Whether you have built links in the past naturally or you don’t currently have any link building in place, you can use the right tools to start improving your SEO and backlinks to improve your rank. The important part is that you focus on high-quality, relevant links, which means talking to influencers in your industry who may like your website as a reference to something that they are working on.
So how does link building work and what can it do for your website?
The Definition of Link Building
In search engine marketing land, link building is one of the best things you can do to affect your rank in Google and other search engines. While websites used to be able to use sponsored or “paid-for” links to rank higher, Google has penalized websites who buy links and don’t properly earn them organically.
Link building means that you have hyperlinks around the web that link back to your websites. These could be other blogs or reference websites, as well as social websites and directories. The higher the PageRank or PR of the site that links to your website, the better your own ranking will be. This is because Google values higher authority websites over others.
In addition, you want to build links to different pages of your website, not just your home page. This means defining pages that drive the most value for your influences as well as your visitors. If you have certain products, services, or content-specific pages, then you can use these links to spread like seeds around the web.
The true finesse is getting influencers and bloggers to naturally link to your products without having to pay or sponsor a blog post, which can get you into trouble if search engines find out that you are paying for backlinks.
Why is Link Building So Important?
Links actually aren’t just comprised of the hyperlink and URL. There are tags, anchor text, and keywords that you can place within a link that give search engine crawlers a lot of information about your site. When links are found across the web that link back with certain tags and keywords, your site will elevate in search engine results pages.
What this really says to search engines is that your site is being discovered across multiple sites on the web, and if it’s been linked multiple times on high-ranking pages, you’re probably getting a lot of clicks and traffic. All of this is important for a crawler to understand why your content is so important and how to change your ranking factors. Links are still considered to be the hardest thing to get and the most important to have when you are building SEO.
Tactics to Build Links Naturally
The best way to build links is to share your content on as many social media platforms as possible and look for communities that like to share content, such as forums and Reddit groups. However, you want to make sure that you’re sharing content in a genuine way and that it’s relevant to the community’s interests. Even better, you should make sure that the content is something new and innovative. Nobody wants to share recycled content. Here’s a quick list of things you can do:
- Create a new video that relates to your products and services that will help your audience.
- Build a page of content that includes links to your best products but is mostly an entertaining piece.
- Get involved with a charity or sponsor an event, making sure to link your page to the event so that it gets shares.
- Send your best content pages, videos, and product pages to social influencers you like on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.