Link building is an important part of executing an SEO strategy. Links serve as votes of confidence with Google. The more votes of confidence that Google can see with your website, the more credibility your website is seen to have and you will further be able to influence your Google ranking positions across relevant keywords for your website. Google continually says that links need to be earned by encouraging website owners to create good quality content that will encourage web users to link to and share the content online.
By Google encouraging businesses to develop good quality content across their own web properties, it will further enhance their business profile and adds value to their business overall. In this article, we discuss the ways businesses can add value to their business with link building services and web marketing initiatives.
1. Qualified traffic leads
By implementing the right link building strategy, the website should be able to increase the amount of referral traffic that is coming to the website. The referral traffic should be relevant and can turn into prospective leads and even sales. Some of the most effective tactics to gain qualified traffic leads include:
- Authoritative guest blog posts on high traffic blogging portals.
- Referral links in comments on high traffic blog posts. These must be highly relevant to the industry niche and valuable to the community, otherwise it will be flagged as spam and deleted.
- Suggesting referral links in forums. The link needs to add value to the community discussion otherwise it will be flagged as spam and the link and profile may be deleted.
- Editorial publications across blogs and media websites can also present your business to a larger and relevant audience that may help with gaining leads and sales over the long term.
2. Showcasing credibility
The links that you receive to your website is a validation of the credibility of your site. Think of it as ‘word of mouth’ or ‘references’ that are obtained online. Good quality link building will demonstrate the credibility references. Some of the methods that can be used include:
- Author by-lines for published guest posts
- References in articles and web publications
- References from published content such as whitepapers slide shares, video content, info graphics and podcasts.
- Appearing in web features, such as recommended or top lists
By increasing the credibility factors through link building citations, you will be able to increase the perceived value of your business and improve in confidence with closing any sales for your business.
3. Enhancing the quality of content on your own site
Google encourages website owners to start adding value by focusing on the content on their own site. Google wants to serve website users with content that will give them a good experience. Webmasters can track their user engagement by monitoring the time that is spent on the site, social engagement signals such as likes, shares, tweets, pins and Google plus ones.
4. Enhance the quality of the content across their social media properties
Get people engaged with the social media properties that are linked to your website. If you have a YouTube channel, develop good quality videos that will encourage people to subscribe to your channel and that will also link to you naturally. If it is Instagram, publish interesting images that will keep your niche audience engaged. Quality will dominate. Not quantity.
5. Encourage sharing through social media
If people are engaging with your content, it is a good sign that people are finding it valuable. Develop content and promote it to niche communities that would like to value the content that you offer. The more signals you gain, the more opportunities you will receive to gain natural links that will further improve your overall SEO profile.
The activities presented create opportunities for web businesses to increase their awareness, credibility and discovery by potential customers. Link building initiatives that are done positively will improve the SEO performance for your web business and brand image online.