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What is Link Building?
Link building is the practice of getting other sites to link to your site’s content.
In the SEO world, we call these backlinks.
This has always been an important way to show Google that your site has authority. It acts as an essential way to improve your visibility on search engines.
In the old days of SEO, this was as easy as getting thousands of low quality links to boost your PageRank. But after Google’s Penguin algorithm update, first announced in 2012, these black-hat SEO techniques were targeted and penalized.
This was Google’s way of ensuring they can provide their users with quality content. The focus now is for your website to get natural backlinks from reputable sites. Having backlinks from spammy or irrelevant sites will negatively affect your chance at ranking on Google searches.
Google normally gives you warnings before penalizing your site. Make sure to utilize Google Search Console if you are a website owner or SEO professional. If you want more information on this, check out this article we published a few months ago on ranking in Google.
Quality Content
Other website owners want to direct users to good content through blog posts, social media, forums, and other avenues. The best way to gain high quality backlinks for SEO is to create compelling and useful content on your website.
In fact, optimizing your content is what Google says is the number one thing to focus on. If you create interesting and useful content, you will gain high quality backlinks, which then will directly influence your PageRank and increase your visibility in search engines.
That being said, you can create excellent content but you will still need to work on getting your site out there in front of the eyes of your audience. The following are some ways that website owners and SEO specialists do this in practice.
Blog Commenting
This is simple. Get involved in your online community.
You probably already follow blogs or forums that are align with your niche or interests. Start engaging with the blogs, comment your thoughts and provide additional insights into the topic at hand. Use this as a way to invite people to your own blog content.
Be careful though, this shouldn’t be done in a spammy, self-promotional, way.
Guest Blogging
If you frequent any number of blogs, you probably see guest posts occasionally. A blog owner will usually allow this when the guest blogger can provide interesting content that will complement their blog.
Take some time researching blogs that are in your industry or niche and contact those blog owners. The key here is to have interesting and informative content. If you find a blog that is in your niche, then there shouldn’t be an issue with the content being relevant to the blog.
If you can land a guest post spot, this gives you a high-quality link back to your website. In addition, this increases your brand awareness with visibility across the web.
Press Releases
These are often high-quality backlinks coming from bigger news outlets. This passes good link equity to your website. We’ve personally seen sites hang onto the number one spot in search engines due to a few good links from press releases.
Make sure the news article you produce makes good use of keywords within the content and links back to your website.
Social Media Activity
Engaging with your users via social media is important as we move into a more digital world. Using these platforms allows your content to be shared among millions of people that can provide links back to your blog or website. Create content that is shareable and this will give your site social signals that can boost your site rankings as well.
To Conclude
Getting a high-quality backlink is like opening a door to your website. Get a link from a reputable site and you will see the number of visitors to your site increase. This not only creates a constant flow of traffic, but it increases your brand’s visibility across the web and acts as a ranking factor for search engines by displaying the popularity of your site. One excellent backlink can be better for your site than one hundred low-quality backlinks.
With all of these strategies in mind, there is one thing to remember: Don’t buy backlinks. As enticing as this is, it often leaves you with irrelevant and low-quality backlinks. As mentioned earlier, with Google’s Penguin algorithm update, having numerous spammy backlinks can actually do more harm than good.
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If you are lost in the ever-evolving digital world but need to get your brand out there in front of your target audience, MARSWorks can help. We’re your digital production studio and can ensure your unique online presence is there to strengthen your brand and grow your business. Contact us today!