Link building techniques can improve your SEO. If you are new to search, an experienced freelance consultant is a good investment.
Link building describes the actions taken with the goal of increasing the number of backlinks directed to pages on a website. Generally in SEO, link building is done with the goal of increasing a page or website’s ranking in search results – say on Google, or other search engines.
Building links continues to be a vital part of any digital marketing strategy, as it affects SEO, makes your content more relevant and authoritative and can help to increase the amount of time spent on your website. All of these factors can lead to higher conversion rates, an increase in customers and a general boost in business revenue.
What to do before you build SEO links
Before you start to build links to your site, you need to have great content in place. Links are irrelevant if visitors come to your website and immediately bounce away because you haven’t delivered what they are looking for. High bounce rates can impact your search engine ranking, so it’s important to invest time into writing SEO-friendly content.
In order to build links to SEO content that is relevant and valuable (to both Google and visitors), you should:
- Create an SEO content strategy
- Write a mix of SEO-friendly content
- Build SEO landing pages that are more likely to convert
- Invest time in keyword research, to ensure you know which search terms your audience is already searching for – this will save you time in the long run
Basically, whenever you produce content for your website ask yourself: ‘is this going to be a valuable resource?’
Building links for SEO
There are a range of ways to get links to help improve your search ranking. Before you launch into trying them all without a focused strategy, you should consider which of the tactics suit the resources you have available and the industry your business is in. For well-established, highly competitive industries, link building can be difficult. Without expert SEO experience, you might find it difficult to make any impact. If you are a niche business with lots of growth potential, you could find more opportunities to build relationships with other sites. Here we take a look at just a few of the link building techniques available to your business.
Content creation link building
This involves creating SEO-friendly content that stands a chance of gaining some links. Examples include how-to guides, infographics, videos or a research report relevant to your sector. After you have created your content, you will try to earn links from people who find them relevant. By directly reaching out to those people, you will spread the word about both your content and eventually your business. This tactic requires a lot of investment and should only be done as part of a wider SEO strategy.
Resource link building
If you’re not in the market for creating specific content for links, you can identify where your business can already add value to your target audience and try to build links from resource pages. Competitor analysis can come in useful here, as it can help you to find resources that are linking to your competitors but not to you, allowing you to then look for similar opportunities for your business.
Broken link building
Broken links continue to harm visitor experience and overall SEO performance. Broken link building is a popular SEO practice because so many dead links exist online. The idea behind this tactic is to help website owners to fix their broken links by using a relevant link from your website. In the first instance, you will find broken links on relevant site pages. If you don’t already have any content that is similar, you will create some content with the aim of replacing it. Then you can reach out to the site owner and pitch to have your content take its place. From a time-spent perspective, if you are implementing a link building strategy yourself, it is a much quicker process if you already have a bank of relevant content to refer to, but this won’t always happen – you may have to invest more time in producing new content. This is one reason why bringing an SEO consultant on board can be a huge timesaver.
Link earning
This involves you earning editorially-placed links ahead of your competitors. When a third party links to your site or content page, they are saying that they consider it a relevant piece of information. This is a strategy that every business wants to succeed with, but one that comes with a word of caution: although this can bring high reward, there is also a lot of time and resources that have to go into making this a success.
Bad links: The negative impact of the wrong SEO strategy
If you build bad links, you could negatively affect your rankings and organic traffic. Bear in mind that Google has a strong set of Webmaster Guidelines and if it finds that you are in violation of those for building risky links, you will most likely see your site drop in search rankings. If this happens, it can take months (if not longer) to recover, which could have a detrimental impact on your business. So how do you ensure that you are only producing high-quality SEO links?
The best chance you have of delivering a successful SEO strategy is to invest in a worthwhile resource: an SEO consultant.
7 reasons to hire a professional freelance SEO consultant
1. You will have more time to focus on what you know: your business
As a business owner, you have enough to do running day-to-day operations. You’re busy. Throw in SEO and chances are, one of your spinning plates is going to fall. You could end up spending significant chunks of time on an SEO strategy that doesn’t work, while also taking you away from your core business tasks.
An SEO consultant removes that risk; you will be secure in the knowledge that your SEO strategy is in good hands.
2. They know what they are doing!
With the best will in the world, if you don’t have any SEO experience, why would you risk your business’s reputation when you could leave it to a search expert? Learning to do SEO well is a time-consuming process; it can be overwhelming to those new to the subject. Rather than learn how to do SEO on your own, you can hire an SEO consultant to help run your campaign instead.
3. Help you to attract new customers
By hiring a professional SEO consultant, you will be one step closer to attracting new customers. They will tailor your SEO strategy to your specific business needs – it isn’t a case of ‘one size fits all’ – so allow them to do what they do best: use content, messaging and relevant keywords to strengthen your brand messaging and establish your business as an authority for the products and/or services you offer.
4. Increase engagement
Your SEO consultant can use their digital skills to help you to increase audience engagement and devise solutions that will bring that audience directly to you. And consider this: every member of that audience has the potential to become a paying customer.
5. Boost customer satisfaction
Without a clear SEO strategy, chances are your business has been lacking a specific digital direction. Perhaps you haven’t been delivering what it is that your customers actually want. With the support of an SEO consultant, you will be better able to provide exactly what your customers need. And in doing so, you will boost customer satisfaction and increase retention rates.
6. Higher return on investment
Due to lower overheads compared with agencies, a freelance SEO consultant is able to offer a market-leading SEO solution at a much lower cost, allowing you to keep your overall spend to a more reasonable level. You can expect a higher return on investment from SEO and PPC with a freelance consultant.
7. The human touch
By hiring an SEO consultant to guide your digital marketing strategy, you will develop a more personal relationship with them, compared with going to an agency.
By having direct contact with the person who has implemented a strategy for your business, you will receive much clearer communication and detailed updates on your campaign performance.
The bottom line
There are a number of link building techniques you can use to improve your SEO. The specific ones you choose will depend on the resources and time you have available, your industry and your target audience. If you are new to SEO, an experienced freelance consultant is a worthwhile investment.
A professional SEO consultant can make your brand’s online presence better and more accessible to a wider audience. With their help and expertise, you will be able to more effectively cater to your target audience via a series of proven digital marketing strategies.
If you’re keen to improve your website’s SEO and need some expert advice, please get in touch.