Link Building Strategies
A successful link building campaign will reward you with better visibility (higher search query rankings), increased search traffic, more frequent search spider crawling of your site, and increased referral traffic (traffic from links).
If you do not see these metrics increase after your campaign, you need either better on-page optimization and/or better link targets.
Before I get into different linking strategies, a quick disclaimer: The suggestions listed below are for information purposes only and the methods mentioned are not intended to promote any one specific link building tactic. You (and your client) need to have an objective to measure success against – traffic, revenue, branding, leads, or what-ever and from there you can determine what methods you think would benefit you best.
Step One
Start every campaign with the question – Why?
Successful companies know “why” they exist and the same holds true for successful campaigns. Rather than getting customers to buy into the what – get them to buy into the why.
Building links for the sake of building links may help rankings – but is that the goal? Without asking “why” are we building links, it will be difficult to determine if you’re building the right links and executing the right strategy. Once you have the reason “why,” you are in a much better position to start defining a strategy that will not only deliver the links, but links that will help the business hit its goals.
Common Campaign Strategies
There is no “one way” to create and administer a link building campaign. Your activities will depend on the type of website you have, the vertical you are working in, and what your objective is.
Small websites might be able to succeed with manual link building activities like directory submissions and link requests. Larger websites will require more scalable solutions.
Here are a few linking ideas to get you started:
Have Clients Link to You
By contacting your partners and loyal customers you can use this strategy and build links quickly and easily – and be sure to ask if you can include your information (and link) in the footer of that website you’re creating. These types of links are one of the simplest ways to get your brand (and link) out there.
Create a Blog
Build a blog that matters. Add valuable, informative and entertaining resources aimed at your target audience. This content and link building strategy is so popular that it’s one of the few methods recommended by Matt Cutts (Google). By creating a blog, you will have the ability to contribute fresh material on a consistent basis, participate in conversations across the web, and earn listings and links from other blogs, including blogrolls and blog directories.
READ: Start here if you need a starting point…Although primarily aimed at offering tips on how to make money with your blog, Darren Rowse and his ProBlogger website can provide you with some excellent advice on how to create content and increase readership.
Content Marketing
Creating high quality content and images that inspire viral sharing and natural linking is referred to as “link bait.” By leveraging your knowledge within your industry or brand, you are able to create unique and insightful content and graphics that your audience will share. These types of high quality, editorially earned links (votes) are invaluable to building trust, authority, and rankings potential.
READ: Want to know about how to create content that goes viral? Check out this free online course that not only offers tips for brainstorming topics and creating content, but shares tactics for publishing and sharing your work. Ed Fry (Distilled): SEO Guide to Creating Viral Linkbait and Infographics.
Guest Blogging
Are you an expert in your industry? If so, you have an opportunity to create content and post it on other websites (in your niche). This tried and true method not only gets you a link from an industry related website, it gets you and your content in front of your target audience which can build your brand and trust factors quickly.
READ: Because Guest Blogging has become so popular, Google has begun scrutinizing these posts to see if they are paid links, spam, or just great content. Here’s an article by Jennifer Slegg: Matt Cutts on How to Guest Blog Without Looking Like a Spammer to Google.
Digital PR
Today’s Public Relations isn’t about churning out mass press releases – it’s about making connections and getting your content in the conversation. By blending SEO, social media and content marketing with industry influencers, you can secure coverage for your content in the circles your audience listens to.
READ: For a better understanding of Digital PR, check out this article by Carrie Morgan: What is Digital PR? Carrie is a 20+ year industry veteran and has contributed to some of the PR industries largest publications.
Resource Link Building
Your audience loves resources that help them answer their questions – it’s their number one search. By finding resource pages in your industry that have broken links, you’re in a position to contact the webmaster of that website (resource) and offer an alternative quality replacement resource – which just happens to have your link on the page.
READ: Currently considered one of the top five most effective link building tactics, broken link building offers the potential for you to create links en masse. Learn some techniques for finding broken links in this article by Ken McGaffin: Broken Link Building: How to Find Thousands of Broken Link Opportunities at a Time.
Paid Link Sources
Search engines spend a lot of time and energy trying to detect paid links, however, it’s impossible for them to detect and discredit all of them. As a result, some SEO’s will turn to paid links as a way to manipulate website popularity and search rankings. They do so with great risk – websites caught buying links or participating in paid link schemes risk severe penalties that could cause their rankings to drop into oblivion.
Additional Information
READ: Because link building is so essential, I’ve added a second link building guide to help you develop this critical (and challenging) SEO skill. It would be wise for you to devote some serious resources (time and money) towards learning how to build links. Link Building, The Definitive Guide, by Backlinko is a great resource that will walk you through the steps including: fundamentals, content marketing, email marketing, guest posting, link building tools, creative ideas, case studies and even black hat techniques. Roll up your sleeves and get started!
READ: Still looking for more ideas? Link building tactics are only limited by your own creativity and budget. If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work, here are 12 more tactics offered by Jason Addre that were published on the Moz Blog.
READ: Sometimes it’s better to know “what not to do” rather than than learning trail by error. Read through this top ten list, 10 Worst Link Building habits, by Julie Joyce published in Search Engine Land before you begin and avoid the no-no’s many SEO’s make.
Conclusion
SEO is a war – not a battle. By focusing your strategies on the long term, like building content for your audience (and allowing links to be built naturally), you are more likely to be rewarded with long term rankings and little worry about search engine penalization.
So where is SEO and link building headed? Good question. Here’s what the good folks at Distilled think…