If you're new to SEO you might be
wondering what all the fuss is about when it comes to link building.
After all, isn't it enough just to create
killer content and let the traffic flow naturally?
Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple.
What's good guys? It's Ben here from Neighbourhood where we
help businesses find, sell to and keep their people.
If you're feeling confused about link building already, don't worry.
In this video I'm going to teach you
everything you need to know about this SEO strategy.
The process of link building involves
the acquisition of links from other websites to your own.
You will also hear these links being referred to as inbound links or backlinks.
But no matter what they're called,
they're simply a way for one website to point to another.
When someone links to your website,
it's like they're giving you a vote of confidence.
The more votes that you have, the more popular and authoritative your
website is going to appear to both users and search engines.
Google's algorithm uses links as one of the main ranking factors.
If your website is garnering a lot of inbound links, it's a signal to Google
that it has trustworthy and relevant content that is worth ranking highly.
If you're planning your link building
strategy already, you might be getting ahead of yourself.
Before you try acquiring links from other websites, you should understand
the different kinds of links and what makes them valuable.
Here are the four main types of links you need to know about.
Firstly, we have follow links which are valuable because they pass along authority
which is affectionately known as link juice.
When a website links to yours with a follow link, they're going to pass
on some of their own link juice and authority to your website.
No follow links, on the other hand, don't pass on any link juice and are
therefore not as valuable as do follow links.
They still can be worth pursuing as they
increase your brand recognition and drive traffic to your website.
User generated links,
as the name suggests, are any links that the users generate.
For example, users may generate links
to your website by including the relevant links in blog comments.
You can also generate these links to promote your own awesome content.
The downside of user generated links is
that Google doesn't recognise them as highly, so you might not want to invest
too much time on these kinds of strategies as they don't guarantee results.
Natural links are the kingpin of links.
They occur when other website owners link to your content.
These are links earned organically without any intervention on your part.
If a website owner is impressed by the quality of your content,
they may choose to link to it from their site without even being asked.
They're the most valuable because they often come from high quality
and authoritative sites that are relevant to your niche.
So now you know the types of link,
but you may be wondering why should I even care about link building?
If you run a website,
there are two main reasons why link building should be on your radar.
Firstly, it's one of the best ways of increasing your site's authoritativeness.
Whenever you publish content.
It's competing with millions of other pieces of content in the search algorithm,
all vying for the attention of the internet.
For it to even show up on Google search
rankings and get seen by the right people, you need to give it a little push.
Link building is one of the best ways
to do this, as it will boost your website's reputation and authority.
Second, link building is an effective way to increase the reach of your content.
By building links to your content, you're effectively giving it to a wider
audience through the users who see it on other websites.
The more people who see and engage
with your content, the more likely they are to convert into customers.
This makes link building critical if you want to increase the traffic on your
website and achieve your business objectives.
If everything we've covered up to this
point is starting to sound a bit abstract, then maybe we should slow it down and look
at link building in Practise with some examples of how to build links.
Firstly, you're going to need to brace
yourself for some virtual knocking on doors.
This may sound like a long shot, but requesting links from other websites
is a perfectly normal and legitimate way of building links.
The key here is to think about building relationships while being strategic about
who you're reaching out to and what you're asking for.
If you own a website that sells cycling equipment, you would want to target other
websites in the cycling, fitness or even healthy living sector.
There's no point in reaching out
to a website that isn't related to your business like fashion or politics.
In this case, its readership is not likely to be interested in what you have to say.
Another vital factor to consider is the quality of the website you're targeting.
Don't try to get links from low quality
websites, as this will damage your own website's reputation.
We'll be having a bigger look at how to determine the quality of website
a little later on the video, so make sure you keep on watching to check that out.
The next thing you need to look at is adding links to the website manually.
This means placing links to your website
in guest posts, press releases and blog comments.
The good thing about building links this
way is that you have control over where they appear.
This method requires a bit of time and effort on your part.
You also need to be strategic about where you're placing your links,
as you don't want to come across as spammy or you could be penalised by Google.
While this method won't give you as much authority as natural links,
it can increase referral traffic, which is always a good thing.
Finally, it may be the most difficult way
to do it, but naturally earning links is the most effective way.
Creating great content that people want
to read and share is no easy feat, but it's really worth it.
When you have truly awesome content,
people will want to link to it without you even having to ask.
Of course, this doesn't happen overnight, and you're going to need to put
in the hard work if you want to start seeing results.
But if you're consistent and patient, eventually your efforts will pay off
and you'll start earning high quality link opportunities.
This method may take longer than
the others, but it is by far the most sustainable in the long run.
Now that you know the basics of link
building, it's time to find out which techniques are the most effective
in helping you get backlinks from quality sources.
The following strategies have proven to be effective time and time again.
First, you need to think about doing some guest blog.
