Building links to your site and valuable information is exceptionally important but can be hard and difficult. Link building forms a highly critical part of anyone’s search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy. More seriously, link building must form part of the overall growth strategy of your business. Link building ensures you generate more attention for your product and/or service and guarantees you more visitors to your website. This is what we call traffic, and the higher the incoming traffic to your website, the more diverse and expansive your audience becomes.
This practice of link building has changed drastically over the last decade, and there are multiple bad practices which you need to make sure you stay away from. As tempting as these may be, they will, in turn, hurt your business and impact your ranking negatively.
In this article, we will discuss 5 easy link building strategies that everyone can use and apply. We will familiarise you with how to create proper links and attract the audience you deserve and need in order to be successful in business.
The Relationship Between Growth Strategy and Link Building
Characteristically, when done correctly, link building comes down to other websites linking themselves to your article or page. These links are essential in helping your website or article rank higher than those of your competitors in Google’s search results. If your SEO is optimised to its best and working correctly, your goal should be to appear as high as possible on the search engine page. The first page, and as high as possible on the first page, is the only goal you should have in mind. Just think about how often you scroll to pages 2, 3, 4 and even page 50 onwards of the Google search results. Almost never!
Despite that, these links do so much more. Not only do these links contribute to an increase in the volume of traffic to your website, but they also aid in obtaining referral traffic from those who would not have naturally come across your website and/or product or service from other sites and pages.
When developing a strategy for business growth, it is imperative to keep in mind at all times that these links were created to direct researchers and readers from other pages, websites and articles they may be currently viewing to further articles which they may find interesting and enjoyable. It is much like a maze or a deep, never-ending hole.
You begin at one point of which you are familiar with and were aware of previously, and by continuing to click on various links and being transported to various other points of interest, you are brought to delve into a much more expansive research platform than ever before. This is why link building strategies are so important when forming your business growth strategy so that you can reach an expansive and never-ending audience, but also the appropriate and on-target audience required for your business to flourish and reach even greater heights.
Link building being part of your growth strategy will ensure you remain focussed at all times on procuring links from sites that will undoubtedly catalyze vast amounts of traffic to your website and/or product/service.
5 Easy Link Building Strategies:
RECOGNIZE YOUR IDEAL AUDIENCE
The very first initial step is finding exactly who the perfect audience is for your specific article, product, service or website.
If you want to be able to captivate and engage with the perfect target audience, you will need to ask yourself two very important questions, Firstly, who your current audience is at this present moment, and secondly, what your optimal and perfect viewers will look like.
This will assist you by safeguarding your current viewers and reaching out and expanding to new viewers that are interested in what you have to offer but who may not have come across your site before. Ideally, you will be willing to invest a vast amount of market research to recognise and learn who your audience is and what they are interested in. This, in turn, must not be misconstrued for understanding the audience and their behaviours, but only to determine who the audience is that you crave and long for and whether you are currently reaching them.
This may seem overwhelming at first glance, but start small and establish which audience you have started out with and who they mainly consist of, and then once adapting your growth strategy, you will be able to expand to a wider group of viewers. However, it is essential to understand that this is largely pioneered by obtaining links from other websites where these additional viewers could be found.
COMPILE A LIST OF SITES THAT INTEREST YOUR VIEWERS
Once you have established who your perfect and ideal audience is, do some research and compile a list of all the possible sites your viewers visit and what may appeal highly to them. If you link these specific websites to your article and/or website, it will help you in expanding your reach and attract more traffic to your site from possible viewers who may be interested in your product/service and who may have not come across it as yet.
Be aware and cognisant of the fact that you do not want a link from every website you obtain during your research. There is a multitude of spam websites or websites that possibly have absolutely nothing to do with your specific niche and, therefore, may not be valuable at all but are just sending your potential viewer and/or client in another direction, which is not valuable to you at all.
There are many cases where too many links and links to pages that do not exist or that are faulty and full of spam can damage your rankings and hurt your business. Links should be obtained through a natural way of marketing – it’s not a simple trick of the trade and should be paid for and recognised like any other kind of marketing tool.
INTERESTING AND WELL-WRITTEN CONTENT
When deciding to make use of links to your content through other websites, it is absolutely imperative that the content is intriguing and inviting for the other websites to want to link to your page. You need to create proper and quality content, which is certainly easier said than done. You will need to think about what will be most appealing to your viewers, together with what will interest them, by using your unique selling point (USP) and point of view in order to captivate them.
When creating content, it is important to think of what questions your clients will have, and through exploration of your content, those concerns, problems or questions which they might have should be successfully answered. For example, if you are selling a product or service, do not simply say your product/service is the best or most amazing product/service. Describe the product/service in such a way that the reader will not only be intrigued but also have comfort in knowing they are viewing the best, most amazing product and/or service without you actually having said it in so many words.
Providing the reader with the information they are looking for, rather than clouding their judgment with unnecessary and obvious descriptions, will help you gain the reader’s trust, and in return, you will be able to obtain more links to your page, as other websites will recognise the remarkable value of your content and entice them to join a link with your page or content. Equally important is that your content must be clear, concise and well-structured so that it is easily read and understood by the viewer.
Once you are completely satisfied and happy with your content, you will need to return to the list of websites you made during your research. Consider which websites will most likely link to the content that you have created. Do not simply send the content to everyone, as this could come across as spam, but rather meticulously select the best options for you and your content.
CONNECT
Once you have selected the perfect match for website(s) that you may think will consider linking to you, connect with them. You can do so by sending an email, although remember that social media like Twitter, for example, are also a great way of reaching out and connecting with people. In order to increase your chances of obtaining that backlink, it is imperative to know and understand the website and the viewers they cater for.
You should always reach out in a personal manner, as this makes it more professional and more enticing for the website to link to your content. Automated emails and/or direct messages are never advisable, as they will be overlooked, possibly as spam. A courteous and considerate email describing your content and request for a backlink to your content is almost always the best route to follow.
It is not uncommon to not receive a reply at all, so in order to amplify your possibility, you need to show your knowledge and depth of your content, giving the impression of uniqueness and something they would like to link to. Nevertheless, do not make it overly lengthy but to the point and exciting.
POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is a very powerful tool and should not be overlooked. Connecting with people and websites through email is only one way to reach your end goal. Feel free to explore these other avenues so that you can reach out to new audiences which you may not even have thought about initially. Substantiate your content by sharing it on multiple social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. These platforms give you the opportunity to expose your article(s), promoting them to an even broader spectrum of possibilities.
CONCLUSION
When link building strategies become part of your growth strategy and are done correctly, you will most certainly see an amplified growth in backlinks to other content and/or websites. You will be able to attract new and fresh viewers which will have an impressive effect on ranking higher in Google searches. Always keep in mind the main aim of building links to other website(s) and/or content is simply to increase the viewership and traffic to your content.
But you don’t need to do everything on your own if you have a reliable digital marketing agency to manage your SEO for you. Along with ensuring your website is optimised and updated with fresh content regularly, they would also invest in high-quality link building to increase your website’s authority.
