Amongst all the techniques in SEO marketing, link building is one of the most important. If you have not yet inculcated link building as one of your marketing strategies, then you are for sure missing out on this business strategy. The use of link building strategies helps you to create SEO Marketing campaigns that are of high quality which helps your business thrive. The first step to take is learning and getting accustomed to how link building works.
What is link building?
Link building is an internet business strategy that links web pages to each other by the use of hyperlinks acquired from other websites and applied to your own site. Using link building helps internet users to navigate between various pages on the Internet at ease. They also aid search engines to move between web pages of your site. Link building can be done in various ways. Mastering one type alone can help you gain an upper hand amongst your competitors. In the United States, people who are interested in link building have grown over 43 percent since 2005.
How are links created?
This is the first question to understand link building, it is very vital to know about the basics of something. Basically, a link is divided into four parts, all which work hand in hand to create an entire unit. That is to say no part is independent.
The Beginning: the initial part links is better known as the anchor. It serves the purpose of opening the link tag which alerts the search engine about a link that can lead to something else on the web. The beginning is identified by an “a”.
Link referral location: the second part of the link building creation is the link referral location which points the location of the URL. These locations can be, an image on the web, it can be a file for download. The identity of this part of the link is an “href”. There is however, a variation of identity on this link, if it begins with a # then this means that the location in question is on the same page of the website.
Visible text of link: this is a part of the link that gives little information of what the users will see when they chose to click on the link. Most times it is edited to stand out and be peculiar from the other texts most of the times blue or underlined. This way it is easy to spot out that this is a link that can be clicked on.
Closure: this is the concluding part of link creation, it is the part that lets the search engine know that the link is a complete one.
How link building helps businesses
There are many advantages of link building, one of which is SEO ranking.
Link building increases SEO ranking, but it provides many advantages for business as well.
Builds relationships: link building requires that you reach out and connect to other businesses, link building is used most times when you want to relay information about promotions and other activities that maybe related to your own website and business.
Although the main objective of link building is and reaching out to other business is to improve your own link, there are other added benefits of link building as well. You can develop and improve a relationship that is mutualistic and benefits to your business and the one you are reaching out to. Since 2005 Guest posting services and strategies have risen by 112 percent in interest.
Referral business: when you carry out this strategy effectively, you are indirectly improving on the traffic of your website and as well improving on your ranking. If you link your website to one that is often visited and relevant you stand a chance of boosting your own sales as well. Just like in content marketing, those sales can automatically turn to return customers which is a long-term benefit.
Brand building: one thing every business wishes to have is a very good and well-known brand. Your brand is promoted with the help of link building. Linking to relevant content proves that you are credible and capable in your field. This in turn proves that your company is of expert services, goods and strengths.
Make sure your pages are worth linking to
The most important aspect of link building, make sure that the website you are linking to had very vital information. First commence with the homepage of your website. Make sure that your link building is based on connecting links to the important industry of vital information and other specialized unique resources. Also, you can create a blog yourself that contains valuable information where you can link to as well. When considering this, the bulk of the content created should have been already created by your organization, expand on it if there is any need to, some of these contents can be restructured from the beginning if there is need to, this time having link building in mind.
Strategies to get other pages to link to you
Here are some strategies that are effective when you want to other websites to reach out to you through links.
- Make sure that your created contents are compelling and engaging such that people will want to link to and make reference to.
- Your news should be submitted for press releases and your site submitted to directories
- Place your products and services in the right places targeting influential people
- Get links from friends, partners, and other people you know
Keeping up with link building is very important because link building is an organic process and is varying from time to time. Keeping up with the trend also means making changes when it is necessary. One thing is assured about linking building, as long as you have started with a content that is worth linking to, your efforts would be a long-term profit for your business.
Link Building and SEO in 2018
We are in 2018 and almost heading to 2019 it is important to follow this trend and get updated with better marketing strategies. You want to start off the year with very effective marketing and SEO strategy increasing your sales and meeting your business goals. For this to be achieved, you should have a better understanding of SEO. This is 2017 results of 1 million Google search results analyzed by Backlinko:
- It was discovered that Back linking made more impact on search ranking more than any other factor.
- Amongst the top three ranking signals for Google, Backing is one of the first three.
- Google looks more at the links connecting a page instead of analyzing the whole content of the page.
- The Demand for SEO tools has increased by over 200 percent in the past decade this rise is continuous.
- Backlinko conducted a case study and found that one Stumbleupon post received 17,584 different visitors to a brand new website all in just a day not just that, a total of over 204,000 visitors in the preceding four months. The growing pattern of the traffic was also consistent for the entire website.
- Try to take note of where your link is on a page. Most links found in the middle of pages are of more value to those at headers, footer or sidebars. Try to make sure that your links are on the body of your web content.
- Take advantage of emails. Instead of making your first email a request or outreach email, it better to wait. Try to use a two-step process instead. The first thing to do is send a feeler email. After which you can send an email that is very personal. This two-step sequence has proved a 40 percent more reply rate, whereas the direct pitch method has just a 16 percent reply rate.
- Heading into 2019, don’t lose focus on prioritizing content. You will turn out successful with more and more people linking their website to your content a reward for having a valuable content. If you do not have a valuable content, you stand a risk of making fruitless efforts in link building. Just as said earlier, reevaluate your strategy and improve as we move on to a new year. The next area of priority after getting a good content is your relationship with other businesses. This strong relationship will help the two businesses to achieve their goal.
- Keeping up with link building is very important because link building is an organic process and is varying from time to time. Keeping up with the trend also means making changes when it is necessary. One thing is assured about linking building, as long as you have started with a content that is worth linking to, your efforts would be a long-term profit for your business.
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