When working toward enhancing SEO, we need to include quality links as quality links draw quality traffic to our websites. How do we go about building the correct links so that our page gets good reference, people repost our content and ultimately visit our website?
“Link building is not a quick fix for SEO – it is something that happens over time organically. It is a long-term strategy different to keywords, which have a more immediate effect. We should be conscious of link building so that we can build that strategy gradually. It is thus a refined part of the strategy that takes time, research and effort,” said Marisa Louw, sought-after professional freelancer, integrated marketing strategist and web developer, who unpacked this topic in the fourth session of a series of five Safrea webinars.
What is link building?
Simply put, a link, or a hyperlink, is a connection between two pages on the internet. With a link, you can refer people to a page, post, image or another online object. Links exist for people in the first place to travel from one web location to another.
Why is link building important?
Search engine robots follow links to discover pages on the internet. This is called crawling. For a robot to find your website, you will need at least one link to it from another website that was crawled already. Making sure you get that first link is one of the things you need to do when you launch a brand-new website. You can list your website on Search Console and various search engines, but this is only a small part of your SEO strategy. Link building is a very important part of your strategy.
| The benefits of a good link-building strategy
Beyond algorithmic benefits, backlinks serve the following functional purposes for your website: · Provides referral traffic. · Indexes orphaned or isolated pages. · Contributes on-page value to readers. · Serves as a citation for research. · Builds relationships within your existing industry. |
What you should do to get links
Create a website that people want to link to. Focus on research and analytics, and add value to the topic while considering the following:
- Who are you trying to reach with your content?
- What kind of content do they need?
- What information are they looking for, and what questions do they ask?
- What websites do they visit?
| Link-building tips
· Look for opportunities related to: o Guest blogging o Influencer relationships o Thought leadership pieces · Find a piece of content ranking highly on Google, for a keyword you’d like to rank and create a better version of the content. “Better” may mean adding a video, useful images, infographics or writing longer-form content. · Conduct research and post the results on your website. · Promote content you want to be linked. |
Social media’s role in link building
Social media is often considered pointless for links, as links from social media platforms are unfollowed. But this isn’t the purpose of using social media for link building. The main purpose of link building through social media is to get links outside the social networks through the people inside them.
Social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and blogging is the tool through which you get those relationships. It’s where you show our business’ personality. It’s a way of introducing yourself and getting involved in conversations by adding real value. It’s important to consider this relationship in your social media activity, be it business-to-business or business-to-consumer. Think about the conversation – listen as much or more than you speak, share useful things, and respond to people.