Tag Archive for: Link building

Simple Link Building Techniques to Follow in 2021

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When it comes to SEO, both on-page and off-page efforts are equally important and need to be done appropriately. Link building is an off-page SEO technique that has become essential in enhancing a website’s rankings and its overall growth. 

Over the past few years, marketers have had to change the way they go about link building due to changes in Google’s algorithm. Google now ranks the quality of links above the total number of links a website has. With that, here are four effortless link building techniques you can utilize in 2021. 

1. Guest Posting 

A guest post is one of the most impactful link building techniques. This not only allows you to generate more backlinks, but helps you build relations with others in your industry as well. It’s fairly easy to identify blog sites that will allow others to write guests posts for them. Look for a medium that is appropriately related to your niche, but not a direct competitor. Doing this will not only allow you to build more backlinks, but can help you build good relations as well. 

When guest posting, you want to make sure your content is high quality and published in a good presentation. If the delivery is not good, your reputation could suffer and defeat the purpose. Make sure you generate informative content so you’re building links in the most effective way. 

2. Broadening Your Relations 

No matter the industry, relationships matter. The same goes for link building. Identify blogs, forums and pages that are related to your niche. Follow them on social media and try to get into contact with them. Connecting with more businesses similar to yours can help in a variety of ways. Not only are you building links but you’re also putting yourself more in the loop of what’s going on in your industry. This also helps you create more awareness for your brand, ultimately helping you and your site grow. 

3. Testimonials 

Writing testimonials is another simple and effective link building method. There are many companies that ask and enable people to write testimonials on the products or services they offer. When you leave a testimonial, you can get a backlink if the company publishes it. Ultimately this will engage more visitors and traffic to your website. 

4. Keep an Eye on Competitors  

Lastly, you should keep an eye on the links your competitors are building. Monitor the strong links they have and see the strategies they implement in going about building them. This can help you improve your own strategies and identify how you can go about getting the highest quality links. 

Final Thoughts 

Link building is an essential factor in an overall SEO strategy. While these are fairly simple tactics, there are many more. Sometimes it’s easier to seek help from the experts. At Onimod Global, SEO is our core attribute and a pillar of our marketing strategy. We develop organic search engine optimization campaigns that deliver increases in organic traffic through an increase in natural rankings across all major search engines. If you’re interested in digital marketing assistance or want to learn more about what we do, contact us today. 

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here

The 3 Pillars Of Link Building

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High quality content is the one of the keys to success when it comes to internet presence. Creating high-quality content can strengthen your business’ branding and spark conversions, but not if your audience is never exposed to that content. Link building is your solution to help your content be visible via other websites and in the search results.

Check out this list created by Michael Johnson, sales manager at Page One Power. He explains how to identify relevant linking opportunities, create and leverage linkable assets, and communicate with site owners in a way that compels them to link to your content.

Create audience-focused, linkable assets

Your links will be as good as your content. If you link to a site or an asset of your company that is worthless to the audience you’re selling to, it makes no sense to include in your content. For example, pointing directly to a product page or other pages that provide low-value to your audience of the sites that you target, you will have a tough time converting into paying customers.

Great linkable assets are audience focused and provide informational educational value. Your linkable assets should not be promotional. Johnson specifically cautions against requesting links to lower-value promotional content or product pages because they may come across as paid links, which may also discourage users from clicking through.

Identify relevant, valued and trusted sites for links

Use the following criteria to evaluate which sites are worth including in a link building campaign.

Value for users. The page that you’re interested in getting a link from should provide value to your customers. And of course, be sure the anchor text in the link helps set user expectations when they click through.

Relevance. Your link building should be relevant to the context of which the link is appearing and also match the audience that you want to attract.

Vet every site. Make a thorough investigation on every site. It’s very important that your sources are credible, and that you can be counted on as a trusted source for your audience.  “Always ask yourself the question, ‘In a world without Google, would I still want this link?’” Johnson said, adding, “If the answer is no, then you have to question whether or not that’s an organic link.”

Trust and authority. Always look at the backlinks to the site you’re thinking of incorporating into your content. “If you see that they are linking out to a lot of spam or are posting low quality content on their website, those are red flags that mean you should probably avoid that website.”

Keep the momentum after the link

After acquiring a link, link builders should send a followup communication thanking the site owner. To keep in contact with these brands puts you in a good position of goodwill between brands. Working together to make sure your audience has accurate and reliable information will translate into paying customers for you both.

