Link Development & SEO
Digital marketing is the bread and butter for small businesses. But there’s more to search engine optimization (SEO) than keywords and content.
Without a proper link building strategy, you won’t get far in the search engine page results (SERPs).
However, building quality links takes time and a solid plan. In the following guide, we will cover some of the best link development strategies you can use to quickly build your backlinks.
Let’s take a look.
First, Why is Link Development Important?
If you don’t know the answer to this, then you’re more likely to eliminate this crucial strategy from your marketing campaign. One thing you need to know is that Google and other search engines use backlinks to rank your website.
If you lack backlinks or have too many low-quality backlinks, then this will hurt your chances of making it to the first page of the SERPs.
Now, let’s review what you can do to increase your odds.
Create High-Value Content
Bloggers are the kings of creating content. And if you can impress them with your own content, they’ll have no problem linking to yours. The purpose of bloggers is to deliver content to their audience that can help them.
This means they’re willing to point their audience to a site that offers content their readers will enjoy.
On that note, it’s important to focus on building content that’s high-value to their readers. You also want o use different types of formats for content delivery.
For example, videos, image galleries, white papers, infographics, and how-to guides. The more informative and easy-to-digest your content is, the more likely it will get backlinks.
Write Guest Blog Posts
Another option is to create the content for a 3rd party site or blog. The idea is to guest write for one that’s not a competitor, yet shares the same target audience.
You can reach out to webmasters and bloggers to see about writing a quality guest piece for their site. Then somewhere in your content, you can include a link back to your website.
There are plenty of great sites that gladly accept guest posts. Make sure to research their site to see how you can spin your content to meet their needs.
Try Ego Bait
Now, this is a clever option that can work really well. And just as it sounds, you’re using content that strokes the egos of an influencer (or two). In a nutshell, you’re baiting them in to link to the post.
There are a few ways you can pull this off without being cheesy or over-the-top. After all, you want the content to come off as authentic.
For example, you can write a top 10 list that includes your influencer (as long as it’s honest).
Try to tie the post with a topic related to your industry. For instance, if you’re in the gardening business, you can write a post of the top 10 influencers on Instagram with amazing gardens.
Don’t Overlook Local Link Building
The above are great options for building quality backlinks for your website. However, there are other key strategies you can use if you’re a local business.
For instance, you should focus on claiming your business listings, soliciting customers for online reviews, and getting citations (online mentions).
These can all help your business listing appear in the local pack results on Google, which features the top local businesses based on these factors.
If you’re new to all of this, you can always enlist the services of an SEO pro. At LocalBizGuru, we specialize in everything to do with local SEO and digital marketing.
Contact us today to see how we can help build your link development strategy.
