Use Your Link Building Campaign to Improve Your SEO

Ever since the inception of a humble search engine named Google, the optimization of a business or a brand’s website is as critical as never before. This all due to the fact that the online presence of such businesses aspire to be at the top of the search results, and want to dominate the online industry.

While the SEO scene is a landscape of constant evolution, one critical component has never been replaced – which only highlights its importance in search engine optimization, namely, Link Building.

Whenever Google determines your page’s rank in organic search results, the two most crucial components that it looks at are the content of your page and the link that point to each and every content.

However, the thing about Link building is that, essentially, it should be hard to do. The primary problem that link builders encounter is that it is difficult to acquire links from trusted and authoritative web pages – you can think of this as the link building equivalent of academic citations. Building links will take up a considerable amount of your time, and will require a lot of hard work to obtain the results that you aim for. So, here are some tried, tested, and trusted link building ideas you can try to improve your SEO.

Skyscraper Technique

This technique is about looking for great content under your choice of keywords, and improving the chosen content to make it your own. Consequently, you will be generating far better content than any of your competitors while staying true to the objectives of your website. However, this task is challenging, to say the least, and the description that is included here is only half of the workload that the Skyscraper Technique requires. Here’s a step by step process:

• Choose the keywords that you need to rank up in. Here’s a comparison: if the keywords are the battlefields in a war, the skyscraper technique is the guns you would use to fight.
• Look for your strongest competitor. Input your chosen keyword into the search bar and track down the highest ranked result, they will be your strongest competitor. You can use tools to scout for their backlinks. One tool I recommend is GrowthBar where you can see backlinks of your competitors right from the search results.
• Assess the content on your competitor’s website while thinking about how you can make them better. Determine if anything needs improvement or if any points need emphasis.
• Proceed to create a new and improved content that will be published on your website
• Search for websites that link to your competitor’s content. There a variety of SEO tools that have this feature, one of which is Competitor Backlink Search by WebCEO. Aside from looking for your competitor’s linkages, you should also look for websites that are not currently linking to your competitor, but dabbles on the same field as the both of you.
• Reach out to those linking sites’ owners and ask if they could link to your website as well, but write your message well while not going the extra mile for niceties. Basically, be straightforward, but be courteous.

Reclaim Links That are Yours, to Begin With

Search for mentions of your brand online, and check if they have links attached to them. If you have found some potential websites, it is time to email them. It won’t be too hard to ask them for links because they are already talking about your brand in a positive light.

This is a method that can be helpful when you have no links or have broken links because this will give you a chance to rank back up in terms of link building.

Make Use of Broken Links

Whenever a domain that dabbles in the same field as you changes their URL, or effectively goes out of business, the links that direct to their content can already be considered broken. Being aware of a competitor’s change in online presence can definitely earn you some extra links; as long as you make sure that your website is a worthy replacement.

When you have found broken links, it is important to remember that the broken link should be something relevant to your own content. If it is, then you should communicate with the website that has a broken link. Most of these webmasters would never leave their broken links as it is, so there is a high chance that they accept your offer and link to your website.

Testimonials

Backlinks can be easily obtained when you leave a testimonial as a customer in a reputable company’s site. Essentially, companies that sell products or services love to highlight their customer’s testimonies whenever they could; because there is no better advertisement than the opinions of your customers. For that reason, companies also love to build up their customer’s testimonies by linking to each and every customer’s website.

However, the problem that you are going to encounter is that you have to buy their product, and there is actually no assurance that they will link to your website.

Guest Blog Posts

Guest blogging has always been a primary strategy when it comes to link building; as long as there is a need for fresh, new, and quality content, it won’t be losing its importance anytime soon. This would mean that you will be writing for other websites, and they will be linking to your website as a means of reciprocation.

Something to take note of is that guest blogging for low authority websites and having links from them will provide little to no help for your rankings. However, links from high authority sites will help significantly help you; as long as the links are relevant and in context.

Creating and Sharing Infographics

Designing and creating your own infographic is up to your skills, it would be worth sharing as long as you deem it a work of quality. Once you have a great infographic, you should make an HTML piece that that embeds the infographic to a web page, and having it link to your own website.

After this process, there are two ways in which you can earn backlinks and improve your overall link building performance:

• Submit them to websites that share infographic material. You would most likely have to prepare a unique introductory text for each of them, and you would even have to pay some of them to host your infographic.
• An easier way to go about infographic sharing is to offer it to bloggers that are in the same field or niche as you.

 

An Interview

There are two ways to go about in using interviews to gain backlinks and increased traffic, they are as follow:

• You are the Interviewee: This could only work when you are already a leader in your own respective niche. However, if you are not, but you still regard yourself as a capable expert in the field, you would need to look for websites that interview experts in the same niche as you, and you can volunteer as an interviewee.
• You are the Interviewer: People have an inkling to reading or learning the opinions of field leaders, as to improve their knowledge in that certain field. You can already take advantage of this by interviewing a thought leader in your niche, and ask them to link to your interview page – or you can do the reverse, and ask them if they could link to your website when they publish the interview on their page.

This will ensure that you will have a modest amount of traffic that enters your website, and you will also be acquiring a backlink from a highly authoritative website.

Trading for Blogger Reviews

In today’s time, bloggers mostly make a living by reviewing products and services for different companies. It is mostly a relationship built on mutual rewards, and if you own a business or a brand that offers products and services, you can use this to acquire backlinks to your website.

It is important to remember that asking for reviews and links in return for objects of value is considered as a violation by the Google Webmaster Guideline. So, make sure that whenever you offer a product or service to bloggers, you will not be explicitly stating that you ask them for reviews, and just let them figure out the rest. Basically, you should not explicitly state that there is a trade of product or services of value between your business and the blogger.

Key Takeaway

Being an expert in link building will require constant effort, hard work, determination, and passion; that is why you have to make sure that you are ready to take on a daunting task like link building. However, when you have already gained the sufficient expertise in link building, you will notice the increased traffic to your website; and your overall rank in organic search results will be higher – as long as you do not go against any of the rules and guidelines enforced by Google.

Are you ready to improve your link building strategy? Do you have any other link building ideas you want to share? Share your ideas and opinions in the comments below.