5 Link-Building Methods Divulged by SEO Pros
Successful link-building needs technique, as there are many different strategies that can attract more traffic to your website.
There is a lot of creativity that goes into this practice since the way a business link-builds goes a long way toward increasing the visibility of your company.
These strategies also require hard work, but luckily some SEO experts have forged a helpful path for new link-builders. Here, are their secrets:
1. Support Socially Engaged Customers
Link-building is a give and take relationship, meaning can be mutually beneficial for the company and the client.
Paul May of Buzzstream recommends figuring out the customers who are active online, including those who blog, and rally behind them, according to a Wordtracker blog by Loz James.
"Showing some extra love to these digitally active folks can result in great links," May said.
Christoph Engelhardt believes link-building is assisted by building relationships with influencers in your industry, Blogging Cage reported.
Finding people who have a purpose online and share common interests can increase your SEO and encourage mutual linking.
2. Content, Content, Content
For Rand Fishkin of Moz, the best strategy is consistently including smart, strong content on your site.
Fishkin believes links will continue to pop up over time, especially if the writing featured has a clear, social media-capable audience. His one note regarding gaining links from good content:
"It's a flywheel in that it's hard to turn those first few times, but gets easier and easier with time," Moz stated in James's Wordtracker blog
3. Link-Build From Resource Pages
Resource pages are always looking for new content to link to, according to Venchito Tampon of Digital.
These pages can be seen online frequently these days for almost any industry.
Tampon added:
"80 percent of the success lies on the quality of your content (design, information, uniqueness, etc.), the other 20 percent is based on how obtainable the link will be."
As you begin to decide where you'll focus your search for possible link prospects, try to find pages that have content similar to yours or fit into the same niche.
Once you've narrowed down the potential sites your material would fit with, you can pitch to back-linkers the advantages of linking to your site.
4. Forum Commenting
Although this link-building tactic could be deemed old-fashioned, it stills works, according to John Rampton of Forbes.
This strategy has been abused by spammers who add dialogue of no value to a post, sometimes by using automated responses.
If done correctly, forum commenting can lead to increased link-building and community around your brand.
If you're able to add quality commentary to high-quality industry posts, more relevant traffic can be directed to your website.
5. Interview Experts
Having a question-and-answer session with an industry afficionado is one of the easier ways to link-build, according to Neil Patel, cofounder of Quick Sprout.
Most experts enjoy talking about their interests and skill-sets, and many more have websites to do just that. Patel suggests asking your interviewee to link to your interview via social media once it is online to increase the value of your links.
"Find out if people have a press page before you ask them for an interview," Patel added.
"If they have one, the chance of them linking to your interview is over 95 percent." he added.
There are many link-building strategies with varying degrees of dedication of time and money.
Yet, while the action may seem tedious, the results still show the truth: link-building is still the best way to increase visibility in an online search, according to Chuck Price of Search Engine Watch.
Although the algorithms and discussion around these strategies will continue to change, Google's own Matt Cutts believes link-building is here to stay, according to an interview with Stone Temple Consulting.
Cutts sees links as one of the best ways to realize someone's relevance and sees future markup as a way to learn more.
What link-building strategies have you found to be the most successful?