The domain of link building has been turned on its head following Google’s Penguin updates. SEO experts are shaking their heads in frustration as they try to figure what Google really wants. It’s clear that they need to have a precise plan that must be effective and also lasts long. So what are the best link building techniques and how can search engine optimization specialists accomplish them? All said and done, it appears that Google is looking for sites that give users an appropriate, hassle-free experience before rewarding them with good rankings. I have come to this conclusion by observing how sites have recently been downgraded because of the bad experience they provide. For instance, sites with poor content suffered from the Panda updates. I can detect Google’s intention by observing that apart from poor content, poor quality techniques to build links, an overdose of advertising and similar matters have brought sites into disrepute in Google’s books. One thing now looks certain: Your site must be valuable enough to get backlinks. All your site’s elements should be of the highest quality and your content must be both unique and enlightening.
Let’s have a look at some factors that affect backlink building:
Company blog: Blogs give you the opportunity to provide new material continually. They help you take to part in web conversations and get links and listings from other blogs. They are therefore a long term, precious technique. Also, you can increase the frequency of updating your blog with quality content in order to increase leads for your company.
Content not related to text: You will get links if you produce content that is not directly linked to the text, like cartoons for example. Or podcasts and videos in which you interview persons connected to your business or in which you talk about matters related to your line of work. If you put on your thinking cap, you’ll get plenty of innovative ideas.
Infographics: You can use Infogram.am or Piktochart to create great infographics if you lack the cash to hire professionals to do the job. It takes some time to create great infographics, but it’s worth the effort; they will provide you quality links.
Live blogs: As a businessperson you will be visiting many conferences and other events related to your industry. So write blogs about all you see and hear at these occasions. The things you write will get plenty of attention and links. Use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to notify your audience about this blogging.
One huge article: A huge article that gives visitors all information related to a topic can get plenty of links. The article must be the authoritative source for something; it must be updated yearly or once in six months. Also, post small articles but don’t submit them to small, microblogging sites.
Free tools: Online tools that don’t cost the user anything are a great way for you to get links as well as become well-known. So create them! A user will love to save some time using these free help tools.
Competitions: Arrange contests where you will give away good prizes to the winners. Such contests can get you links from respected sites. Also, your brand awareness among people who don’t know you will be augmented. Don’t forget to tell your social media audience about the competitions that you stage.
Tutorials: For your product you need to have a manual that instructs people how they must use your product. So have a detailed guide ready that precisely tells your users how to use your product. In this way you can get organic one-way links.
Wikipedia article: If your business/company doesn’t have a Wikipedia page then have one immediately. It will give your business/company a sense of authority to have one. Ensure that an article that is informative and which adds value to your firm is posted there.
Local citation building: If you are a local business, it would do you good to have local citations which will make you more visible in local search results. A citation is a mention of your product/service on the Web. It may have a link or it may not. Citations are important factors in local search ranking and are vital for businesses seeking a localized SERP that has a physical location.
Broken link building:For those not familiar with this, broken link building relates to finding appropriate pages that could link to you; spotting broken links and letting the owner of the website or the editor know about the broken link. After this, you either get your link added as an additional link or as a replacement. You could even think of re-creating content that is not live and ask anybody who links to that dead content to link to you and not to that dead content. The value of these lie in that they serve the web as well as your clients.
Avoid These Things
Repeat anchor texts: Don’t keep on repeating the same anchor text. If your links have been built by using only a few SEO keyword phrases, your technique may be identified and invite penalties for search engines can easily find this out.
Links in footers, sidebar: Search engines view the links that show up on footers and the sidebars of blogs – and therefore on all the blog pages – as distinctive places of manipulation. So avoid them. Instead, concentrate on getting more valuable backlinks.
Spammy backlinks: These links come from poor-quality sites and are meant for advertising. They are not relevant to your site so ignore/delete them.
Too much link velocity: Your links must be built in a natural way. Too many links and that too very quickly will look like SERP exploitation. Rather than doing this, concentrate on getting lesser but better quality links for every new site you develop.
Importance of Guest Blogging
Guest blogging can raise the quality of incoming links. Due to this, SEO companies are using guest blogging as the chief means of their link building process. Two aspects of guest blogging must be examined thoroughly before you use them. Check out the blog’s quality and where it is being linked to.
Does the blog site accept any post they receive? If they do, it means they don’t much care about quality. Some other factors must also be taken into consideration before you think of posting on a particular site, like inclusion of content that’s not really focused, payment requests, blogs that seem to be linked in some kind of network and blogs that don’t really look like they have a following. To put it in simple terms: seek out only authentic blogs. Pay attention to anchor text variety also. Don’t end your association with that blog after submitting it; promote it on the social media and reply to comments so you stay in touch with the owner of the blog. Keeping in touch helps to open up future options.
Summing Up
Building links will help get you leads and business. In this article I’ve explained the many things that have to be done to get on to the right path and provide Google what Google wants. It has become essential that using short cuts and dubious ways to build links wont’ work and will in fact earn the criticism of the search engine. Most people know the importance of building good links and set aside a monthly budget to reach their goal. But since the Google algorithms, website owners have ceased to be complacent. They know that Google is looking for authenticity and transparency in websites; and, since building links will ensure great returns for all businesses/industries, it’s something you can’t overlook.
Hope you liked this post and looking forward to your comments on it.