Johnson also recommends paying attention to the internal linking of the page that earned the backlink. Since product or promotional pages aren’t likely to attract many of their own backlinks, internally linking those conversion-based pages to other pages with a stronger backlink profile will help you to build link equity.

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. To find out more about who we are and what we do, click here.

Link Wars: The Force Awakens

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Link building looked different a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away). Columnist Winston Burton explains how things have changed and what works today.

Google’s algorithm to impact website visibility takes hundreds of factors into account, but none of them have been as important and impactful as the almighty link.

“When I first started in SEO more than 10 years ago, the link was the most powerful factor in improving your search engine rankings, especially if you secured links from high-quality, trusted domains with keyword-rich anchor text from sites with high Page Rank.”

Getting a link used to be the way Google found and indexed sites. A lot of companies made a lot of money by selling links, because back then it was easy to manipulate rankings in various ways, including:

  • getting links from affiliate networks;
  • purchasing links from high-authority sites;
  • obtaining links from .gov and .edu sites by exchanging some services or items;
  • using blog networks;
  • procuring links from microsites;
  • and purchasing domains just for links.

Those were the good old days. But now, a link is just a link, unless it is clicked on many times by humans with specific intent, which is the new force in search.

Search engines have been devaluing some link tactics over time because of past abuse, which is evident by all of the Penguin updates. However, securing high-quality links is still absolutely necessary for ranking high with Google, Bing and others.

In short, a lot of tactics and strategies that were used back in the day no longer offer any value and, in fact, can be harmful. These days, it’s all about building high-quality content, securing (and maintaining) links from relevant and authoritative sites and weeding out spammy backlinks to your site.

Offering High-Quality Content

One of the best ways to secure links is to offer high-quality content that meets the needs of users based on their intent. Offering content in a user’s moment will increase conversion rates and drive more sales.

Consider a consumer’s path to purchase. For example, if a person’s car battery dies, he or she may turn to the web and do a search for “car battery.”

This is the beginning of the research phase, just seeing what’s out there. The consumer will continue to refine the search based on the kind of battery that fits their vehicle and price range. Once the consumer figures out exactly which battery to buy, he or she may perform a branded search (e.g., “DieHard Advanced Gold AGM PowerSport Battery 9-BS”) and make a purchase from there.

Each of these searches represents an opportunity for a car accessory retailer to be found by the customer and gain brand exposure. Brands must have high-quality content for each stage of the user journey to maximize this opportunity.

Having great content at all stages of the user lifecycle provides consumers with a great experience that has the potential to keep them coming back for more.

Pro tip: When you build new content, test it through paid social media to give it the extra boost it needs to get in front of your target audience and attract more endorsements and links.

Monitoring Your Existing Links Closely And Taking Action Where Necessary

Always monitor your existing links, keeping track of the good ones and pruning the bad ones.

Ensure that your links are contextually relevant and provide value to the user by offering additional information, products or services that will help them. Remember that Google is taking user engagement into consideration in its algorithm.

Carefully monitor any losses from high-quality and authoritative sites. For example, if you’re a computer manufacturer, and you had a link from CNET with a great review of your product, you want to ensure that you keep that link. Not only is it a relevant link from a well-respected site saying positive things about your brand, but the presence of an easily clickable link has the potential to drive sales.

If you lose such a link for some reason (e.g., you change domains or someone updates the page), you must contact the webmaster to get it back. Otherwise, this could have a negative impact on your search engine rankings.

Additionally, you should seek to remove any suspicious or unnatural links to your site that have the potential to cause website penalties. This might include paid links, links from spammy blog networks, links from questionable sites or links from pages/websites that aren’t relevant to yours. If the webmaster doesn’t want to remove those links, you can use the disavow tool in the Google Search Console.

Final Thoughts

While the very fabric of the web originally was built around links, that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It pays to keep in mind that links were invented to be clicked on, not just for search engines to consider in their ranking algorithms. Thus, end-user behavior is the new force in link power.

Obtaining high-quality links is still very important for improving search engine visibility. Brands should focus on creating high-quality, engaging content that meets the needs of end users based on their intent at all stages of their journey.

Always focus on quality over quantity, because it is not about who has more, it is about who is more trusted and offers value and a great user experience. Quality and relevance win every time.

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Ref: Search Engine Land. Winston Burton.