In the seemingly never-ending world of the web, it’s a challenge to ensure that your webpage is one of the top search engine results when a user types in certain keywords. One of the surest ways for SEO optimization and building organic traffic towards your website is through SEO link building. A tried and tested method, link building is a far more ethical way of gaining visitors than buying links.
What is link building?
Very simply, getting another website to insert a link to your webpage is called link building. This link is referred to as a ‘hyperlink’. Getting other webpages to include hyperlinks to your website requires trust and time. However, it is an extremely crucial process if you wish to increase the traffic to your website in a consistent and authentic way.
What is the importance of link building?
Search engines like Google have countless search results for something as simple as ‘how to make pasta’ to something complex such as ‘evidence for climate change’. Google uses algorithms which determine the relevance and importance of your webpage to the search query based on the number and quality of hyperlinks to your webpage along with other factors. Link building doesn’t automatically guarantee a better search engine result; the hyperlink should be on a quality websites that rank high on the search engine themselves.
Link building in terms of hyperlinks help to increase visibility and click throughs, building awareness and a greater traffic to your website.
Hence, link building is an essential tool in the arsenal of digital marketers while building a brand’s success story.
Different link building strategies for your website
For the enterprising digital marketer who likes to try out different strategies to drive home results, link building provides a great avenue to execute different tactics. Here are a few:
1. Finding synonyms
One of many innovative link building techniques, this strategy requires you to search for websites that are in a ‘similar’ field as you but not the ‘same’ as that will create competition. For example, if you are a health insurance provider in Mumbai, find blogs on healthcare in Mumbai and request them to allow you to write a blog post on their website/blog.
2. Make meaningful blog comments
No, this is not about stealing another’s thunder. Find blogs similar to your topic and write a 100-150-word meaningful comment with a link to your webpage. If you leave a generic or ‘spammy’ comment, it will most likely be deleted or not even glanced at. Taking the same health insurance provider in Mumbai example, you can comment on a blog about geriatric health in India. The comment could include insight into the growing costs of healthcare for older people, and include a link to your insurance page.
Similarly, you can comment on relevant social media posts and forums.
3. Become a ‘resource page’
Let’s say your business provides camping equipment. You could look up blogs about camping and request them to include a link to your website. Any potential camper or guide visiting that blog will find the link to your website and probably make a purchase, or at least become aware of your existence!
If you have a specific area of expertise such as ‘native advertising for fashion’, you can approach blogs that post about digital advertising or marketing and pitch a guest blog idea. Your blog post will not only help break the monotony of that blog, but also earn you backlinks. A simple way to find opportunities for blog posting requires you to search for *your area of expertise*+ ‘write for us’.
5. Skyscraper method
Another genius idea developed by a man from the field itself, the Skyscraper method involves you rewriting an already popular post but in a better way. You can include updated statistics, infographics, or videos to create the content. Then, pitch your article to the websites that have hyperlinked to that original article. Since your article is better, they will update their webpage with your article and hyperlink.
For any of the strategies to work, remember that the content you create needs to be of excellent quality to compel other website owners to hyperlink to your webpage. With a careful mixture of effort and strategy, digital marketers can leverage link building for better search engine optimisation.