Organic link building is a crucial aspect of SEO that can make or break your online presence. It's the process of getting other reputable websites to link back to yours, and it's not as easy as it sounds.
To start building organic links, focus on creating high-quality, informative, and engaging content that adds value to your audience. This can be in the form of blog posts, infographics, videos, or even podcasts.
The key is to make your content linkable by including relevant statistics, research, or expert opinions that others can reference. For example, a study found that 70% of marketers believe that content quality is the most important factor in determining linkability.
By following these simple tips, you can start building a strong foundation for organic link building that will drive traffic, increase engagement, and boost your online authority.
Organic Link Building Basics
Link building is the process of acquiring links from other websites to improve your online visibility. It's also known as Off-Page SEO, which directly impacts rankings and helps your website become more significant to search engines.
Getting links from high-authority websites, like Hubspot and LiveAgent, can increase your website's trust and improve rankings. This is because links from authoritative websites signal to search engines that your content is valuable and useful to readers.
Internal links are just as important as external links, and they can help users navigate your website and improve your search engine rankings. However, it's essential to create quality content, like blogs, infographics, and case studies, to link to.
A well-thought-out link building strategy is crucial for reaching the top of Google's SERP, especially in highly-competitive niches. Common link building strategies include guest blogging, PR campaigns, and creating linkable assets.
Here are some key points to focus on when building links:
* History for fraudulent activitiesTraffic to ensure it attracts a relevant target audienceContent to ensure quality and consistency
By paying attention to these points and using effective link building strategies, you can improve your website's visibility, increase referral traffic, and boost your brand awareness.
Getting Started with Organic Link Building
Building a comprehensive link-building strategy is crucial, but it's essential to start with the right approach. An intelligent email outreach is crucial to avoid overwhelming content creators with backlink requests.
Before you begin, make sure you have the right tools and practices in place to supercharge your link-building campaign. This includes deciding on the pages to build links to, which can affect the outcome of your entire SEO strategy.
To choose the right pages, consider the traffic potential, profitable keywords, and value for your business. Pages with high potential to drive organic target traffic, such as product pages, are more valuable for SEO. Use a keyword generator to gauge a page's traffic potential and identify high-converting keywords.
Here are some key aspects to consider when choosing pages for link building campaigns:
- Traffic potential: Pages with high potential to drive large amounts of organic target traffic.
- Profitable keywords: Pages that target the most valuable keywords.
- Value for business: Pages that directly sell your products or showcase the benefits of your goods or services.
Beginners
As a beginner, it's essential to understand the fundamentals of link building.
Link building is a crucial aspect of SEO, and it's what we'll be focusing on in this article. There are three key ways to measure link quality: anchor text, link equity, and trust flow.
To build links, you need to know what types of links are desirable. According to the article, there are 50 types of links you want and how to build them.
Here's a list of the types of links you want and how to build them:
- 50 Types of Links You Want & How to Build Them
Link building techniques come in three categories: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Make sure you're using good link building techniques to avoid getting penalized by search engines.
To run a sustainable link building campaign, follow these five tips: Tip 1: Be consistentTip 2: Monitor your progressTip 3: Stay up-to-date with industry trendsTip 4: Be patientTip 5: Be flexible
Press Relations
Investing in press relations can be a game-changer for organic link building.
Links on news portals and press sites are valuable because these sites are generally recognized by Google and have great authority on the web.
The Domain Authority of sites like The Guardian and The New York Times is 100, making them highly authoritative sources.
These sites also reach many regular readers, leading to massive spontaneous sharing for any subject appearing there.
Having a press office strategy can help you achieve a link or mention from these sites without having to pay for it.
An advisor handles the work of building a relationship and communicating with media outlets, passing along valuable information and achievements about clients.
This can get you a space in the press, attract visitors, and earn links.
The press office can also include digital channels, social networks, and influencers in its reach, increasing your chances of getting a space and earning links.
Understanding Google's Evaluation Process
Google's evaluation process for links is a complex one, but it's essential to understand it to succeed with organic link building. Google's algorithm uses a multitude of factors to rank pages, including link evaluation.
