What are some good link-building strategies that can help improve your website’s SEO? Link building is an important part of SEO and should be considered as part of your overall digital marketing strategy.
Search engines consider links to be one of the most important factors when determining rankings.
Link-building in SEO
This refers to the actions taken to increase the number and quality of hyperlinks pointing to a given webpage. The purpose of this is to improve the search engine ranking of the page and the site as a whole.
The number of high-quality links a page has is directly correlated to how much authority it has. Other benefits of link building include:
- Drive organic traffic
- Boost brand awareness
- Enhance your user experience (UX)
This blog will help you build the types of links that will improve your website’s ranking in search engine results.
Understanding the different types of links
Before we get started with our best link-building strategies, let’s go over the different types of links you should be aware of as you’re building your links.
Internal links
Internal links are links from one page on your site to another page on your site. While they may not get as much attention as some other SEO tactics, meta tags are still crucial to success. For example, internal links help:
- Users and search engines find content on your site.
- Spread link equity (PageRank) from one page to another, boosting your website’s domain authority (DA).
- Define your site architecture.
It is important to be strategic in your internal link-building.
Outbound external links
Outbound links are hyperlinks that lead from your website to another website. These are mostly used to add context to content by providing readers with a resource that contains more information about a particular topic.
When it comes to search engine optimization, they help improve the credibility of your content and make it more authoritative. This is necessary in order to comply with Google’s E-A-T requirements for content that performs well.
Inbound external links (backlinks)
External links that lead to your site are called backlinks. Valuable links are seen as a vote of confidence, not just by search engines, but by users as well.
The better the quality of your backlinks, the more likely you are to rank highly on search engine results pages.
No-follow and Do-follow links
You need to know the difference between no-follow and do-follow links when you are linking to and from your website. You also have to know when to use each.
Technically, there’s no such thing as a do-follow link. By default, all links are do-follow unless otherwise changed. This means search engines will follow the links unless you add the attribute rel=nofollow.
If you don’t include the rel=nofollow attribute when linking to an external website, search engines will take it as a vote of confidence from you. The reverse is also true.
A no-follow link is a link that has been designated by the rel=nofollow attribute, which instructs search engines not to follow or crawl that particular link. It does not share any link equity with the page it is on.
Now that we have that taken care of, let’s quickly get to our business of the day—link-building strategies you can use to improve your SEO.
Strategically Build Internal Links
1. Automate with a tool like Link Assistant
If you have a few pages on your site, you can easily build internal links. However, it becomes very difficult to keep track of your content and internal links manually as your website grows.
Anchor text is the text you see on a webpage that you can click on to be taken to another webpage. Link Assistant provides suggestions for what anchor text to use for links in your posts. This tool also makes it easy to identify posts that don’t have any links, so you can add them.
You can add links to posts without even having to open them.
You can either accept all of the Link Assistant’s suggestions for internal linking at once, or you can choose to accept them individually.
Whichever way you decide to go, Link Assistant will help speed up your internal link-building and make it much easier. When you use Link Assistant, it is much easier to optimize your internal links.
2. Determine your ideal website structure
It is best to determine your site architecture before you start building internal links. This simply means how your website is organized.
A well-structured website leads to users having a positive experience (UX). This also makes your site accessible to users and search engines.
What is the best way to set up the structure of your website? A few tips for doing that include:
- Keep your top-level navigation simple.
- Use a simple URL structure.
- Use breadcrumbs to make navigating back and forth easier.
Your site’s architecture refers to the way its pages are organized and linked together. Understanding your site architecture can help you determine which pages on your site are most important and how to link to them. And this brings us to the next point.
3. Identify your pillar content and build clusters around it
Another critical element of building internal links is to identify the most important content on your site. Pillar content is the content on your site that is most critical to your site’s success. It covers a topic extensively and is essential to your site’s success.
After you have your main points, you can create separate pieces that go into each one in more detail. Child pages are pages that can be linked to pillar pages and vice versa. You can also create links between child pages. These result in clusters around your pillar post.
Why is this internal linking strategy important? Some of the most important reasons include:
- Helps search engines better understand what your website is about, resulting in better indexing.
- It’s essential to building authority.
- Improves UX as users can easily find more information on a particular topic.
- Improves the quality of your content.
- Makes content planning and creation easier and faster.
When you use more keywords, it results in better SEO and higher rankings. If you want your website to rank high on Google, you need to publish authoritative content, especially for websites and pages that deal with matters of life and death.
4. Ensure your links are contextual
If you want your readers to explore your site and find all of your content, you should link your new post to your other posts. This way, your readers can easily find all of your content and explore your site. A big no!
Proper internal linking requires that your links be contextual. You should only create links to pages that are relevant to the topic at hand. That’s called is contextual linking.
