Search engine algorithms sift through many factors when crawling through pages on the internet. Among the factors that they use for page rank, inbound links from popular websites, what we call good links, leading to yours can play a substantial role in increasing your website rankings. It is a much talked about subject but many webmasters do not understand the value of link building strategies.
So when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website, link building is one of the areas that you might want to focus on.
What is Link Building?
When we talk about link building, we are mostly referring to inbound links or backlinks (other types of links are outbound links and internal links). Backlinks are links from other websites leading into yours. Search engine crawlers look for the total number of backlinks and also the authority of websites that point towards pages of your website.
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A popular and authoritative website linking to yours enhances your ranking. Quality links are what you want because links from spammy or suspicious websites can result in a ban for your website.
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Links from websites that are relevant to your niche, say listings of summer art camps for kids, will help your kid’s related website rank higher. When building links look for bloggers or other places that support your niche.
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For local businesses such as real estate, medical or law practices look for links from high-quality websites that cater to the local community which will increase local SEO visibility. Include links to social media to broaden your audience.
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Links which are inbound which have relevant anchor text to help your SEO. For example, if your window cleaning business website is linked to the word “window cleaners” then that will help your website visibility, more so than just the linking to generic words for example, “click this”. Build links that provide a greater appeal.
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More than half the Internet is spam, so in order to show that your website is trustworthy, links can help. BackLinks from authority websites such as .gov or .edu will help search engine crawlers recognize your website as a non-spam, and a trustworthy one. The higher number of such links the better.
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Use press releases to build high-quality links. When your press release is picked up by a distribution or newswire source your backlink that will allow your links to be seen by many news organizations. Most of the search engines will pick up press releases as news and your backlinks in the news story or release give your website a tad bit more authority.
In a sense, backlinks are like peer-reviewed content or website. The higher the Domain Authority of the website that’s linking to you the better your reputation gets on the search engines and those links will help you rank higher in a google search or on other search engines.
Getting Started on Link Building
A. Keywords
Imagine you want to rank for a keyword like “glassmaking”. You should first check the search results for that word. You will see a number of websites that are ranking for that keyword. Your best bet is to earn inbound links from those web pages. While it may not be easy, even a handful of good links will help with your SEO.
You could also get a lot of info by analyzing how the top results are using backlinks to their advantage. If they are your competitors that are garnering the coveted top spots on the SERP then you need to dig and analyze their content marketing, backlinks both internal and external link building strategies and link building techniques. Take the time to look at links that show up as broken.
Contact the owner of the broken link and offer to provide a good link to replace the missing link. That will help the other webmaster or SEO too.
B. Competitors
If you are just starting out, identify a few potential competitors who are already ranking for the keyword that you’d like to rank for. Analyze the backlinks profile in ahrefs or Moz some other tool for each of your competitors. It doesn’t have to be ahrefs or Moz as there are plenty of free backlink analyzers. This will give you a good idea of how you should create a link building strategy. Strong link building techniques, watching for good link opportunities will improve your search engine rankings. Look at your competitors link building tactics by studying their backlink profile, Are they going after both no follow backlinks like those from the news media that carry press releases, or are they going after do follow links from the same group? Both sets of links have value but no follow links have a lesser value when you are comparing link juice or the power of do follow links. Either way, links can help drive traffic to your website. Many site owners across the world have relatively little knowledge of the link building tools that are available to help boost your page rank.
C. Maintenance
Broken links tend to accumulate over time and they are inevitable as your site grows. Many links don’t remain valid, websites can shut down and over time the bad backlinks can cause problems for your SEO and even your page rank and that affects search rankings and relevancy. When your site displays internal or external links that are no longer relevant links, then according to Google’s guidelines these errors or broken links show up as 404 errors (or URL not found).
Page errors of any sort can hurt your page rank and your SEO work and let’s not forget that your target audience will be turned off and they will leave your site. Maintaining and checking your own sites link building
Search engine crawlers also check the freshness of your content and its usability. This is so that they can ensure that they are providing the most relevant and up to date data to its users on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
So, keep working on gaining inbound links for your own site. As for broken links, many tools are available for auditing broken links on your website. Once you’ve identified the 404 links, either remove them or update them. This will also help your SEO ranking.