Link evaluation goes far beyond quantity, considering the quality of links based on various criteria. Google values link quality over quantity.
Here are the key factors Google evaluates in a page's links profile:
- Quality of links
- Relevance of links
- Authority of linking sites
- Diversity of linking sites
These factors are crucial in determining the credibility and trustworthiness of a website. Google views links as endorsements, helping them assess the relevance and credibility of a website.
By understanding these factors, you can create a link building strategy that focuses on quality, diversity, and building relationships. This approach will help you earn high-quality links that boost your website's trust, improve rankings, and drive referral traffic.
In fact, Google's emphasis on E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) underscores the role of links in establishing a website's authority. Websites with a strong link profile are more likely to be authoritative sources of information, contributing to improved rankings.
Link Building Strategies
Link building is about quality, diversity, and building relationships. It's not just about getting any old link, but about earning high-quality links that will help improve your website's authority and ranking.
To create valuable link roundups, list posts that showcase other people's awesome content. This is an excellent way to give you a boost in both areas, and other brands and content creators in your industry will notice and appreciate being included.
Here are some effective link building strategies:
- Publish studies, infographics, and interviews to attract organic backlinks.
- Use the Skyscraper Technique to create high-quality content that outranks existing content.
- Share long-form content, as it tends to get more backlinks and social shares.
Long-form content gets an average of 77.2% more referring domain links than content shorter than 1,000 words, and the ideal content length for social shares is around 1,000 words.
How to Boost Your SEO
Creating high-quality content is key to attracting organic backlinks. This can be achieved by publishing studies, infographics, and interviews that provide valuable information to your target audience.
To create linkable high-quality content, focus on creating well-researched and accurate information that speaks directly to your target audience. Use supplemental images, graphs, videos, or infographics when appropriate, and make sure your content is complete and up-to-date.
Here are some examples of digital marketing assets that can help increase the chance of sharing and generating links:
- Infographics
- Interactive content, such as quizzes, calculators, and assessments
- Posts with lists
- Complete guides
- Research results
A well-executed internal linking strategy helps search engines understand page relevance, page value, and the relationship between pages. Use anchor text variations to avoid over-optimization issues, and add more internal links to content within the same topic cluster.
By creating linkable digital marketing assets and implementing an effective internal linking strategy, you can boost your SEO and attract more organic backlinks to your website.
Referring Domains
A successful link building campaign will eventually show a gradual uptick in the number of referring domains pointing back to your site. This trend will pick up speed as you continue to establish and build relationships with peers in your industry.
You can expect to see an increase in traffic records once your backlinking campaign starts showing results. This is a clear indication that your link building efforts are paying off.
The number of referring domains is a key metric to track in your link building efforts. It's essential to monitor this metric to see how your campaign is progressing.
One of the largest discussions in link building is the number of times you can get links from the same domain. Some SEO experts recommend getting only one link per site, while others say more than one link is fine.
Here are some general guidelines for referring domains:
Remember, successful link building means playing the long game and playing it well. It will take time to start seeing results, but with persistence and the right strategies, you can build a strong backlink profile and improve your website's authority.
Guest Blogging and Co-Marketing
Guest blogging is a popular method of getting high-quality backlinks. It involves creating a blog post for another website and including a backlink to your own. This can be a win-win situation, as the other website benefits from high-quality and valuable content.
To get guest posting backlinks, you should look for websites that accept guest posts. You can find guest blogging opportunities by using Google to search for "Write for us" pages, or by checking competitors' backlinks. Make sure the websites on your list are worth the time you'll spend planning and writing a blog post.
You can create high-quality content for your pitch by researching the topics that the most popular website covers and figuring out which topics it lacks. Include up to three topics in your email offer to give your potential partners a chance to choose something that fits their blog best.
Here are some tips to consider when crafting your pitch email:
- Start off your email by introducing yourself and mentioning some articles on their blog that you enjoyed and would like to expand upon.
