If you’re looking for ways to improve your SEO search rankings then it’s time to take link building seriously and create a link building strategy that works for you. By having those all-important links you can boost your domain authority and increase ROI. In today’s competitive world it’s essential to implement link building into your marketing strategy if you want to rise above the noise and improve SEO.
Not sure where to start? We have put together a brief overview of some of our top link building strategies to get you on your way.
Testimonial Link Building
When it comes to SEO and a link building strategy, testimonial link building is sure to score you powerful homepage link placements. Reviews and testimonials provide fresh (and frequent) content and help build a relationship of trust between you and the customer. Testimonials can signal to search engines that a page has been updated; this increases your page crawls and has the potential to push you up the Google ranks depending on the quality of the review. Testimonials and reviews also give you a chance to rank for long-tail keyword terms.
More importantly, testimonials or review pages add credibility to a brand. Reviews influence customers in the decision-making phase more than anything else, so positive reviews can increase conversion.
Link Roundups
Let’s start with the basics. What is a link roundup? Link roundups are weekly, daily, or monthly curated lists of the best content from within your industry. The reason why this is a dream for anyone building links is because the sole objective of these pages is to link out to other websites. This means those sites are more than happy to share links.
Roundups consist of quality-content, and quality content means shareable content. It is very likely that you’ll notice a spike in website traffic when your links get featured on one of these pages. That traffic is an added bonus to the SEO value of having back-links on trusted websites.
Resource Pages
Resource page link building is not a new link building strategy but it’s still one of the most popular and effective link building tactics around.
Why is it so popular? Three reasons:
- It works.
- It’s scalable.
- Lastly, it’s relatively easy.
What is resource page link building?
Resource page link building is where you get back-links from web pages that curate and link out to useful industry resources. A resource page’s value is determined solely by the quality and quantity of the other resources to which it links. When you reach out and suggest useful content to the creators of such pages, what you’re doing is helping them to improve the page.
An Internal Link Building Strategy
An internal link building strategy is one that leads to another page on the same website. In order for your content to rank, it needs links. Your posts are more likely to be found by Google if they are linked to and from somewhere on the web. Google can also determine the structure of your website through internal links. They can also be used to create a hierarchy on your site, allowing you to give the most important pages and posts more link value than other pages that are less valuable. By implementing a thought-through internal linking strategy you can boost SEO for your business!
Expired Domains
Expired domains are a fairly untapped market still, despite them being a very effective way to accelerate SEO performance. Why are expired domains a valuable asset? On its own an expired domain doesn’t have any value, however, it becomes valuable when:
- A) It has a quality link profile (with unoptimised anchor text)
- B) It was relevant to your website
- C) It wasn’t previously used for spam
The main benefit of using expired domains for link building is their quality link profile with content relevant to your industry. By creating a 301 redirect of the expired domains to your website you can boost your search engine ranking.
Guest Blogging
Guest Blogging is the practice of publishing articles with unique content on blogs relevant to your industry. Known as second-tier link building it’s an often-ignored strategy for where you acquire links to webpages outside your domain that link to your pages. Second-tier link building is not a new topic; it’s about bringing up your brand-relevant content that is hosted outside your domain, basically, it’s about promoting your promoters (linking to pages that link to you).
Broken Link Building
What is broken link building? Broken link building (also known as Dead link building) is the practice of building more backlinks through the process of replacing links to 404 pages with a working link to a current website. Here’s how it works:
- Find broken, dead or otherwise non-functioning pages related to your topic area or industry.
- Choose pages you can recreate (with original content) or that are related to content you’ve already created.
- Reach out to site owners, letting them know they’re linking to a broken page and suggesting your content.
Reverse Engineering
If you can get the same backlinks that your competitor’s have, you’re in the fast lane to the top of Google’s search results. Reverse engineering is the process of analysing an existing system or structure (whether it be a marketing system, or the structure of a website) and using the findings to establish a similar system. The thing to be wary of here is that you do not duplicate anything that is protected by copyright laws. However, when it comes to the systems used to optimise and to market a website, generally you will not be at risk of violating these laws. Tools such as SEOpen can help you discover exactly which websites your competitors are building backlinks from.
Newsjacking
Newsjacking is the method of injecting your brand into the stories or headlines of the day. You simply find a story that you can relate back to your brand or topic in some way or another then, voilà! You become instantly relevant. This technique offers multiple benefits:
- It can get your name and your content in front of a large number of people.
- It can demonstrate your brand’s expertise on a particular subject.
- Plus, it can help make your audience think of your website as a place to go for updates and newsworthy content.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a means of promoting a businesses products or services through partnering with popular social media users or bloggers. Influencers generally have a large, engaged audience that brands want to tap into to help build brand awareness, credibility and drive sales.
Influencer marketing is relatively new strategy (a few years now) that arrived just as people were increasingly tuning out ads, and brands needed a new way to reach their target audience. Since then it’s grown to be one of the most popular marketing strategies out there. The benefits of influencer marketing include:
- Reach a bigger audience
- Build trust
- Grow your social following
- Increase site traffic
- Get more leads
- Drive sales
Data Driven Content
Content driven from the results of comprehensive data analysis will always out-perform any other strategy. The same is true when it comes to link attracting content. Data driven content analysis can include original research, such as correlation studies and other applications of statistical techniques to data. The data itself may be accessible to everyone, or it may be information obtained through more proprietary means.
Link Reclamation
Another link building strategy is link reclamation. This is the process of finding, fixing or replacing broken links that lead to your website, or replacing links that aren’t passing value as efficiently as they should or could. This applies to links on your own site to internal pages and external links other people are using on their sites.
The benefits to link reclamation:
- It’s something you can start right away without assets
- It’s a low risk/low investment form of link building
- Most brands will have unlinked mentions, however big brands tend to have the most and therefore see the biggest routine returns
By following the process of finding and fixing broken links through link reclamation you can maintain the quality and SEO power of your back-links.
Conclusion
There is no denying the benefits of a link building strategy for your SEO. If you look at any trusted site that performs well in the search engine results you will notice two things:
- Their content will be regular, high-quality content that is valuable to their target audience consequently, making it shareable content.
- Their link building game will be strong and noteworthy.
These 12 tactics are not set in stone but offer a general overview of link building strategies that work. There are always new tactics to discover along the way. If you’d like to discuss a link building strategy for your business then get in touch today on 0870 062 8760 or email us at info@aiminternet.co.uk. Find out here how working with an agency can help your business.
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