Short Summary: Link building used to rely more on numbers rather than quality. But according to this year’s statistics, SEO experts have noted that it is apparent that a link-building strategy will be a more dominant aspect of search engine optimization compared to establishing an immense quantity of inferior ones.
And beyond top-notch content creation and blogging, search engines will give you a higher position if you have more high-quality backlinks leading to your website.
There will be no content exposure if there are no backlinks. Backlinks are any links from one website to another. However, not all backlinks are made equal. And to give you a proper understanding of it, let’s dig more into the main terminology about link building.
What is link building?
In SEO, link building is the process of obtaining other websites to connect to a page on another website to earn a higher ranking on the search engine result pages (SERPs) and improving search engine visibility. And in simple terms, it involves a one-way hyperlink commonly referred to as backlinks that redirect from one site to another. Marketers believe and consider that Link Building is the most critical and challenging aspect of SEO. But at the same time the one of the most rewarding when properly executed.
Importance of Link Building in SEO
Search engines like Google and Yahoo play a vital role in SEO as it is the one who determines if a website is worthy enough to get the recognition it deserves if it sees that content is consistently generating buzz across the web.
When website X connects to website Y, it sends a strong signal to Google’s algorithm that website B is deserving of higher rankings for related keywords. Backlinks drive organic traffic and the identifier that search engines use as the basis of how high a page should appear in their search results. These valuable links also help search engines to discover new websites that convert into referral traffic on which pages benefit. Link building also adds credibility and provides more revenue opportunities to the site being the other fundamental reason why links are a crucial component of any effective campaign.
What are Effective Link Building Methods?
In link building, you must utilize the best strategies that can help you build valuable links. Techniques that can deliver a positive impact on your search engines rankings and will be reliable to lead organic traffic to your sites. So, here are the 10 Best Link Building Methods for 2021 that can help you with those fundamentals.
1. Start Blogging
Quality backlinks are never acquired. Hard work is needed to earn them. Just like anything in this field, it will start with your brand. By consistently blogging relevant and valuable content, your brand can get more engagement and attention. Then as time goes by, you will gain authority in your industry that the public will naturally link to you and constantly comes back because of the quality of the content you consistently provide.
To rank high in search engines is the ultimate goal of every link-building strategy for SEO, and blogging is said to be the number one positive contributor to attain it.
2. Develop and Dispense Infographics
The benefit of using infographics is that they will continue to deliver organic traffic to your blogs and help you earn quality backlinks to get unsolicited engagement. When you create visual content, it can capture a wider audience because the public has a different take on obtaining information online. The use of infographics expands the form of content that becomes visually available also thus attracting links.
However, your infographics must be extraordinary or professionally-like created because everyone is investing and relying on it now to go viral. Gifographic is also the best option if you’re considering looking for shareable infographics.
3. Take advantage of Guest Post
Link building is also all about relationships. It’s very critical to establish links that will benefit your website rather than links that will hurt your standing in search results. Find other sites and websites that will willingly accept and share your guest post on their social media platforms and not only that but also websites that are within your niche and trusted web pages that are already ranking highly.
Guest posting is an excellent way to obtain connections. Thus, every blogging effort must result in traffic, so it is also necessary to understand your blog audience for that specific page. Guest blogging must be executed more on a tactical aspect to achieve the goal you set at the beginning. Because if done incorrectly, it can result in a negative effect on your blog.
4. Convert Mentions to Backlinks
Imagine how many backlinks you can get if you maximize every mention you get across the web. This method is probably the most efficient way to acquire new backlinks. Though it will be a thorough job to trace every mention about your brand or blog, there are online tools such as advance search operators that can help you with the process to convert it to backlink.
Make a kind gesture to reach out and give appreciation for mentioning your sites. Ask permission if you can add a hyperlink that will also be convenient to their audience. And as much as possible, don’t invest your time and effort tracking irrelevant links and focus on those high-ranking sites that had mentioned your brand.
5. Boost Engagement on Social Media
There is no better place to boost engagement but through social media. Social media has transformed digital marketing to expose sites to more and more people that can help you reach your desired target audience and unlooked-for engagement. Continuously update your audience by sharing helpful information and engaging topics.
Bloggers who are not active on social media or not considering this platform as a great source of engagement miss a huge opportunity to boost their overall site visibility and enhance their link profile. Social media gets more people to know about your brand and site URL and also help your page became more accessible for your following to reach your content.
6. Learn from Competitor’s Healthy Backlinks
Keep your competitor close and their healthy backlink closer to yours. It is very critical to be mindful of what your competitors are doing. Never be discouraged if they won valuable links from key sources because this only means that it is doable for any site. Know your direct competitors that ranking higher on search engines and adapt the process they are doing or the keywords they are using and learn from them.
Learning from competitors also includes replicating their best link but not in a way that will backfire on you. Social Media will be your ultimate go-to platform if you want to learn from the best and get every process right and on point for your links to be effective and climb the ranks.