Guest blogging involves writing a guest post for other relevant websites
and including a backlink to your website in the article.
When done correctly, guest blogging can be extremely worthwhile.
But guest blogging opportunities won't come looking for you.
You need to seek them out actively.
Simply using Google Search is an easy way to find guest blogging opportunities.
If you want to write a guest blog about
SEO, you could search for SEO and guest post.
This would bring up a list of websites that accept guest posting about the topic.
After identifying some websites that you think would be a good fit,
contact the website owner and suggest the blog you want to write.
You do, however,
need to ensure that you're only guest blogging on high quality sites.
Next, you need to create linkable assets.
A linkable asset refers to the type of content that screams share me.
Examples of such great content include infographics, ebooks, and white papers.
The key is ensuring that the linkable
asset is high quality and informative, as nobody will want to link to something
that is poorly made or just not interesting.
If you're not sure what kind of content
would make an excellent linkable asset, take a look at the content that's already
being linked by other websites in your niche.
You'll surely get some high quality,
valuable links if you can create something even better than what's already out there.
Don't have enough time to build linkable content?
No problem. There's another method that can help you
get backlinks, and it's called broken link.
Building a broken link strategy involves
finding external websites in your niche with broken links.
Then you need to contact the webmaster to let them know.
Tools such as check My Links can help you find broken links on these sites.
After you find some bad links, go ahead and find the owners.
You can let them know that one of their
links is pointing to a page that users can't access.
Be sure to include or suggest a backlink
to your piece of content as a resource they can use to replace the link.
This may seem like a small thing,
but it's a surefire way to get high quality links from relevant websites.
Next, you need to think about social media content.
Promotion via social media isn't just for promoting that content.
It can also be the perfect tool for building different link types.
How?
As part of a content marketing strategy, one should incorporate shareable content.
That way, every time you post something
on social media, the likelihood of somebody sharing your content is higher.
And if they do share it,
there's a chance that their followers will see it and click on the link.
In addition to sharing your own relevant
content, you should share other people's content that's relevant to your niche.
When you do this,
you'll build relationships with other people in your industry.
They may be more likely to share your content in the future.
You should also increase your visibility on different social media platforms
by responding to brand mentions and engaging in relevant conversations.
These practises can help establish yourself as an authority figure,
which will make people more likely to link to your content.
Another strategy for easy win backlinks is looking for unlinked brand mentions.
The press and other high authority sources might mention your brand regularly
already, but not all these mentions will link back to the content.
That's why it's important to actively search for unlinked brand mentions
and then contact the offer to request a backlink.
In most cases, they'll be happy to apply it as it benefits their audience too.
One of the easiest ways to find high
quality backlinks is to look at your competitors.
You can try to get links from the sites that they're tapped into.
Some of the best tools that can help you see which websites link to your
competitors include Moza's Openside Explorer and Href Site Explorer.
Once you have a list of potential
websites, determine the best way to contact the website administrator.
You can then ask if they will be interested in linking to your website too.
You should also analyse your competitors
anchor text to see what keywords they're targeting with their backlinks.
If you can get links from the same websites and use relevant keywords,
you'll be well on your way to building high quality backlinks.
For all of these strategies,
it's important to determine what websites will provide high quality links.
The Internet today has 1.7 billion active websites.
That's a lot of sites, and it can be tough to determine
which ones are high quality and which ones are not.
Here are some things you should look out
for when trying to determine whether a website is high quality.
Firstly, you need to ask yourself is the website relevant to your industry?
If not, it's probably not a high quality website for you.
Links will be of high quality if they
contain content related to what your website is actually about.
To tell whether a website is relevant, ask yourself whether you would still want
a link to the website even if there was no SEO benefits.
If the answer is yes, then the link is relevant.
Next, you need to think about domain authority.
This is a metric that's used to determine
how well a website will rank in search engines.
A website with a high domain authority is more likely to rank well,
while a website with a low domain authority will generally rank lower
on the search engine results page, you can check a website's domain
authority with tools like Moza's Link Explorer.
When seeking backlinks,
always choose a website with a domain rating that is close to 100.
Another thing to consider is trust.
Trust applies everywhere, even on the internet.
You should only get links from websites
that you trust, as they will be of high quality.
To determine whether a website is
trustworthy, you need to look at things like the site's lifespan,
the presence of security, the brand's social media activity,
the level of websites traffic per month, and finally the website's privacy policy.
If a website ticks all of these boxes,
it's probably trustworthy and a good source for backlinks.
So there we have it.
Everything you need to know about link building.
These strategies can help you nail your link building campaign.
But don't forget, if you want your business to be
discoverable, you still need to produce high quality content.
If you still think you need a bit of extra
help with your backlinking strategy, then don't hesitate to reach out.
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If you want to read more about
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That's it from me, guys. Happy marketing.