post a full-time job and internship opportunities.
- Conduct a competition
This way, you can easily develop an engaging relationship with your local business community. Also, improve the local economy with less effort. These SEO strategies are authentic and provide genuine backlink opportunities.
Refurbish quality content
Do you track every piece of your content? Yes! You’re doing a great job. Then you must know which part of your content is generating maximum traffic and converting visitors to potential customers.
When you find content that is working well for a longer time, keep a close eye on that content. It means you need to refurbish the content for multiple platforms such as YouTube, Quora, Instagram, Slideshare and more. These platforms will expand the acquisition horn beyond search engines (Google).
Else, you can refresh your old content by adding more value on a similar platform. If your content needs any updates, note them down and update them accordingly. Add a link to a popular website, this way you can earn a quality link.
There might be some websites that are using your visuals or images on their website but don’t link you. Reach out and seek a link from them.
Always be genuine and personal
There is a common mistake that every marketer does is they build links and forget about custom or personalization. When you’re planning to build a backlink, spend some time on personalization. Never send a spammy email to website owners, this will annoy and make their eyes roll.
If you want to get a good response via outreach email from other website owners, then you need to
- Give a personal touch by mentioning their brand name, brand products, address, etc.
- Providing value is also important. Keep a check on their broken links and let them know about it. If there is any page showing an error, inform them.
- Keep your outreach email short and clear.
- Ask any questions.
How to identify a good link?
What makes a good link? As a digital marketer, you need to know the difference between a good and a bad link.
There are a few steps that can determine whether your link is good or not.
Relevance
The link needs to come from a relevant website. For example, if you’re running a healthcare website, the link should be related to the health domain. This will ensure that your brand is building a good link.
Trustworthiness
This is an important factor to consider, you should check the website’s trustworthiness. Simply put, while auditing a good backlink, you need to check a few things
- The lifespan of the website
- Does URL is containing SSL or not
- Social media activities
- If there is a privacy policy on their website
- Traffic received every month
Placement
Yes! Placement plays an important role. The placement will have a direct influence on your link performance. If you want to place your link on any website, you need to request the owner to place it above the fold. Else, you can add a link in the upper content of the body. As the audience will see the link at top of your web page and perform an action. Avoid placing your link in the footer and sidebar sections.
Authority score
Checking the authority score is also important. It will help you to measure the impacts of the website. When the weightage of the authority score is higher, you can trust it without any worries. The authority score scale will range from 1 to 100. Your link will have more impact based on the score of the website. There are several online tools available to check the authority score.
Anchor text
If you’re unaware of the anchor text, you need to pay close attention to it. Anchor text is plain text that is used while linking from one webpage to another. While writing the content, providing the well-optimized anchor text will be more beneficial for you. All you need to add a primary keyword in the anchor text. Also, the text link needs to consist of a natural mix.
Things to avoid in link building
Spammy links are the links that are built-in unnatural way. Adding more links to your content may lead to low quality. Few people buy links or exchange links, these practices might sound easy, but dangerous. They might put your efforts at risk. Because search engines will definitely penalize websites with any spammy link. Never build a spammy link profile.
Few things to remember
- Many SEO specialists say using a paid link can lead to a lazy link building strategy.
- Paid links can manipulate search engine algorithms and put them at high risk.
- Paid links will end up that comes from the website and are not properly aligned. They might have more outbound links with low-quality content.
Apart from the risk associated with the paid links, you need to remember the fact that when you can purchase a link, even your competitors can also follow the practice. So, never be fooled to purchase a paid link and risk yourself.
Wrapping up
So, you’ve reached the end! Let’s give a quick look at link building. It is a common practice used to acquire links from your site to another. According to SEO terms, these links are known as “Backlinks”. Quality backlinks from relevant and high-quality websites can pass domain authority and improve your rankings on search engine results. As per Google guidelines, it’s vital to identify whether the linking website is relevant and trusted.
Create engaging and quality content and link to trustworthy websites. Use the above-mentioned link building techniques to help acquire more backlinks. Everyone needs to agree, that link building takes time and effort, getting started with link building sooner is better than later. Get started and enjoy the benefits of your site in the upcoming days.
