Link building is exactly what it sounds like – working to increase the number of links pointing to your website from other places on the web. Link building is a huge part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because Google uses the number and quality of links pointing to any given website as a way to measure how reliable that website is (ie the more high quality links, the better!). If your business is going to compete and thrive online, you need to do everything you can to drive traffic to your website, and link building is a vitally important part of that.
But how do I actually build links?
If you are working on link building on your own as a part of your online marketing efforts, then the most effective method of generating links to your website is by creating great content that people want to link to – but you don’t want just any old content. You want content related to the keywords you are targeting because the anchor text (the words users actually click on to follow the link) affect your search ranking. If you are trying to rank for the keyword “plumbing” you want links that say something like “Check out these great plumbing tips!”
So start by building content
Over and over again in this blog, we’ve emphasized the importance of great content. Content is the foundation of all of your SEO work, and it is especially important to link building. Even if you are a one-person business handling your own marketing, you should do your best to find time to produce good content about your industry on a regular basis. Even a short blog post once per week will help, as long as it’s providing information that will be useful to your customers.
But who is going to link to my content?
This is going to take a lot of time and hard work, so be prepared to camp out like this for a while.
If you keep creating great content, sharing it via your social media profiles (especially Twitter), and you get lucky, people will begin to find your work and create links of their own accord. But if you’re like most people, you will need to do some groundwork to build links. For most people, link building means personally reaching out to the people who run other blogs and websites and asking them to link to your content.
Because you are relying on the interest and good will of strangers, you want to make sure that the content you are asking them to link to is worth their time and relevant to their interests. For example, if you are a catering company, you might write a blog post called “5 things the experts use to make meals memorable.”
The next step is to think of who would be interested in this kind of content. For a blog post like this, it’s easy to think of a wide range of people who might want to share it with their readers. Food bloggers, DIY bloggers, and event planning websites may all be interested in sharing this sort of content with visitors to their sites.
A positive side effect of reaching out to other site owners in this way is that it can also help you build positive relationships with other professionals in your industry. This can pay off in the future as you build more content and come to be seen as a trustworthy source of information.
But this all sounds very time consuming!
Well, that’s true. Running your own link building campaign means spending a lot of time creating content, doing research on people and websites to reach out to, and sending out emails asking for links. This is a lot to take on, and many small business owners choose to outsource their link building to a company that specializes in online marketing, like LinkNow Media.
Learn more about RankBooster, how you can save time, and beat your competition
Among our other SEO and marketing options, we offer our RankBooster monthly plans. With three different service levels to meet your business’s needs and marketing budget, we have a highly efficient and effective link building service that can save small business owners literally hundreds of hours each month so that they can focus on what they do best – building their businesses!
For more information about LinkNow Media and RankBooster, feel free to contact us today. We’re happy to answer any questions you might have. Remember, the web is waiting for you!
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