27 Dec The Marketer’s Guide to Link Building
When it comes to marketing, there are plenty of tactical options out there. One marketing strategy used to increase brand visibility is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is what it takes to get a site or web page listed at the top of a search page. Savvy marketers use many SEO tactics to boost a site’s search results. But, there is one specific tactic that deserves a more in-depth explanation: link building.
How Links Affect SEO
Search engines use algorithms to determine which sites are important enough to “show up” on a search engine results page (SERP). For instance, Google uses similar algorithms to Domain Authority and Page Authority to decide where to place a website or page on the results page. The coveted spot being number one or at least on the first page. (For a deeper dive into Google PageRank, here’s an excellent summary.)
Link Building Explained
First, here’s a rundown of the different types of backlinks:
- Internal link: Link on your site to another page within your site.
- Outbound or External link: You provide a link from your website to another website or page.
- Backlink: a website provides a hyperlink on their site “back” to your website or a specific page on your site. Backlinks are crucial to increasing a site’s ranking on a SERP.
Domain Authority has Replaced PageRank
Google use to rank pages from 1 to 10 grading scale. The higher the PageRank the better quality site. Link builders use to leverage that scale to identify the value and quality of a linking domain. Google killed PageRank on March 7 2016. Moz quickly rose up to the challenge the industry was immediately faced with and created a comprehensive system to identify quality of links/domains. Domain Authority and Page Authority were then born and is now one of the many metrics we use at grading the quality of a link.
Link building requires methodically securing backlinks from other relevant high quality websites. If the website providing the link has a high Domain Authority and Page Authority, that power and trust flow transfers to your site or page. Thus, your Domain Authority increases by association with a credible site.
Now listen, the secrets we are about to unveil here are tactics 99% of agencies are NOT using. Sure, some agencies do some of these things but the level of strategy, breadth of experience and tactical ability behind Red Wagons link development for SEO is second to none. I guarantee that there is something in this list that you have never heard of and
Specific Link Building Tactics
Tactic #1 - Building Content
Every business should consider themselves a content marketing company. Without content you cannot effectively build powerful links and increase the amount of search queries your site shows up for. Creating content that is the best answer for any search query and user is a strategy we have seen work to drive rankings and grow lead and sales output. By leveraging well written content with social media and content amplification, you can start to drive earned links, traffic and more sales.
Tactic #2 - Outreach
Reach out to other sites and bloggers to let them know that you have valuable content. Ask if they have an interest in sharing. Simple outreach is done by everyone. Pump up your outreach by automating it and giving people value before you ask for a link. We have been doing outreach for years and its about the prompt, the motivating factor, its about relationship building. We don’t use a shotgun blast approach, we use a strategic, currated list of potential sites. A wish list if you will. How we outreach is a lot like how a sales team should outreach and we leverage automation to help us do this on an effective scale that drastically increases high quality backlinks.
Tactic #3 - Guest Posts
Guest posts are another form of outreach, rather than asking for a backlink offer to write a guest post for another site. In your bio, provide more than a link back to your site. Consider offering a free giveaway. A free download, for example. This will help drive traffic to your website. Guest posts have been done to death though. Although they are still affective and easily obtained, how you go about doing your guest posts is something that should be scrutinized heavily.
Tactic #4 - Internal Links
While not as powerful as backlinks, internal links are still a critical component of your link building strategy. Internal links give structure to your site and depth. They also increase the likelihood that people will spend more time engaged on your site. Time and depth signal to Google’s algorithm that you are an authority on your subject matter, boosting your PageRank.
Tactic #5 - .EDU Resource Library’s
Building high quality relevant links from trusted authoritative sources is a quick way to see long term growth and improvement in your organic rankings. Creating a scholarship or providing a resource that can be added to .edu resource library’s can be a powerful link building technique. We have seen this tactic be very successful with our clients.
