5 Must-Do's in Your Link Building Strategy
by Dave Maloney
More inbound links means more chances to get found, more traffic, and a turbo boost to your website in the eyes of Google. Link Building is an essential component of inbound marketing, unfortunately oftentimes getting backburnered (like blogging!) Like all that SEO stuff, keyword research, coming up with new offers to attract customers, (and blogging), link building isn't a task that you can blow out once and be done with it, so you might as well jump in and start pecking at it at least a little at a time. An ongoing link building strategy should be a fundamental part of your inbound marketing plan, and the longer you ignore getting started, well, the longer you won't see any results from it. Here are a few techniques to work into your inbound marketing checklist, and honest, they're not as painful as they sound.
Your Link Building Strategy Checklist:
- Link Directories. There are hundreds of directory sites out there where you can submit your site to be included in with a link back to you. Just do a search for "website directories" or something similar and start a spreadsheet of them. There are free and paid ones; start with the freebies. There are directories for your site overall, and ones just for blogs. You just submit a form with your URL and a decription of your site. It's mindless, tedious and time-consuming, perfect for an intern (or your kid, who can go through it a lot quicker than you). While most of them may not be very high quality links, it's still a worthwhile exercise to improve the number of linking domains to your site.
- Article/Press Releases. Similar to registering with Site or Blog directories, you can submit your best blog article(s) to a list of article directories. If your company has an announcement that's noteworthy, new product unveiling, expanded service region, etc., you can submit your news to PR sites in a "press release" format, or if you are having an event, submit the details on an event promotion site. All of these sites are out there as free and paid services, just do a search and add them to your spreadsheet. Make sure you link back to your website somehow in your article or post!
- Guest Posts/Comments on Other Blogs. Blogs have almost always been the most popular form on internet content. Posting content (that links back to your site) on another blog that's relevant to your industry or business is a great way to advertise your expertise, as well as gain some higher-quality links than you'd get from a universal link directory.
- Social Media. Saying "My customers aren't on {Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, etc., }" doesn't get you off the hook; if people are searching there, why wouldn't you take the chance to get found there? It takes effort, but done right you can extend your online audience exponentially;(see Holistic SEO) and again, don't forget to bring them back to your site!
- Ask! You can do that? It can't hurt to call or contact the webmaster of a certain site (a partnering company you do business with, product vendor, a school where you are holding a seminar, etc.) and ask for a link; they could be your most valuable ones. Before you just ask, consider what you'd like them to use for the anchor text of your link; the right keywords will make that link even more valuable!
As you've already heard, the
best link building strategy could also very well be the most difficult: to
create interesting content that people will want to link to. The
worst link building strategy, maybe worse than doing nothing, would be buying into one of those emails you get everyday that guarantees you x-thousand awesome instant inbound links...just save your money and do the work, you'll be glad you did!
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