When thinking about your SEO Link Building strategy, it is important to remember to put quality links first on your list.
Just adding any link to your page will not be as helpful as you think. Search engine algorithms are looking for high quality, relevant links for their users. So your links should reflect that goal.
SEO Link Building: Developing Your Digital Brand Through Quality Links
SEO link building can feel daunting and cumbersome, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Just like developing your digital brand may have felt awkward at first and then became easier, your SEO link building process will feel the same way.
Half the battle in your SEO link building process is simply knowing where to start.
Luckily, we have some great tips to help you on your way to choosing the best possible quality links to use for your digital brand.
If you really feel like you need extra help, you can always hire a company to provide SEO services.
SEE ALSO: Local SEO: How to Make Your Brand a Local Rockstar
The Impact Links Have on Your Search Profile
Links have always affected how a search engine perceives a website. The type of pages linking back to your site can have a significant impact on your brand’s visibility and traffic.
Thus, having high-quality links can only help your brand, never hurt it, and should always be considered a good investment.
Link building processes have changed as search engines evolve. That is why it’s essential that you make sure the links to your website are “good” ones. These links are aligned with the expectations of both consumers and search engines.
Keep reading to discover how our link building strategies will help your website.
Evaluating Your Link Profile
Knowing your website’s current link profile is the first step in your link building strategy. Without taking the time to evaluate your link profile, it will be hard to determine what exactly your digital brand needs.
So, how do you begin evaluating your link profile?
Here are a few factors you must consider.
Backlink Analysis
It’s important to determine whether there are any link issues before we start with the link building process.
You need to watch out for low-quality links that risk Google penalties, and broken internal links that have negative effects on search engine crawling and indexing.
On-Page Cleanup
This process involves cleaning up your website’s link profile by fixing your webpage and internal linking structure. Make sure all your links are working, and that all the necessary redirects and error pages are in place.
Inbound Link Detox
Then work on taking down or disavowing detrimental third-party backlinks. Doing this will put you in a better state when building quality links to your website.
The result will create a healthy link profile. This will benefit your website and withstand the test of time and algorithm updates.
Creating Shareable Content
Although we use the term “link building”, you need to earn most of your links by creating link-worthy content. Makes sure to produce original, relevant content that provides an enticing value proposition to your online audience.
This will create an engaging environment where your readers and website visitors are more inclined to discuss and share your content with their friends on social networks.
The whole point of your content is to create something worth sharing. Keep that in mind when you’re writing it. Look for great little nuggets of information that your readers won’t be able to live without.
This is what will motivate them to share your content with this peers.
Diversity and Context
Context is the key concept behind content marketing and link building strategies. You need to make sure everything from keywords to anchor text placements and landing pages are optimized for your target audience and search engines.
Inserting links that are out of context or irrelevant is a bad practice, and could risk getting your website penalized.
Even if search engines still pull you up with out of context links, the users who read your articles may find the inclusion unappealing and choose not to come back or share it with their peers. Make sure to select anchor text and keywords that are related to your content.
Building a lot of contextual links is not enough to create a future-proof link profile. You need to keep your links and your anchor text diverse to avoid being penalized for over-optimization or link spamming.
Link Diversification
It’s much easier to create fake profiles and link to spam websites these days. This is why search algorithms continue to emphasize the importance of having a diverse link portfolio. Simple diversifying can eliminate many SEO link building problems that can arise.
Diversifying your links means building inbound links on multiple websites with unique domains and IP addresses.
The more unique links that search engines see, the more they will treat your website as a trusted source of information. It works just like any human would. the more you see from a site that you trust, the more often you’ll source it and go back to it.
Creating and managing social network accounts for your brand can also help with diversification. These accounts can improve your brand’s social signals, and act as a cushion when major algorithm changes are applied in the future.
It’s also easier to make your content go viral when you post or share them on your social accounts.
Give your link portfolio the diversity it needs by building social sharing links and making sure your other links are coming from unique, relevant, and reputable third-party websites.
SEE ALSO: Do I Need to Optimize My Instagram Business Profile for SEO?
Anchor Text Diversification
You should no longer be focusing on inserting exact-match anchor text to rank for your keywords. You need to diversify your anchor text and make your keyword insertions as “natural” as possible.
We use four types of keywords as anchor text:
- Brand keywords focus on your brand or website name, or your website’s naked URL. By using your brand name as anchor text, you can promote your business, attract more leads, and improve your SERP rankings by associating your brand with your target keywords.
- Exact match keywords are standard key phrases used as-is in linking.
- Partial match keywords are variants of your exact match keywords. This includes synonymous keywords (e.g. “bankruptcy attorney in LA” is a partial match for “bankruptcy lawyer in LA”), or long-tail keywords (e.g. “ceramic co ee mugs” is a partial match for “co ee mugs”).
- Generic keywords include calls to action such as “click here” or “visit this website”, or any other phrases that encourage readers to click on the link.
Building a Publishing Network
You need to focus on getting quality links rather than merely gathering links. Building a network of publishers and getting your content onto relevant and influential online publications is a good way to acquire the links you need.
Having this network allows you to promote your brand to a wider audience. It also improves your credibility and gives you a stronger, more diverse link profile from quality pages.
Plus, the extra viewability that your brand will receive from the outside publishing is always appreciated.
Types of Publication Links
There are four main types of publication links to use for your digital brand. Each one will have different ramifications for your brand and your content.
These four main types are:
Press Releases
Press releases allow you to make announcements about new products, services, or website features.
They can help increase brand awareness through authoritative news and information channels. In addition, they also provide your website with a quality backlink.
Downloadable ebooks, Guides, Infographics and White Pages
These types of content provide in-depth information about industry- related topics. Offering eBooks, definitive guides, infographics, and white papers to your visitors will them into loyal customers and adds to the diversity of your link profile.
Videos and Webinars
There is an undeniable rising popularity of video streaming websites and scripts. This is why educational videos and webinars are becoming a valuable way of communicating with your users.
The creative and memorable videos you produce and link back to your website will remind your audience that you are a reliable information resource.
Informative Blog Posts and Magazine Articles
Develop, write, and publish informative articles on external blogs and online magazine sites which then link back to your website. Your articles should establish a good reputation for your brand by giving it a voice and personality.
We have strong working relationships with several reputable online publications. This helps us guarantee that your links will only be coming from quality pages on the web.
Final Thoughts
The importance of building high-quality links to your website cannot be underestimated or underplayed. With the ever-changing landscape of SEO, initializing high-quality campaigns is going to make all the difference in whether or not your website will withstand the test of time. Maximize your SEO link building to make sure that your brand ends up on top of the list.
What SEO link building tactics do you use?
