There’s nothing like link building to build your profile, increase awareness of your site, and help increase your SEO.

Going at it the right way, however, is critical. Some types of so-called link building – randomly commenting links back to your site on every forum you encounter, for example – won’t actually draw traffic back to your site or build SEO at all. In some cases, Google may even penalize you instead of rewarding you! Utilizing organic, Google-approved link-building strategies will help increase attention in your site and raise your search engine rankings accordingly.

Step One: Create High-Quality Content

If you don’t have high-quality content on your site, there’s nothing for other people to link back to. If you want to build organic links back to your content, you have to produce that content! High-quality content is more than just random blogs thrown together to make it look like you have a posting schedule. Instead, it fills a genuine need for your audience. It might answer their questions, share news about your industry, or provide a deeper look at your daily business tasks. Also, note that blogging is not the only way to connect with your customers. You can also produce videos, put together infographics, or preside over webinars in order to attract visitors to your site.

Step Two: Link Internally

External links back to your site may do more to boost your SEO rankings, but internal links are a great place to start. As you’re producing content, take the time to link back to things that you’ve written in the past – especially popular or useful things. This practice will also make it easier for search engines to locate new content as you produce it.

Step Three: Flesh Out Your Social Media Profiles

Your social media profiles should detail your business, what it has to offer, and a link back to your website. You don’t have to have a social media profile on every social media platform available – and in fact, keeping up with them all would be a full-time job all by itself – but you need to have profiles on the top sites: Facebook, for example, should be a vital part of your inbound marketing strategy. As you build your social media pages, you’ll discover that it goes a long way toward increasing your SEO and traffic to your website. Note that “good” profiles – those that have plenty of fans and regular interaction – will do more good for your ranking than generic profiles that have been thrown together.

Step Four: Share Your Content

You’ve set up your social media pages. You’ve produced the content. Now, get the word out about it! Use your social media pages to link back to the content that you’ve produced, to start discussions about it, and to interact with your customers to discover what they like about a specific type of content – and how you can improve it next time! Great content will also be shared by your customers, which means that you’ll get an even better boost. Focus on different types of content and try posting at different times of day to see what is most likely to catch your customers’ interest.

Step Five: Build Relationships

Not all links back to your content are created equal. Links from reputable websites or authorities in your field, for example, are more likely to attract the interest that you want in your webpage. To build those links, you must first build relationships! Reach out to other experts and authorities in your field. Let them know that you’re building up your website, and offer an exchange: if they’ll help get the word out about your content, you’ll help build links back to theirs. Not only will this help increase your standing on Google, it can also increase the way your customers view your expertise.

If you’re a local business, it can also be helpful to link back to content that wasn’t created by members of your specific industry. For example, you might run a t-shirt company, but building a relationship with your local school district will help them share your content, bring in new customers, and more. Talk with other local businesses to see who is willing to build those relationships with you. By sharing each other’s content, you’ll both benefit!

Source: FixMyWeb.com.au

Step Six: Write Guest Content

Now that you’ve got your business pages squared away, it’s time to start generating links from outside sources. One of the easiest ways to do that is writing guest content! Your author bio can link organically back to your homepage or to a specific blog post that you’d like to highlight. Depending on the website you’re producing content for, you may be able to link back to past content on your business’s blog in order to build even more links.

Note, however, that guest content must be even better than the content that you produce for your business’s page. You want to establish yourself as an authority in your industry and provide content that is highly useful, not just to your audience, but to the audience of the page you’re guest posting on. Not only that, you want to create content that is unique: it shouldn’t be just like anything that’s already on the page, or the person running the page isn’t going to be interested in it.

There are several ways to go about producing quality guest content that will enable you to produce Google-friendly links back to your website.

• Enter into an arrangement with another local business or another business in your industry. Ask them to guest post for your site, then guest post for theirs. This can help both of you, both through link-building and through increasing your content library.
• Look for pages in your industry that are looking for content. Some of them are actively seeking posts and will have submission guidelines.
• Approach industry leaders who don’t have visible submission guidelines. If you have established yourself as someone in your field who can be trusted, particularly if you have reached the level of “authority,” it will help open doors for you to post on their websites.

Step Seven: Fix Broken Links to Your Content

Back links are great, but they won’t help you if they link to the wrong content! Make sure that links to your website are current and accurate, especially if you’re completed a recent site migration or otherwise changed your directories. There are several tools available that will help scan for broken links, catching everything from misspelled links to content that is no longer available on your site or has moved. By utilizing those tools regularly, you can ensure that you’re actually getting credit for all those links you’ve built.

Link-building is an ongoing process – and one that, in some cases, can be quite time-consuming. You don’t want to let your link-building efforts fall off, since fresh, new links and new content rank higher in Google’s algorithms. When you do it properly, however, you’ll notice that your search engine ranking starts to increase dramatically.

If you need help developing your content creation strategy or building the links that will raise your SEO, contact us today to learn how we can help you meet your marketing goals, attract new customers, and make the connections your business needs to be successful.