SEO
Once upon a time, it didn’t matter where links came from, you just needed to get as many as possible to improve your website’s search engine ranking. Now, all that has changed. Link quality matters more than quantity, so getting the right type of links has become more of a marathon than a sprint.
That’s why we’re firm believers in blogging. When you regularly post high-quality content to your business blog, you’ll get more backlinks. Businesses who blog see on average a 434 percent increase in indexed pages and a 97 percent increase in indexed links. Plus, businesses that blog get more than twice as many website visitors than businesses that don’t and receive 13X more ROI.
In addition to blogging regularly on your business website, here are more link building strategies that actually work.
Guest Blogging
If you’re in the B2B space, guest posting delivers solid, dependable returns over time. Just look for businesses related to your own and create content useful to them, and include a link to your website.
Let’s say you’re in real estate. You look up businesses associated with buying and selling property, and you write articles for them to publish in their own blog. For example, people looking at homes also tend to be interested in interior design, so you might reach out to a local interior design firm. Write an article that’s something like, “Interior Design Trends in New Construction Homes This Spring.” Offer it to them, and include a link to your website. They get free content, you get a backlink.
Tips for Successful Guest Blogging
These tips will help you get more links and traffic over the months and years.
- Target the right websites – It’s only worth the time and effort if the website for whom you’re guest blogging has a domain authority equal to or greater than your own. Ahrefs has a free website authority checker you can use to measure your own website authority and that of ones from whom you’d like a backlink.
- Write for that blog’s audience – Get to know the content they care about and strive to provide that. The point isn’t just the backlink, you want users to actually read your article so the link brings traffic.
- Blog a lot – One or two blog posts isn’t going to get you the type of results you want. It takes consistency over time.
Infographics
Infographics are even more powerful than blogging, generating up to 37.5 percent more links than your everyday blog post. An infographic is simply an easy-to-digest visual representation of a chunk of information. Try creating an infographic for one of the following:
- To explain a complex process
- To break down complicated ideas or concepts
- As a tool to compare and contrast or weigh pros and cons
- To summarize data, research or statistics
- For any other situation where you have several pieces of information to present and need to offer a broad overview
People love infographics, so they share them and link to them. The problem is, creating infographics can be expensive if you don’t have an in-house graphic artist who knows how to create them. One of the perks of being a Spade Design client is that we offer free unlimited graphic design (yep, that includes infographics) for every single client, no matter what plan you’re on.
Social Media Marketing
People interested in what you do or sell are online, scrolling through their social media feeds every day. Often they do it several times a day. Make sure you’re sharing the blog posts, guest blogging, infographics, and other content you’re creating on your business social media pages. When you do, you give your audience more of what they want, and you make it easier for them to share with others. Your content gets in front of more eyes and is more likely to get linked to.
Broken Link Building
If you don’t have unlimited time for creating fresh, unique, robust content, you may want to try your hand at the old-school tactic of broken link building. Here’s how it works:
You find links that no longer work on blog pages, then email the blog owner. Politely point out the issue and ask them to replace the broken link with one from your relevant high-value content. Because they don’t have to hunt for another replacement, they swap out the broken link for yours and everyone is happier.
Link Roundups
A link roundup, sometimes called link love, is basically a collection of the very best resources on a topic that includes links to that resource. It’s a powerful way to network with authority voices in your industry.
Your audience will appreciate being able to locate all the best resources in one place, and the fact that you follow the people who provide those resources says you stay on top of trends. Even more importantly, the sources to which you link might reciprocate.
Always Remember This
You’re probably interested in link building because you know your link profile is a huge factor in search engine ranking. You want Google to show your pages at the top of search engine results pages for relevant keywords, and links will help you get there.
Keep in mind Google’s goal isn’t to count links or clicks or any other single factor. Google wants to provide the user with the best answer for their query. Whether you’re making a guest post, blog article, infographic, or any other form of content, focus on making it the most relevant, unique, user-friendly, informative, helpful piece out there. Otherwise it’s likely to get buried in the sea of other content churned out every day.
Spade Design’s SEO Accelerator Program helps clients optimize everything about their website’s SEO for consistently high search engine ranking. Let’s talk about how to individualize your SEO strategy for Growth in Spades when you get in touch.
