All SEO practitioners know that link-building is a vital component of SEO. When search engines crawl web pages, they aren’t just looking at the content of each page; they’re also looking at the number of links that point to that page from external websites and how reputable or high quality those websites are. Link-building is a significant ranking factor and the success of your link-building will have a big impact on how well you rank in search results but it’s not this simple. In order to really maximise the effect of your link-building campaigns, we’d recommend adhering to the following instructions.
Monitor and Review Your Own Inbound Link Profile
Keeping track of the inbound links coming to your website from other websites is really important. It’s simple to do but many people forget that the starting point for any link building campaign is to know what links are already pointing to your website. Without checking your own link profile you won’t know if you already have any high quality or low quality links pointing to your site. If you have low quality links pointing to your website, this could be affecting your sites performance within search – something you will need to remedy with immediate effect. Monitoring your own inbound links with Google’s Search Console or another tool will give you a greater awareness of your own inbound link profile so you can make sure that you’re linking with reputable, well-established websites.
Don’t Rely On Masses of Content for Your Success
Producing high quality content that’s rich with keywords is vital for your SEO but spending all of your time trying to put out huge volumes of content every week isn’t advisable. Rather than spending time searching for topics that are loosely related to what you do, focus on churning out content that is specific, topical and completely relevant to your audience or you’ll just be wasting your time. The content must be engaging, interesting to read and give the user something valuable in order to attract shares and high quality links.
Don’t Just Build Links, Build Relationships
Rather than only interacting with influencers in order to get a mention or a link on Twitter, focus on actually developing a rapport with them. This would entail engaging with them about things that aren’t necessarily related to your industry; they’ll take more of a notice and a liking to you if you’re willing to engage with them about things they’re actually interested in.
Share Third Party Content and Help Others
Rather than only sharing and tweeting about your own articles, share and show appreciation for the work of other people! Not only is it a nice thing to do, it’s also a way of building the rapport we spoke about in the previous point. Sharing third party content is an effective way of building relationships, making contacts and establishing you as a credible person in your field. Who knows, you might get a link from a share back as a gesture of good will.
Figure Out Where Best To Promote Your Content
Rather than spending time promoting your content across all social media platforms, it’s important to focus on the most relevant platforms to your business. This can be determined through trial and error and by using apps such as BuzzSumo that give you a break down of how well your articles are performing on each platform. Keeping a close eye on what platforms get the most engagement will allow you to promote your content with maximum efficiency in the future.
Keep Doing What Works Well
Using Google Search Console and Analytics find out what links send you the most relevant traffic and aim to build more links on that particular website. Perhaps you have a strong link from an old article on a website that still gives you traffic every month, so why not try building another link to a newer article on that same website? Utilise all the link building opportunities available to you and you’ll see a surge in your conversions.
Remember That Your Ranking Isn't Everything
Don’t obsess over your rankings as there are other things that are just as important. Many people express dislike for no followed links which are links that carry no optimisation weight and have no positive ranking signals. However, these links still send traffic to your website and any sort of traffic referrals are ultimately a good thing. If you get a conversion out of something, it’s generally positive.
In order to really maximise the effectiveness of your link-building campaigns, professional help is always advisable. We can make sure you’re ticking all the right boxes when it comes to link-building; get in touch to arrange a consultation to discuss your SEO.