Link building should never be random. It must be strategic. A large part of that includes making sure you link to pages that improve your content. Constructing your website in this way will result in it being well organized and search engines will be able to index it more easily. This also makes it easier for website users to navigate.
5. Careful with anchor text
Choose your anchor text carefully when building internal links. What is anchor text? Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink.
The words in your anchor text are important because they help search engines and users understand what will happen after they click the link. This is why you need to be careful with the words you use to link to other pages. Examples of how to do so include:
- Be descriptive: Your anchor text must describe the topic your link leads to.
- Must be natural: Don’t force links into your content by twisting the anchor text to accommodate the post you want to link to. Place your internal links naturally into your content so that it both flows and adds context.
- Avoid clickbait: As much as you may want readers to click on your link, avoid using click-baity anchor text. This is anchor text that promises something readers won’t find when they follow the hyperlink.
In addition, don’t try to improve your anchor text by using your main keyword in every hyperlink. Doing so can lead to you being penalized.
6. Find out who your audience is
Your website should be able to appeal to your current audience while also attracting the type of audience you want. Building and maintaining an audience is essential to gaining new listeners and retaining your current ones.
Get to know your audience by doing some research. This also allows you to gauge if you are effectively reaching your target audience.
7. Identify sites that appeal to your audience
It’s time to research and make a list of websites that your desired audience is likely to visit. Identify the websites that already appeal to this audience.
As a way to increase traffic to your website, you can include links from other websites that might be appealing to the same audience. This way, you can reach people who are interested in what your website has to offer, but may not be aware of its existence.
You don’t need links from every website out there. Links from websites that are not related to your topic are not useful. It could even harm your ranking in some instances. Sites that engage in spammy practices or sell links are not to be used or purchased from. These are both considered DON’Ts when building links.
You can’t just do link-building by accident. In order to have a successful SEO campaign, you should include getting links from other websites as part of your overall marketing strategy.
8. Create amazing content
For other websites to link to your content, your content must be link-worthy. Thus, you need to create quality content.
It is more difficult than it appears to be. Before you start writing, think about who your audience is and what their interests are. Also consider what unique perspective you can offer on the subject.
Do not simply explain why your product is great and why customers should buy it. Your content should address a problem or question your audience has.
If you give other websites the information they want, they’ll see your content as valuable. If you build trust with other websites, they will be more likely to link to your website.
You should also consider the readability of your content. Ensure your articles and pages are well-structured and well-written. There are a lot of blog posts and an entire course on content SEO and SEO copywriting.
9. Adapt content to websites
Now that you’re satisfied with the content you’ve written, you can focus on the list of websites you made in the second step. What websites are most likely to link to the content you created?
Sending everything you have created to every website on your list is probably not the best idea, as it may decrease the likelihood of those websites linking back to yours. On average, people don’t have the time to read five blog posts and pick one they like. Also, if you post too much, you run the risk of being perceived as spam.
Make sure the websites you include as links are relevant to your blog post or website. Choose them carefully. The blog post is relevant to their content, so they will most likely link to it.
If a visitor clicks on a link to your website, it’s because they’re interested in the content on your site. This increases the chances that they’ll convert to a customer or make return visits.
If you use a long-tail keyword approach, there will be fewer sites that will be a good fit for your writing.
While this may not be seen as a bad thing, it could be interpreted that these websites with more specific content are more prone to link to your content.
10. Identify site owners and reach out to them
After deciding which website(s) to contact, it is time to reach out to them. Emailing people is a great way to get in touch with them, but social media platforms like Twitter can also be effective.
If you want to increase your chances of getting a backlink, you should learn about the website and who it is designed for. Reach out to your potential customers in a personal way.
Do not send out automated emails. In order to get another website to link to your content, you can reach out to them through email and provide a courteous explanation of what your content is before requesting that they make the connection. Often you will not get any response.
If you want your content to be linked to by other pages, you need to make sure it is unique and worth linking to. Explain why your content is special to increase your chances of getting a link. The lower your chances are of getting a link for a very basic post that could have been written by anyone.
Content that can only be found on your website. Keep your emails concise to avoid losing your reader’s attention.
11. You can amplify your content with social media
You can do this by sending an email or message. To get links to your content, you can contact specific people or websites by sending an email or message. Social media is a great way to get links and reach new audiences.
Make sure to share your new content on social media platforms such as Twitter. Tweet your article to people who would be interested in reading it. You can increase your article’s exposure on Facebook by promoting your content and reaching new audiences.
If people are engaging with your content on social media, that is likely to result in more links.
Conclusion
The goal of any link-building strategy should be to bring in new visitors who are interested in what you have to offer. Higher ranking in Google will be a positive side effect. As long as you are looking at link-building as a way to get more traffic from another site, you are doing it correctly.
