Building links is considered by some as one of the most important factors for SEO. Some would consider a good link building strategy as the most important factor.
Link building refers to the practice of building a network of links from other websites to your own which act as advocates for the content of your website. Google consider these as 'reviews' from other websites that feel that your website is so good, they should send their traffic to it to learn from your content. In it's simplest form, these links come in 2 forms:
Backlinks will reference your website to include your website domain. for example, www.fullcirclewebsitedesign.co.uk
Citations will reference you or your business but will not contain a domain name. for example, Full Circle Website Design. This can be just as important as a backlink though as search engines are intelligent enough to make the connection between business name and website domain name.
FINDING HIGH QUALITY BACKLINKS AND CITATIONS
Securing one backlink from a high quality website could be worth a hundred backlinks from smaller and less respected websites.
So if I managed to get a backlink to my website from, say, National Geographic then the link juice would be worth more than a bunch of backlinks from individual blog sites or small websites.
Link juice? What's that?
Link juice could be called the amount of Oomph! that a backlink provides. Some factors to consider would be:
You get more link juice from a bigger domain with more domain authority
You get more link juice if a backlink has less links on it as the juice will be shared out amongst all the outgoing links
You can gain link juice even with internal links from one of your web pages to another
If you are building links and find out that your links and references to your website will be 'nofollow' links (as per most comments on social media posts) you won't benefit from any link juice.
WHERE TO FIND LINKS
A good link building strategy is a crucial part of your marketing plan but it can take time to find good links. Some places where you might want to consider:
Directory sites (e.g. Yell, Thompson, Yelp, Cylex)
Forum sites (e.g. Reddit, Quora)
Reciprocal links from other business owners that you know
Social media pages that you have set up and link to your own website
Find industry specific forum sites
Try going to Google and typing in your business industry and then "forum" to find industry specific forum sites. you could repeat this with "directory" and other keywords.
LINK BUILDING CERTIFICATION THROUGH LINKEDIN
This LinkedIn link building strategy & technique course gave a run down of useful, relevant and up to date tips on building links that served as a great refresher course to substantiate what I already know so that I can effective link building services to my clients. It was also packed with lots of extra tips and hints about SEO link building that any business owner with a website would find useful.
In conclusion, a great course, time well spent and useful.
Comments