Link building is essential for success when it comes to ranking organically. It is one of the top-ranking factors Google considers, but search engines are continually changing their algorithms in order to identify the best results for Internet searchers. While the importance of links may have diminished a bit in the eyes of SEO sources, links still have influence in search results.
A link’s job is to tell a search engine that people think your site is relevant and provides enough value to be advocated to a larger audience. A greater number of quality backlinks can impact your search rankings as well as the volume of traffic to your website. Some think of link building like content marketing and know their strategies have to accommodate the time, money and skills available within their organization.
AVOID
Highly competitive keywords – larger brands will always perform better. Focus on extremely specific keywords and long-tailed keywords with more descriptive, unique phrases.
A non-mobile friendly site - more searches are performed through mobiles or tablets than traditional computers; not to mention that Google and other search engines rank websites with mobile-friendly versions higher that sites without.
Pushing out content for the sake of content - quality over quantity. Your content must provide value to readers. While 2000+ words may garner best SEO, posts of around 1000 words generate better bounce rate and bring back the greatest number of subscribers. Aim for publishing regular, value-added content over time versus hundreds of posts and links at once.
Irrelevant links – links should share a relevance to the website to which they send traffic.
Links without keywords – for contextual links, incorporate your keywords into the anchor text.
Broken links – they can reduce the quality of backlinks and slow down your website.
Pictures that are not optimized – visuals are important for maintaining reader interest and boosting search engine performance. Optimize pictures by adding relatable image titles instead of leaving the nonsensical string of letters and numbers. Also, offer image tags when saving pictures to the website. Leverage best results by using original images versus stock and avoid duplication of images within your site.
Slow load time – 25% of users will leave a page that takes four seconds to load and 74% of mobile users will leave a page that takes five seconds to load. It has been found that for every one second delay, there is a 7% loss in conversions.
Key word stuffing – this will reduce a website’s ranking in 2018. There is a fine line between ideal density and stuffing; 2% or less is best, but 3% or greater risks being perceived as key word stuffing.
Participating in excessive reciprocal linking – only do this with bloggers who have high quality blogs that contain content relevant to your business area.
DO
Write – original articles with fresh content that offer value and original data/research are efficient link builders. Conduct independent research, collect unique data points, and publish your findings. Include visuals such as graphs, charts, and infographics. Data driven content with unique data can help an article stand out.
Share content – utilize social media and include links. Ensure that you are creating high quality content, sharing it across channels and promoting it as well.
Create and share videos – 66% of search engines found link building with videos to be effective.
Promote other resources – this strategy will help acquire links. Think interactive pages, like tools, quizzes, and calculators; infographics; e-books; and tutorials.
Earn links by promoting others – integrate quotes, highlight interviews and speaking events. Interview a key influencer or big-ticket customer. Ask questions about topics your audience finds valuable or would benefit other, relevant websites. Mention influencers in your posts, include a direct quote – play to the ego of major players. Posts like these are often shared and help to create a cycle of link building.
Consider location – build links not only to your homepage, but also to internal pages of your site.
Contribute content to other sites – write guest blogs. They are an effective means of driving new traffic to your site.
Use infographics – they are one of the most shared types of Internet content. Infographics are shared and liked three times more than any other form of content.
Link building has changed in the last few years. A quality approach is more important than quantity and site authority matters – aim for links from top sites in your niche. Location also matters. Strive for links showing in the content of a page, not a footer or navigation area, and remember that it is better to get links from pages with only a few outbound links. If you are not gaining any backlinks, consider whether or not your content is link-worthy.
Because search continues to be a primary online marketing channel, link building should be a primary focus within your SEO services. Contact us at Strategy Driven Marketing to start planning and implementing your link building strategies.