Businesses understand that link building is essential to their SEO success and an invaluable way of building referral traffic, partnerships, and brand recognition.
At its core, link building strategies seek to increase search engine rankings; however, they also serve many other functions.
Keyword Research
Search volume is key in drawing visitors, which then helps your site acquire links. When someone clicks one of those links to come visit your website, Google takes note and ranks your site higher – hence why organic (not paid) traffic should be prioritized over paid for traffic for any website or business.
Keyword research is essential in making sure your content and SEO strategy target terms relevant to your business, while simultaneously taking into account what constitutes relevant terms in the marketplace. An effective research process should also include an assessment of competition.
Competitor link research is an ideal way to do this, which involves closely studying how your top competitors’ pages acquired links, then gathering ideas about how you could likewise obtain similar ones and outrank them. Remember that organic, natural link building takes time; quick fixes such as black-hat link building will only hurt in the long run.
On-Page Optimization
Link building is an approach to increasing website traffic through links. This can be accomplished using different tactics and strategies, with the end goal of getting high quality backlinks that can improve search engine rankings while driving organic search traffic to your business.
These link building strategies involve making improvements to your website or individual page content so as to make it more aesthetically pleasing and search engine-friendly, taking note of what Google considers best practices when assessing websites.
Keyword research allows you to develop quality content that actively addresses the problems of your target audience while at the same time telling Google about the purpose of your site. Making your text scannable by including keywords into it and optimizing image alt text are other essential ways of helping Google understand what’s on your web pages. Furthermore, intelligent inter-linking of your pages spreads page rank around (rather than having all links concentrated on one page); this way you build quality inbound links and increase website rankings.
Link Building
Quality still reigns supreme when it comes to links. You need content that captures people’s interest and generates engagement if you want people to link back to your page – this could include blog posts, white papers, infographics or videos.
At first, search engines such as Yahoo and Alta Vista relied solely on what was written on a page to rank results; when Google entered the fray with their PageRank algorithm evaluating how many hyperlinks (known as backlinks ) each webpage had, this changed dramatically.
However, you should be wary when using low-quality link building tactics. Google actively penalizes websites using methods which violate their Webmaster Guidelines, which could have serious repercussions for SEO rankings.
Social Media
Employing social media as part of your SEO strategy is an integral component of link-building success. Millions of people browse Instagram feeds, tweet regularly, update LinkedIn profiles, or search Pinterest boards every day; placing links in front of these users gives your website greater chances of being clicked through by visitors.
One effective method for building links is through mentions from influential figures. This can be accomplished both through social media outreach and cold emails – Twitter is particularly useful here as it allows you to directly reach influencers and get their attention.
Another effective strategy for building links is through hosting contests on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Contests provide an engaging way of promoting your brand while simultaneously building valuable backlinks.
