Link building is the method of creating links on high ranking websites that are related to your target market back to your site. The major search engines factor in the number of quality links a site has pointing to them when determining their page rank. Link building is an important part of SEO, as high-quality links from authority sites can significantly improve your site’s search engine rankings. The more links pointing to your website, the higher your search engine rank will be. Focus on getting high ranking websites linking back to you, websites with high pagerank.
Achieving a high ranking in the SEs takes time, particularly with highly competitive keywords. There are no shortcuts to success, as they say, trying to manipulate the SEs may work short term, but the search engines will eventually catch on, penalizing you. Following search engine guidelines, creating quality content that users want, and building quality links will ensure your site is "future proof", ranking well now as well as in the future, regardless of SE updates.
Create A Successful Link Building Strategy with Blogs
Blogs are a great way to create a successful link building strategy. They can include multimedia such as video to make them more compelling. Readers can leave comments, which helps build engaging content. If you create interesting content that people want to read, you can organically build high quality links over time. Write articles related to your niche to draw readers in and drive them to click on your website once they finish reading to learn more about you and your offer. Keep in mind your article is essential to a successful link building strategy, so make sure you put effort into it to get as much exposure as possible.
Guest Post To Strengthen Your Link Building Strategy
Similar to blogging, guest posting is another good link building strategy in which one creates posts on sites outside of their own to build links back to their site. By providing useful content you can build a good link building strategy. Share information that is of value to users and search for high quality websites that are relevant to your niche. Keep posts simple and make certain they convey something about your website.
More Link Building Strategies
Search engines look for natural results. Strive to ensure every website link is related to your niche. For example, if your website is an auto parts shop, linking to an auto repair shop would be acceptable. If your auto parts site were to link to say a wedding blog, that would be seen as unnatural. A good rule of thumb is if it doesn’t relate to your website, it’s not a good link.
High-quality sites will appreciate getting a contextual link from your site. Make sure to link to their relevant posts in your content. Contextual backlinks are vital for off-page SEO, and they work together to build a solid foundation for your link building strategy.
Avoid reciprocal links, as this method is generally a mutual exchange to increase link count. Search engines can see reciprocal links as a manipulation tactic. This is not to say that two websites can't link to each other, but it should be done so in a natural way, not as an agreement to increase link count. One-way links carry much more weight than reciprocal links, so focus more so on getting sites to link to you.
Search engines seek effective results. It is better to have a small number of quality links rather than a large number of poor links. In fact, having an excessive amount of links can do more harm than good. For example, gaining 1,000 links within a month, but none of the links being related to your site is going to put you at risk of being penalized by the search engines, causing your ranking to drop drastically. Now, you have some major issues to attend to, cleaning up toxic links, and trying to get back into the good graces of the SEs. It's better to build related links naturally, for example, if you were to get only 10 links related to your niche within a month, that would be much more effective than the 1,000 unrelated links, especially in the long term. The natural links would be much less likely to get your site penalized, they would actually help increase the ranking and authority of your site. It's better to focus on quality rather than quantity when link building.
Managing Your Link Building Strategy
Link building is one of the most essential factors of SEO. There are several simple things you can do every day to manage your link building strategy. Keep a log of dead, irrelevant, poor links and prune them appropriately. If you have more than 25 links, creating a directory could help in managing and organizing the links. If you decline a legitimate link request, be sure to write an email to the webmaster explaining your decision.
Respond to link requests in a timely manner. You may get many spam contacts, which you should have a system in place to track, block, and otherwise handle. Other link requests may not be a good fit, so be sure to assess each legitimate request. If you decide to decline a legitimate link request, be sure to write an email to the webmaster explaining your decision. If the site is related to your website, it may be able to make changes and become a valuable link partner. Common courtesy goes a long way, especially in today's world where it's becoming less and less common.
Make sure your links are working properly, relevant, and sending traffic to your website. If they are not, take the time to fix them. You don't want links that are dead, pointing to irrelevant content, anything of poor quality, etc. It's also a good idea to keep track of the websites linking to you. Regular pruning of dead, irrelevant, poor links helps keep your link portfolio healthy. Also, ensure links are labeled to adequately reflect the webpage they link to.