Link building
One of the most popular questions for search engine optimization (SEO) professionals is “What are some of the best link building strategies?” While there are many answers to this question, they all boil down to one thing: link building is changing.
This article will discuss how link building has changed over time, what Google thinks about these types of links and whether or not you can still build them today. We’ll also examine several different kinds of links that have been considered white hat outbound linking methods in the past but may be dangerous today.
Finally, I’ll share several ways that you can assess your current backlink profile and determine if your site’s rankings are at risk from bad backlinks pointing to it.
I think it may surprise you to learn that link building isn’t going away â it’s just changing.
The first thing to understand about a “link” is that it’s not really a page on the web with a href attribute and an HREF value in the SOURCE/attribute of the page tag. A link is simply anything on any webpage that points to any other place on the web, including itself (a self-referential link).
When Google was first released, many people believed that if they could get tons of links pointing to their site, they’d rank #1 for every keyword term they wanted. This turned out not to be true as search engines continued to evolve and better understand how pages were connected and related and what those connections meant to users.
Google got smarter. As pages became more interconnected, search engines began understanding the context of these links and at what “link popularity” level it made sense to consider them good.
Link quantity, link diversity (the number of different sites linking to you), link relevance (how closely related the linking site is to your topic/keyword) and anchor text relevancy all became important factors that could help or hurt rankings in Google’s eyes. Then came Penguin, which rewarded trusted sites with high quality content while penalizing spammy looking sites with low quality content. Link building was starting to become more white hat SEO, but there were still some gray areas where people were being caught by Google for buying/selling links or creating spammy profiles to manipulate their link profiles.
So what is “link building” today? I think that link building, as we know it, has changed into two primary categories: outreach and relationship-building. These are activities where you’re creating or strengthening relationships between your site and other sites on the web through editorial mentions, guest posts, social sharing etc., rather than trying to game search engines with optimized anchor text links.
This trend of Google rewarding searchers’ experience instead of only SEOs’ efforts has never been more apparent than it was yesterday during Google’s keynote at SMX West . Matt Cutts discussed how duplicate content isn’t necessarily bad for rankings if it provides a good user experience , EMDs are dying out (if not already dead) and Google has gotten very good at understanding semantic language.
I’m here to say that there is still a time and place for link building , but it’s not the same as what we’ve been doing in years past. Below, I’ll share several different kinds of links you can build today that will help your rankings (and might actually get approved by Matt Cutts ), along with some examples:
Editorial Mentions:
Getting mentioned in an article relevant to your business or industry not only sends signals about your website to search engines, it also strengthens relationships between webmasters who may end up linking to you later when they write articles relevant to yours. It can take time and effort, but this kind of link building is like planting seeds, so you have to be patient.
Link Roundups:
Roundups are becoming increasingly popular among bloggers who are looking to get their name out there, increase social engagement on their site or just looking for content ideas that they can repurpose later on. If you’re an influencer in your space, this is a great way of getting links to quality pieces/posts of yours that deserve more attention than they’re currently getting. For example, if you were writing about how it’s important for businesses (especially SMBs) today to be “on the go,” an editor might include your article in roundup post like this one featuring 10 experts’ opinions on mobile marketing . Long-form Guest Posts: Quality guest posts used to drive tons of links and social shares, but as search engines became more sophisticated those links started to count less. Guest posting isn’t dead , it’s just not as easy to get away with as it once was. However, there are still some great opportunities out there for guest posts that link back to your site in a way that can actually help you rank better in SERPs.
For example, you could write a blog post on an extremely relevant site related to your business/industry/marketing niche. Use the keyword you’d like to rank for in the title of the article along with several other related keywords throughout the article so natural anchor text links would be generated any time someone copy-pasted your article elsewhere (like Wikipedia).
If done correctly, this does two things for you:
Increases your online footprint by getting another site to link back to your website Gets more credibility because the website linking back is not only quality, but it’s related to what you’re writing about. It makes sense that the author of an article on digital marketing would have something interesting/useful to say about other elements involved in marketing, like product development or branding.
Long-form White Papers: These are very similar to long-form guest posts except they always include links at the bottom of the page with a call-to-action for people who want additional information concerning your business.
Let’s say you run a software company and you want to let potential customers know how much time and money it could save them. You could write a long-form white paper that shows them how much time they would save by using your software, as well as how much money they’d save depending on their company size and the number of employees who use those various time-saving features you’ve included in your product.
Doing a bit of research for this could also help you understand the prospect’s pain points which would help you tailor your white paper even more towards what they need to hear to make a purchasing decision. Affiliate Reviews: There was a point when affiliate links were banned from Google News , but now they’re allowed so it’s an opportunity for some extra links without having to do anything “illegal” like buying links or building low-quality links .
What you could do is research your competitors and find out who their top affiliates are for a particular product or service (it’s usually listed right there on the page). You can then contact those businesses and ask if they’d be interested in running an affiliate review article/case study on the product, where you might get a link back to your website.
Podcast Guest Appearances: If you don’t have time to interview someone using one of the methods above, another way to get more links would be through podcast guest appearances. Depending on how popular it is, this might even lead to people sharing and linking to that episode which we know can help give pages a little boost in rankings .
The best thing about these kinds of guest posts would be how easy it would be for you to create an awesome guest post about your target keyword. If they have a podcast for people in your industry, chances are pretty high that they already did their research and know what topics or guests would appeal to their audience.
Not only that, but if you send them the right kind of content (something entertaining but still informative) then, like Adam Carolla , you’ll likely get invited back to future episodes too! This is similar to doing interviews with bloggers who might also want to publish your interview on their website or repurpose it elsewhere. It’s great way give yourself some more exposure while getting another link back to your site .