Backlinks can also provide you with referral traffic, which is another search engine ranking factor, as well as increase website traffic and visibility. You can earn good links by publishing good content. When influencers or others see that you are providing quality content, including infographics they will know that you are working hard to better your site with a solid link building campaign.
Webmasters and SEO’s reward those that do the hard work of maintaining and gathering quality links. Another way to get good quality links is to work with experts in your field. Experts can easily be found on LinkedIn. Bloggers or working with guest blogging or even providing guest posting works well too. Most influencers, bloggers or guest posting will get you at least an editorial link which helps your link juice. Working with quality influencers almost assures that you will not receive low-quality backlinks but conversely if you build relationships, provide great content, maintain backlinks and always use quality content.
If you are still reading here are some extra items that will help you with your own sites SEO and page rank.
Will blog comments help with SEO? It is our opinion that high-quality comments that are on point will drive traffic which will also improve the overall ranking of your content. The downside depending on the type of organization you are you will need to police these comments which in itself can be a full-time job.
What is a piece of content? Something that is posted to your website or blog. It could be a long or short story, an infographic, an image or a meme. They are all pieces of content.
What is the homepage? The home page or main page of your site is used to facilitate navigation to other pages on the site by providing links to prioritized and recent articles and pages, and possibly a search box. According to Wikipedia, it is the homepage or landing page for most websites. A link from your home page to another location on your website is an example of an internal link.
What is a Case study? According to the Oxford Dictionary, a case study is a process or record of research in which detailed consideration is given to the development of a particular person, group, or situation over a period of time.
What is a google penguin and do I need it to use Google for SEO? Google’s Penguin is a codename for a Google algorithm update that was first announced on April 24, 2012. The update is aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
What is a link exchange: According to Wikipedia, A link exchange is a confederation of websites that operates similarly to a web ring. Webmasters register their web sites with a central organization, that runs the exchange, and in turn, receive from the exchange HTML code which they insert into their web pages.
What is broken link building? According to Moz broken link building is a tactic used by SEO’s and webmasters alike to find links that are broken where you could supply content to replace that link. As a link building tactic, broken link building is a white-hat, effective, scalable, content-focused link building strategy that builds links through finding broken links, recreating that broken content, and helping webmasters replace broken links with your corrected link.
What is anchor text? Anchor text as defined by the Oxford Dictionary appears highlighted in a hypertext link and that can be clicked to open the target web page.
What is an authoritative backlink?
Need more on link building? Just call the team at Results Driven Marketing, LLC where we craft only artisanal high-quality backlinks for discriminating SE’s and webmasters.
What is anchor text? Anchor text as defined by the Oxford Dictionary appears highlighted in a hypertext link and that can be clicked to open the target web page.
What is an authoritative backlink? We wrote a page about authoritative backlinks too. But for our purposes today we can state that a referring domain of high quality that was configured using SEO best practices. The website ranks well in Google and as many high quality referring domains.
Need more on link building? Just call the team at Results Driven Marketing, LLC where we craft only artisanal high-quality backlinks for discriminating SEOs and webmasters.
Did we miss something that you think is important to the topic? If so drop Janeene a note at janeene@digitalrdm.com
Janeene High is the owner of Results Driven Marketing, a 100% women-owned business headquartered in Wynnewood, PA with an office in Philadelphia, PA.
Janeene and her team have been helping customers increase qualified traffic to their websites by using the latest digital marketing strategies, including SEO (search engine optimization), PPC advertising (pay per click), Display advertising and social media marketing. If you or your business are looking to be found by more people that need your services, contact Results Driven Marketing, LLC or give Janeene a call 215-393-8700.
See this article as it was originally published on November 16, 2018 and was updated yesterday.
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Tags: Design Inspiration, Internet Marketing, Web Design, Backlinks, link building
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