Tactic #6 - Creating multiple interactive content elements in your content marketing and aggregating them
When you develop content for your blog or website, consider adding in infographics, videos, podcasts, pdfs and other similar assets. By doing so you will create a more powerful piece of content that will rank better in organic serps. You will also be creating assets that can be aggregated to other platforms which can build internal deep links to your content and it can also build referral traffic and brand awareness. A great example of this is taking a video podcast and syndicating that to audio podcast and video sites. We just wrote a blog about different types of interactive content you can find here.
Tactic #7 - Link Reclamation
Many brands have content they have taken down from their site which removes the power of an inbound link, especially if you do not have an optimized 404 page. Link reclamation is a powerful tactic that rebuilds old links.
Tactic #8 - Competitor Link Building
Is your competition ranking for all the keywords you wish your business was ranking for? One of the quickest ways to to eat immediate search impression share for keywords your competitors are targeting is to get links from the same places they have links from (and have content that targets that keyword). We have proprietary tools and methodologies that allow us to spy on your competitors. We can analyze their backlink portfolio, discover what links you have in common and which links we should be prospecting. From there we create a strategy that prompts a better result on link acquisition.
Tactic #9 - Remove Toxic Links
It’s not always about BUILDING new links. Sometimes, in order to see real growth in organic SEO you need to remove toxic links that have plagued your sites ability to gain real growth. We have propriatary methodologies and tactics we use to identify toxic links. Our system analyzes over 100 factors and can determine what backlinks are toxic, suspicious and healthy. By removing toxic links from your backlink portfolio you can remove site penalties and improve your rankings.
PROTIP: Not many SEO’s know about toxic links nor do they know exactly how to determine if a site is actually toxic or not. Improper changes made to your Disavow file can have detrimental and long lasting effects on your site.
Tactic #10 - Become a contributor
This tactic is something 99% of agency’s overlook and we are going to share this little known secret. If you are trying to dominate a space and be the authority and leader within your industry, you must become a contributor. We help develop relationships and content for businesses that is posted relevant industry publications. The backlinks within a footer BIO of an important industry publication can bolster your organic SEO and also build and reinforce your authority within your space. This same strategy can be used on industry blogs, forums etc. Valuable contributions to conversations are a great place to build links, awareness and reinforce authority.
Tactic #11 - Viral Content and Sharing to Bloggers
This is actually a thing. But not like you are thinking. We don’t think creating flash dance mobs is an effective way of building viral content and links. To expensive and how many times can you do that? Viral content is an old strategy that new young agencies have no clue about. It was deployed in the days when myspace was the social media giant and digg.com and stumbleupon were social media kingpins. The strategy involved creating a fun but educational piece of content that ended up getting voted up on social bookmarking sites until a traffic spike hit and people tend to blog about content that “goes viral”. Stumbleupon is not around anymore but the idea of taking viral content and getting it in front of an audience that “blogs” is an important part of link building. Our agency has the ability create viral content that generates engagement, conversation, inspires thought and builds your links.
Tactic #12 - Influencers
I’m not going to talk to much about this but I do feel its worth mentioning. Influencer marketing isnt just about getting your favorite fitness model to pose with your protein powder. It can also be leveraged to build links. Influencer marketing platforms are not designed to naturally build links so it takes an agency with special skills in this area to be successful.
Tactic #13 - Contact us to get THE MOST EFFECTIVE AND STRONGEST LINK BUILDING TACTIC KNOWN TO MAN. TOP SECRET - NO OTHER AGENCY HAS THIS LINK BUILDING TACTIC
This last tactic is one that we are not willing to give away for free. This tactic allows you to build your backlinks in a way that will destroy and utterly crush your competition. This tactic is not a gimmick. This tactic is not smoke and mirrors. If you contact us to find out what this tactic is, your link building results will drastically change.
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Conclusion
It takes effort and creativity to build links to your website. But the time and effort are worth the results. According to this study by Ahrefs, only 5.7% of new websites make it to one of the Top 10 spots for a keyword within one year. The difference between those sites and the other 95%? Strong backlinks and a marketing company that knows how to get results. We have hundreds of strategies and tactics to build links for our clients that result in high If you want to boost your site’s ranking fast, start working on your backlinks. If you want to dominate your competition and see real results, start working with us!
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