- Offer topic ideas, and then share links to three of your most recent and successful guest posts so your new partners can see that you're a real pro on whom they can rely.
- Check their website's guest post pitch requirements (if there are any), and follow them.
Co-marketing is another strategy that can help you generate backlinks. It involves companies coming together to create materials in partnership, such as ebooks or tools. Both partners promote the product and link to each other's pages.
Search for Partners
To find the best partners for guest blogging and co-marketing, you should look for websites that are authorities in their field and produce good content related to their area of expertise. These sites are often already well-positioned for their main keywords.
One way to identify the best partners is through the Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) indicators of Link Explorer, Moz’s tool. These indicators simulate how Google’s algorithm views search results based on several ranking factors.
You can check the DA and PA scores of potential partners to see if it's worth getting backlinks from them. A higher score means a better chance of reaching the top position in search engine results pages (SERPs).
To start slowly, offer to help with a problem or content, displaying your interest in contributing, and building a relationship of trust. This may take longer, but it is more likely to consolidate a partnership.
You can use Link Explorer for free, but with some limitations. Alternatively, you can use the Link Explorer extension for Chrome or Firefox, called MozBar, which presents the main indicators of the tool in search results.
For example, searching for the keyword "Digital Marketing Tools" using MozBar will show you the DA and PA scores of potential partners directly in the search results.
Guest Posting & Co-Marketing
Guest posting and co-marketing are two powerful strategies for getting high-quality backlinks. Guest posting involves creating content as a guest author on a blog, where you produce a post that's relevant to your partner's blog and insert one or more links to your pages.
To succeed with guest posting, choose partners that have a similar audience to yours, so you attract visitors who will be interested in your content. This is crucial, as many partnerships were created just to generate backlinks without thinking about the user experience, and that didn't work.
Co-marketing, on the other hand, involves companies coming together to create materials in partnership, such as ebooks or tools. Both partners promote the product and link to each other's pages.
To find suitable partners, research their content and audience, develop relationships with editors, do favors, and deliver great content. You can also use Google to search for "Write for us" pages, check competitors' backlinks, or join guest blogging communities.
Here are some tips for crafting a successful guest post pitch:
- Identify reputable websites with a strong online presence in your niche, high domain authority, and a history of publishing quality content.
- Pitch relevant topics that align with the interests and preferences of the guest post site's audience.
- Highlight your expertise and credentials in your pitch, mentioning previous successful guest posts, industry accolades, or specific qualifications.
- Create high-quality content that offers unique insights, actionable tips, or thought-provoking perspectives that solve a problem for the target readership.
- Add contextual links to your website within the article, and include an author bio with links to your website or social profiles.
- Promote your guest posts on social media and within your network to amplify their visibility and influence.
Some popular platforms for finding guest blogging opportunities include BuzzSumo, HARO, and guest blogging communities. When reaching out to influencers, start by quoting or interviewing people in your content, or look for bloggers who are already linking to similar pieces.
Measuring Success and ROI
Measuring the success of your link building efforts is crucial to understanding what's working and what's not. Building a robust catalog of quality backlinks is a quality game, not a numbers game, so patience is key.
To get an accurate read on the success of your efforts, track and analyze factors like Google Search Console's link building features, such as rejecting backlinks.
The first thing you want to figure out is how many leads a content piece can generate for your business vs how much it'll cost to rank that particular piece of content. This gives you a good idea of the ROI to expect from your campaign.
Our backlinks tool says you need 1.4k links to rank in the top 100, but the actual number may vary depending on your specific situation.
To measure the impact of your link building strategy, try using metrics like Domain Authority growth, Organic traffic and keyword rankings growth, Lead growth, and Referral traffic.
These metrics will help you determine whether the link building strategy you're using is contributing to the growth of your website or not.
Tools and Resources
Developing a link building strategy requires the right tools to identify opportunities and correct problems.
To help you get started, consider using tools to identify partnership and linking opportunities.
Free tools are valuable linkable assets that can attract authoritative links and traffic to your website. For example, Surfer's free SEO Chrome extension led to a ton of backlinks from high quality websites.
