Building organic traffic through SEO is one of the best long-term investments you can make in your business. But what really helps improve your rankings?
While SEO experts often debate the secret to topping the search page, Google states that links, when included in high quality content, are the #1 factor in boosting SEO. Focusing only on your on-page SEO and content creation is fruitless if you aren’t backlinking high authority sites with relevant content.
Sounds simple enough, right? Not necessarily. Whether it’s an outdated link or a low quality site, not all links are created equal. Here are 10 effective link-building strategies to level up your SEO game.
- Start a blog
Now let’s be clear, starting a blog, writing one post and forgetting about it for a year isn’t helpful. In fact, that stale content will actually work against you over time.
What does work is consistently updating your content using relevant topics that will engage your audience. Within those articles, you can put in high-quality links, including products on Amazon, related articles from authoritative sites, and even other articles within your own blog.
- Ask for backlinks
If you’re just starting out, this is the perfect first step! Think about who you know in your network who has a somewhat established website and is relevant to your industry. Ask them to place a backlink to your site anywhere from a product page to an article on their blog, just be sure it’s not included as a menu item!
- Write a guest post
Publishing new content on your own blog is essential to maintaining and improving your rankings. But you can also increase your rankings by writing guest posts for other blogs and linking your site in your bio.
Look for businesses within your industry with active blogs and ask them if they’d be open to you writing a blog post. You can even trade blog posts or offer up your expertise on a related topic!
- Give a testimonial
This one is a gift that keeps on giving. Working with other businesses who deserve your praise, especially if their customer base would benefit from your products or services, is a great way to increase your visibility. Writing a testimonial to be published on the business’ website will allow you to backlink your own site when referencing your business.
- Build relationships
We often view the internet as an impersonal experience, but there are plenty of ways to connect with people all across the globe. Whether it’s a Facebook group, blog, or forum, get engaged with others who might be a good fit for your business.
Think about who your customer is and join groups with similar audiences. Once you’re in those groups, start commenting on other people’s posts. Make sure you’re including relevant and helpful information – you want to build up a reputation as an expert on various topics! As you start to build trust within the group, you can also share content or products from your own business as a solution or addition to any conversation. Be sure to be authentic and helpful, and not avoid appearing spammy!
- Turn mentions into backlinks
As you engage more and more with social media platforms, your content or page may be mentioned by other users or businesses. Often your content won’t be linked, and that’s an easy opportunity to score a backlink. When you find your content (there are plenty of SERP research tools, like SEMRush, that can help), reach out to the business and ask them to add a backlink.
- Discover competitors’ common backlinks
Unless you’re launching a business in a new industry, there’s likely some competition outranking you. SEMRush can again come in handy here in analyzing common backlinks used within your industry. This will give you a guide for what kind of backlinks to go after in your own climb to the top of the search results.
- Recover your dead backlinks
As you develop your content, your backlinks may lead to error pages. All active sites are constantly updating their content to maintain their own rankings, which sometimes requires republishing old content, creating dead links. These dead links will work against you, so it’s important to update them regularly.
Scour your content for links leading to 404, 403 and 503 error pages. Again, there are plenty of tools out there to help you review your content and report back any dead links without lifting a finger. Whenever you find a dead link, simply look for a replacement link to relevant content on the same site or another authoritative page.
- Use infographics
Infographics feed into our visual nature, making them much easier for people to consume. Because they’re so engaging, infographics are also widely shared by other sites, often without a backlink.
Using Google Image Search, you can find sites where your infographics are used and check if a backlink is included. If not, reach out to the business and ask them to update their page with a link!
- Get an indirect backlink from your competitor
When two sites both link to the same URL, the sites become indirectly connected. By finding sites that your direct competitors link to in their content, you can reference the same URL and indirectly connect yourself with the competition.
Make sure you’re inspecting the authority of the site being used to ensure it’s a quality link, and you’re on your way to beating the competition!
With these 10 tips and tricks, you’ll be well on your way to improving your off-page SEO and climbing those search rankings. Still not sure where to start? Book a consulting call with our team today!
