The Benefits of SEO / Link Building. Many people get a bad reputation about link building. This comes from companies who used questionable methods to build links and got penalized by Google. This does not mean that link building is bad; there are plenty of benefits to be had by those who do it right. Here are some of those benefits:
Link prospecting tools
One of the first steps in SEO / link building is understanding your brand’s audience. A link prospecting tool will help you narrow down the options by providing you with metrics such as estimated organic traffic and engagement. Using such tools is extremely beneficial, as you can easily set aside pages that do not have relevant content for manual review. Moreover, a link prospecting tool can help you find popular articles based on the referring domains.
You can also use the inurl search operator to find relevant resource pages or industry blogs that feature the key phrase. This search operator will return pages that contain the key phrase in the title or URL of the page. You can also specify the query exclusion option, which will exclude the site from search results if you do not want to have its links on your website. A good tool should also provide you with a list of potential blogs, and a way to qualify their quality.
Quality of backlinks
In the online world, there are two approaches to link-building: quantity and quality. While both strategies are beneficial for some businesses, most should fall somewhere in the middle. In general, SEO pros aim to obtain medium-quality backlinks. Here’s how you can determine the quality of your links:
First, consider the sources of your backlinks. Links from high-quality websites tend to correlate with strong page-one rankings in Google search results. But keep in mind that quality is more important than quantity. A link from a high-quality domain is far more valuable than one from a spammy site. To be considered high-quality, a site must have some original content that satisfies the reader’s needs.
Creating shareable content
There are several reasons to create shareable content, including to increase traffic to your website. In addition to improving user experience, sharing content creates backlinks. Creating rich experiences is a proven SEO tactic and leads to improved SEO metrics. For example, pages with high-quality images and videos tend to get more clicks and have lower bounce rates. Moreover, they are more likely to be shared on social media, providing additional optimization opportunities. Infographics are highly effective link-building tools, as they make it easy to consume large amounts of data. Infographics, for instance, generate 25.8% more backlinks than videos or “how-to” posts.
In order to generate a high volume of traffic, you must create shareable content that evokes emotions. If your content isn’t shareable, it will fail to generate enough traffic to help your SEO efforts. This means creating content that relates to a specific topic and inspires a specific action. Creating shareable content is one of the best ways to attract a loyal following. The six questions below can help you create a shareable piece of content.
Getting links from other sites
There are many different ways to get links from other websites. One of the easiest is through business partnerships. You can link to a partner’s site in exchange for a link back to your own. Other ways to get links include contacting site owners and requesting to link to their sites. Purchasing links is the most risky option because Google cracks down on websites that buy links. If you want to build links from other websites, it is important to use the resources available on digital marketing blogs.
It is vital to get links from relevant and related websites. A good rule of thumb is to choose related, topic-specific communities. A link from a site that is irrelevant to your content will send confusing signals to Google. The linking domain does not necessarily have to be related to the topic of your page, but it should be relevant. Google will also give more weight to links from relevant sites that are not spammy. This way, you can make your links more effective.