Best Tools
Developing a link building strategy can be tough without the right tools to help you identify opportunities and recognize problems.
Ahrefs is a key SEO platform focused on off-page SEO, and it's not free - you'll need to purchase one of the plans, starting at $99/month.
The Site Explorer feature allows you to search any web URL to learn about its backlinks profile, which can be super helpful for finding out which sites link to your competitors.
The Content Explorer feature lets you search for sites for a given keyword, making it a great solution for finding good link building partners.
Alerts are also a useful feature, issuing a warning whenever a site gains or loses backlinks, which is great for monitoring competitors' link building activities.
Here are some of the key features of Ahrefs that can help with link building:
- Site Explorer: search any web URL to learn about its backlinks profile;
- Content Explorer: search for sites for a given keyword;
- Alerts: issue a warning whenever a site gains or loses backlinks.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a key SEO platform that's focused on off-page SEO. It's not free, but you can purchase one of the plans starting at $99/month.
Some features are extremely useful for link building. Ahrefs offers a Site Explorer that allows you to search any web URL to learn about its backlinks profile. You can search for competitors and find out which sites link to them.
The Site Explorer is a game-changer for understanding your competitors' link building activities. You can also use it to find new link building opportunities.
Ahrefs also has a Content Explorer that allows you to search for sites for a given keyword. This is a solution to finding good link building partners.
Another useful feature is Alerts, which issue a warning whenever a site gains or loses backlinks. This is great for monitoring competitors' link building activities.
Here are some of the key features of Ahrefs:
- Site Explorer: search any web URL to learn about its backlinks profile
- Content Explorer: search for sites for a given keyword
- Alerts: issue a warning whenever a site gains or loses backlinks
Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is an incredibly complete website audit tool for both on-page and off-page SEO. It's a great first step, even with some limitations in the free version.
The paid plans start at £149/year, which is a reasonable investment for businesses looking to improve their SEO.
Screaming Frog is particularly useful for identifying broken links (404 errors) and auditing redirects.
This is crucial for recovering link juice and preventing users from getting lost on your site.
White Hat vs Black Hat vs Gray Hat
When building links, it's essential to know the difference between white, black, and gray hat SEO.
White hat SEO involves creating high-quality, relevant content that others will naturally want to link to. This approach focuses on building a strong online presence through great content and engagement.
Off-page SEO encompasses backlinks received from other sites, part of a link building strategy. But it also includes brand mentions without links, an additional ranking factor for Google.
To achieve white hat SEO, you need to focus on creating material that is truly relevant to the audience. This approach may take more time and effort, but it's a sustainable and effective way to build links.
A link building strategy should include both on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is under your control, and you can edit your pages and optimize your internal links to best suit your objectives.
Here's a simple breakdown of white, black, and gray hat SEO:
Black hat SEO involves using manipulative tactics to build links, which can lead to penalties from search engines. This approach is not recommended and can harm your online reputation.
Gray hat SEO is a combination of white and black hat SEO, often using tactics that are not explicitly forbidden but not recommended either.
Actionable Takeaways and Future Trends
Building a strong link building strategy requires a clear understanding of what works and what doesn't. Backlinks are still one of the top Google ranking factors, boosting a website's trust and improving its rankings for target keywords.
To succeed with link building, focus on gaining organic backlinks. These are the most valuable type of backlink, and they can bring in referral traffic and improve brand awareness.
A balanced anchor list is also crucial for a successful link building strategy. This means varying the types of backlinks you use, but focusing most of your efforts on organic backlinks.
Your link building strategy will only produce good results if your donor websites are high-quality and relevant. This means choosing websites that are related to your business and have a good reputation.
Here are the key elements of a successful link building strategy:
By following these key elements, you can create a link building strategy that drives real results for your business.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the mistakes in link building?
Building too many backlinks too quickly can be identified as a shady link building strategy. A natural backlink profile built over time is a more effective and sustainable approach to link building.
Sources
Featured Images: pexels.com