How To Approach Quality Link Building

As marketers, we operate in a vastly dynamic world. As it changes, so do global trends and people’s needs and wants. For businesses to stay competitive in today’s landscape, it is important to understand how to boost and maintain your SEO rankings by building quality links that add to your business’s value chain.

What is Link Building?

Link building is just a piece of the overall SEO puzzle. Link building is a way to include single one-way links in the content to a separate webpage, which helps boost its rankings on search engines. It’s always great to include clickable sources in your content that redirects your audience to something of even more value.

Why is it important?

The vast majority of searches that happen online go through Google, and that’s part of the reason why backlinks are so important. When analyzing content to rank, Google looks at data around how many sources are linked to that page.

Does a blog have clickable links that lead to a part of your website, or another medium?

If the answer to these questions is yes, Google can understand how to rank your webpage better. Even now, Google focuses on backlinks as the mainstay for optimal page ranking. Rather than looking at the number of links, Google puts a renewed focus on the quality of links, which helps ranking more than quantity.

Spotting Quality Links

Things to look at when determining the quality of a single link:

Look at pages with higher Page Authority

• On many SEO and Keyword Tools we use, there are metrics that rate URLs based on their ability to rank on search engines by themselves also known as SERP. Looking at links with high URL scores and using them in your content which contributes to building quality links.

Look at Domain Authority

• Understand which website the link is coming from as this matters just as much as the content. For example, a link from a high traffic source like Forbes.com would typically rank very well compared to a link from a domain that doesn’t generate much traffic of their own. To look at a domain’s authority, check SEMrush’s online tools which help score the domain based on quality.

Relevancy of Link

• If your business is about selling apples and you get linked from a domain that sells electronics, it will not help your rankings as the generated link is not relevant to what you do at all. Google recognizes that fact and makes it difficult to rank organically.

Link Positioning

• A link back to you should be placed in the main body of the content meaning more visibility, it would be difficult for your page to get traction if the link is buried somewhere at the bottom of an article.

Editorial Links

• Organic Links included by individuals within the content that show a genuine interest in you will generate more traction than user-generated links made solely for SEO purposes.

Link Building Through Content Marketing

Creating compelling content is as raw as it gets to obtain links.

Here is a list of things that could be linked and shared across a network:

• Visual Content
• Infographics
• Charts
• Images
• Diagrams

Visuals are easy to link. Especially if it is eye-catching and stays relevant to the target market you’re hoping to attract, being easily shareable, visuals are a major contributor in strong backlinking from the content.

Original Data and Research

Content built around showcasing new, found, or interesting information and data with the public typically rank very well. This is mainly because sourcing and citing original content is a sure way to generate organic traffic to pages. By the nature of this type of content, the links build up quick and direct most traffic to you.

List Content

Sharing Information in a list type format packs a ton of value for readers as they are short and to the point and easy to understand. That being said, they tend to get shared quite a bit among people making them highly sought after for backlinking.

Advanced Backlinking Tips

Build visuals for ideas and concepts

Having visuals break something down into a visual format will enable people to interact with it more clearly and share it based on ease of use and access. Lots of potential to redirect traffic to you.

Podcast Interviews, video features, guest speaking.

These are good mediums to share information and what you know, where there is no choice but to link back to you. The great thing is the world of content creation is flexible and there are millions of things to talk about!

Re-establishing Dead Links

If there are webpages that mention you but do not link back, it’s important to take notice and send them a light-hearted email making sure they link back to you! Tools like BuzzSumo help you identify which pages mention but do not link to you.

Let’s Get Linking

We want to build value for our audience and consumers. Building strong and interesting linkable content should help you do that. While backing relevant websites and pages with great domain and site scores should help you understand which brands to connect with. We want you to create a reliable network for your business and backlinks will be a tremendous asset for that!

Still wanting to learn more? Need help building your SEO in other ways? Contact us now to get in touch with our SEO experts and get started on your new strategy!