7. Subscriptions to Newsletters
Subscription to Newsletters is an effective method but is always not given enough importance by marketers in obtaining site awareness. Since it is a consistent publication to members of a society or organization, it can constantly help increase backlinks and traffic to your site traffic. Plus, maximizing the use of effective and not-to-miss engagement is also a reliable and go-to practice for this link-building method.
8. Link Sources from Trusted Sites
Trusted leading sites are also establishing resources pages that you can use as a guide in developing your own. Gather and produce a highly acclaimed list of blogs, then convert it to buzz-worthy resource articles. The more blogs you can list, the better for the audience to get the information they are looking for and the more backlink you can get in return.
Then the next step is to request more backlinks through email outreach from those content creators whose works you included in your resource article. It is absolute that they will appreciate the gesture and will be thankful enough to return the favor. Link building is also about trust, and if you’re able to establish one from everyone in the industry, you can reap positive results.
9. Launch Campaigns
If funded well and the resources would allow, launching campaigns is indeed a wise linking idea. You can target a specific group of people or the general public to join, on which you can get numerous high-trust links. It can be in the form of a guest post to your blog using relevant topics and using specific criteria that must include a link directing to your page.
And make sure that it’s for a great cause and is worth their engagement because cheap campaigns are just a pure waste of effort. Promote it well and spread the word about it, and you will be surprised by the response and positive benefits it can deliver for your sites.
10. Track Down and Utilize Dead Backlink
The two primary causes of broken links are misspelled links or the transfer of the page to another domain. Sometimes even how much you build up and ensure that all your backlinks work, you can’t help but find broken backlinks that do not serve their prime purpose.
Being too complacent that all backlinks work is a drawback in link building, so to avoid this, the best option is to track down dead backlinks and convert them to something valuable. Make the most out of every opportunity to replace dead backlinks, even on pages that resemble the content you offer. Broken links should never be a barrier in increasing your site traffic but instead be redirected to more relevant and high-engaging content.
What are the Best Backlinking Practices and What to Avoid?
There are many other ways to gain backlinks and build your website link foundation. However, in your journey to becoming a professional SEO, you will encounter and hear of methods that although would seem to bring an easy one-shot success, but would actually bring your past efforts down the drain. So what are the best link-building practices, and what are the ones you should avoid?
Practice Traditional Link Building
The call for fast and timely results is the main reason why traditional link buildings techniques are still the go-to practice to get quality links. Though also referred to as the most common practices that are extensively utilized and adapted through the years. Yes, it might bring disadvantages to anyone since almost everyone is already using it. But if these approaches and the significant risk involved with them are thoroughly comprehended, you can still see your site in better rank positioning. And to name a few of these manual link-building strategies, this comprises guest blog posting, press release distribution, directory submission, reciprocal, and forum links.
Try Link Earning
High link-building efforts will always reward you with the same amount of time and resources that you invested. As other practices commonly involve assistance from an external party, link earning must start with creating high-quality and relevant content that has a better chance to go viral and will highly get public acceptance. These advanced tactics consist of interactive tools, infographics, newsjacking, content and expert roundups, interviews, and testimonials.
It’s time to start using these tools to create high-quality links to your website if you’re serious about building quality links to your website. Link building tools can save you time, help you stay consistent and organized, and provide results.
Be Cautious of Paid Link Building
Paid link-building strategies are tactics that can give opportunities to your brand to earn referral traffic. It is often in the form of giveaways, campaigns, scholarships, and sponsorship to give your brand exposure to which the public can benefit. But still, be cautious not to cross the line in investing in paid links because Google is very strict with these kinds of strategies, so always do everything in the right way base on Google guidelines.
Quick-Win Link Building
As the name suggests, it is a link-building technique that focuses on efficient ways of obtaining links using only a small-scale amount of time and resources. You will get a high reward that does not require much effort to implement. Reviving broken links, converting mentions to backlinks, obtaining links from suppliers, subscriptions links, and internal linking are just some of those strategies under this practice.
Never Engage with Black Hat Link Building
This link-building strategy is an unethical practice and often used to manipulate search engine rankings. And must not be regarded as a realistic alternative that is explicitly against the Google guidelines. Black Hat has been included in this list to bring awareness to everyone in the industry to avoid this link scheme and not tolerate this kind of ranking manipulation. Some of those strategies include obtaining links from hacked sites, comment spam, networks for private blogs, embedded links, paid links that pass PageRank, low-quality directories, and more.
Conclusion…
Marketers are fully aware that adapting search engine optimization (SEO) strategies are the most important and the most effective way to rank higher in search engines. Link building is not all about creating a website and welcoming anyone who wants to visit. It is a continuous process to earn, build and improve backlinks that will progress through time as the demand for high-quality content rises.
The real challenge doesn’t lie in which methods work best. But in obtaining valuable and trusted links naturally. And just like what we reiterate at the start, it’s not all about the quantity but the quality that can help you achieve those goals on why you need the above link-building methods in the first place.
So go and get invested in your preferred methods and focus on building high-quality backlinks that can help you reach the top of Google ranking.
