Link building remains a critical and powerful marketing tool for improving the search visibility of your business online. Unfortunately, it is becoming more challenging to build the kind of links that increase organic search traffic that will lead to encouraging strategic business growth. Here are four strategies that can help you improve SEO and build links to drive more traffic to your website.
1. Making Contextual Relevance Important
Link building has become more about your users rather than your online presence. With the arrival of the Google Hummingbird algorithm, the need for building links to fantastic content has been reemphasized. The update focuses on understanding the context of the search engine query, as opposed to identifying specific keyword queries. This provides you with the opportunity to create content that is need-based rather than keyword focused.
2. Building Relationships is the Next Level
The new link building process is about building relationships with websites and their audiences. Take some time to identify a common goal that you share with similar sites. This can act as a catalyst for a mutually beneficial relationship. Building a natural connection with other websites and their audiences will set the stage for natural link building, which Google appreciates.
3. Think Long Term
You can’t be in a hurry to build these new relationships. There are numerous reasons why a blogger might not want to create a relationship with you right away. It is your job to convince them that you can help them with their own brand-building efforts. This will take time. If you come across as someone who genuinely wants to make a meaningful contribution to their site, you will be able to gain their trust and develop a sustainable relationship with them.
4. Combine Digital Marketing Activities
Digital marketing activities, including social media and content marketing, have become intricately woven into the link building process. If you can get your social and content marketing tactics right, your link building efforts will follow. Contemporary link building has become a convergence of various tactics that should be a part of your overall marketing strategy.
5. Do It Right
There are certain link building practices that seem to work but are not good strategies in the long run. These are so-called black hat link building tactics that may initially increase traffic to your website, but will ultimately put your site and business at risk of being penalized by Google. In addition, your business reputation would suffer since people don’t like it when you’re just baiting for clicks and views online.
Black hat link building tricks search engine algorithms by keyword stuffing, cloaking, poor content placement, and using private link networks. Cloaking displays one piece of content to online visitors and different content to search engines.
If you want to do it right, your best option is to implement white hat link building strategies as this is an acceptable form of earning traffic and ranking high on search engine results pages (SERPs). Through white hat link building strategies, your links will appear on searchable articles that are written for content information and value. This includes published articles through guest blogging, business listings, testimonials, and directory submissions.
White hat link building practices ensure that the terms and links in a content piece are natural, relevant, and useful for searchers who are looking for such information. Search engine giants rank websites with relevant keywords and content higher than low-quality sites that don’t give value to a user.
The way search engines look at link building has dramatically changed over the last several years. While it is still essential in the grand scheme of things, it is now more target audience driven than anything else. Use these tips to improve your link building and see how quickly your efforts drive traffic to your site.