Effective Link Building Strategies
It is very important to use a wide variety of link-building methods. Just like in your overall marketing strategy, putting all of your eggs in one basket is not what Google wants to see. If something should happen to one method or strategy, then all of your efforts have just been for nothing. Here are several methods you can use for effective link building.
Guest posting
Guest posting on other blogs or websites is a great way to get your content in front of new eyes. However, posting low quality, useless, short articles is a waste of time. You should only guest post on high authority websites that you are likely to get traffic from. Guest posting will not only get you links, but you may also receive links from people who read your content and link back to you or the post. This is added SEO value with very little work.
Outreach link building
This method is developing a list of websites to reach out to. Here are a couple tips from the writers at Search Engine Journal
Run a back link analysis of your top 5 competitor sites.
Eliminate links with a page authority below 20.
Eliminate any no-follow links (unless they are likely to provide significant referral traffic).
Export your list and sort from highest page authority to lowest and work your way down the list of sites looking for ways to get a link. Finding the link to your competitor and improving the content they used to get that link is the best way to get your own link. You can also look for broken links to competitor sites and offer a new piece of similar content for the site owner to link to.
Send a quick email to the site owner and tell them what you have to offer.
Repeat until you have gone through the entire list, then find sites ranking 5-10 for your keyword and repeat steps 1-4.
Social link building
Finding links via social media is a newer method of finding link opportunities. How do you find social media links? Find profiles that closely resemble your niche and share your link or own profile. Monitor your user engagement and identify the content that was heavily shared, commented on, retweeted, etc. Take that content and recreate something that is closely related to the original post. You could contact everyone who engaged with that original post and let them know that you have something new to share.
Directory submissions
Find quality directories that you can submit your website to. However, there are thousands of low-quality directories that you should not waste your time with. Some examples of high-quality directories are “Best of the Web,” “Yahoo Directory,” and “Business.com.” The best thing to do is find directories that are human-edited.
Comment on blogs
Find blogs that are closely related to your website or niche and only comment on those. Do not waste your time commenting on blogs that have nothing to do with your industry. Your comments should add to the conversation and encourage further interaction from the writer(s). This should help you build a relationship with people in your industry and eventually they may let you guest post on their website.
The niche you are in and your industry will determine the best link-building techniques for you to use. Remember to use high-quality links from authority websites and don’t waste your time with low-quality directories and irrelevant blogs.
