Link Building Strategies (Part 1)

When you use Google to search for anything that’s currently on your mind, have you ever wondered why the search results rank in the order that they do? If so, then you’re definitely not alone in your curiosity.

Like with any given task, being neat and having good housekeeping practices can lead to the development of efficient processes. Maintaining a website, like any other process, is all about ensuring that your pages stay efficient. Your site’s information and media may change from time to time, as you keep it updated to better serve your visitors. So how does keeping a neat and organised website help you better rankings/positions on Google?

Unfortunately, Google prefers to keep its methods undisclosed to the public. Although, whilst the tech giant prefers not to get too chatty about the algorithm it uses to rank websites; that doesn’t mean there aren’t common qualities to a website that can improve and boost rankings on Google.

Effective link building is an example of how to show Google the quality of your website. In a nutshell, linking your site’s pages out to other credible sources of information will allow Google’s algorithm to rate your site with a better domain ‘authority’. Your site can then appear more favourable to search engines; compared to competitor sites that do not exhibit good link building qualities throughout their pages. A good way to go about building links out from your page, is by including links within your content to other information pages owned by established brands and companies within your industry. Assuming that these other pages belong to corporations and large businesses, Google also assesses them for their high or low domain ‘authority’. The websites that you link out to, need to have a comparable or higher domain ‘authority’ than yours. In essence, don’t let low ‘authority’ sites drag you down.

The Very Basics of Link Building

What do most webmasters and business owners want out of their website? More traffic! Google’s ‘secret’ algorithm may be subject to change with every update, yet there are a few basic methods of practice for SEO that won’t. And link building is widely considered to be among these few essential practices.

The basic practice of link building can be simply explained through the following steps:

1. Create valuable content for your audiences,
2. Add links throughout your content, which redirect to pages within your own site, as well as to external sources of information.
3. Get in touch with owners/webmasters of other sites (with high domain authority), and ask for your fresh piece of content to be promoted on those sites. Even if they are willing to link your logo on their site, back to yours.

Now that we’ve covered the basics of effective link building, consider these three popular link building strategies to start bringing in quality traffic to your site.

Broken Link Building
Broken link building gets its name from the common practice of fixing broken (and outdated) links on a website. It gives webmasters a great method to reach out to other site owners, so that mutual link building can be established between their separate websites.

Broken link building works by:

1. Contacting the webmaster of a site similar to yours, and making recommendations for any broken links or outdated content on their site that could be replaced.
2. Using broken links as an opportunity to ask if they are interested in promoting any of their new pieces of content on your own site. Offer for their content to be featured on your own website. So that ‘the feeling is mutual’!
3. Establishing mutual link building strength between both your sites, also known as sharing link ‘juice’. Sharing link ‘juice’ helps individual sites achieve better domain authority with Google search results.

Guest Blogging

Much like broken link building, guest blogging is another link building strategy that allows you to reach out and network with other webmasters. Similarly, the practice of guest blogging allows your site to establish higher domain authority, by featuring content that would otherwise be published regularly on another reputable site. An example of such a site would be a blog that regularly posts updates about your industry.

Guest blogging typically begins whenever a content writer or webmaster begins researching a new topic for a post. Part of this research typically involves looking at what other thought leaders within your industry are posting through their content. And that’s where you can identify a potential blogger or post that you can invite for the purpose of guest blogging on your site. In turn, you could also offer for your content to be featured on their site.

There are three goals in mind, when you might consider using guest blogging as a link building strategy:

1. To expose your site to a completely new audience,
   2. Establish yourself as a thought leader, and
   3. Develop a network among other active bloggers in your industry.

Newsjacking
Newsjacking works according to the idea of ‘success by association’. Breaking news stories are bound to emerge throughout your year. Why not find a way to tailor your content to be relevant to a hot topic that’s got countless people searching for news online? Aligning your content to popular news topics not only helps build traffic to your site. It also impacts your business by creating brand awareness through relevant content.

As a link building strategy, Newsjacking begins with:

1. Finding a popular topic,
   2. Monitoring its associated keywords using Google Trends or by following Twitter hashtags, and
   3. Following content by bloggers and journalists to better understand the news lifecycle of a topic, and
   4. Identifying if there’s an opportunity for newsjacking to be done at the right time.If you’ve identified an opportunity for newsjacking, capitalise on this content opportunity by:
   1. Publishing a blog, graphic, or piece of content with your take on the hot topic,
   2. Tweeting or posting content using established hashtags, and
   3. Contacting journalists and other bloggers who may be interested in featuring your content.

   Use these strategies together, or sparingly when you find individual opportunities to network or capitalise on hot industry topics. There are many factors involved when it comes to getting your site to rank higher on Google. These basic link building strategies should help you develop a better understanding of why search results rank the way they do, and what you can do to improve your business’ searchability online.

Watch this space for our next follow up to this article, with more nifty link building strategies to come!