7 Easy Steps to Master Link Building

Your online success as an internet marketer will depend heavily on good search engine optimization (SEO). Although volumes of books are written every month on SEO, building links to websites is for some reason often overlooked.

Link building is an important part of SEO success. This process helps increase website traffic by connecting quality websites to your website or blog, which leads to increased traffic, as website visitors click on them for more information.

Success at building links to your site requires knowledge of various types of links and how they are obtained. Not all link types have the same effect, and some are not as important as others. It is equally important to know each step and what they can do for your site or blog. Here are top link building strategies for your website.

General Directories

Getting links from directories is the first method that you should use to get link popularity for your site. It is usually the fastest way for the big search engines to find all the pages on your site. The best search engines like Google and Bing are free to submit to.

Besides the search engines, there are also some general web directories that are worth getting listed on. Directories such as About Us, Blogarama, Best of the Web, Google My Business, and Bing Places are best for paid ads. You’ll want to be listed in several categories as well as in regional categories.

Niche Directories

Another area to consider is finding niche directories that are more specific to your market. Most of these directories have softer rules for linking content. The best advantage of using these directories is to get links from sources that your competitors will not have.

Building links from General Directories and Niche Directories is an often neglected – but still effective means of increasing web traffic to your website… Click To Tweet

A quick and easy solution here is to use a general service that specializes in niche directories, such as Directory Critic. Here you simply select a general niche, such as “affiliate” and you will then be directed to a listing of several affiliate related niche directories for you to peruse. This is a much faster approach to getting listed and you’ll find that you’ll be listed much quicker and more prominently on these niche directories.

Create Social Media Profiles

In today’s online market, it is essential that everyone who sells services or products on the Internet is available on many social networks. At least, being seen on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram, you will attract links and traffic to your site.

Many of us now have several accounts on different social media platforms.

And it’s not enough to simply “be seen” anymore. As we continue to evolve on our social platforms, our expectations are evolving too. It has now become necessary to incorporate an entirely new method of online marketing – social media marketing.

Once upon a time, when social media was young, you could get away with a few posts here and there and build backlinks that way. But now your audience expects you to actually engage them.

Here is where a social media strategy is an absolute must, because without one, you’ll be missing out on driving targeted traffic – and only getting backlinks (which, as far as social media is concerned, are not nearly as important.) Sprout Social gives you a comprehensive plan on their website of how to develop your own social media marketing strategy.

SERP Links

This strategy will take the most time, but in the long run, it will give better results.

First, you need to find the best keywords on the market on Google and find out who is in the top 50 or 100 websites. Since these sites are in the top positions in the search results for keywords, you should compare their sites to see if they have any binding policies. Another method is to do the same only with non-competitive, but related websites.

Building links via competitor’s sites is certainly not an easy thing to do, but it is a tried and true method. You’ll want to use a site such as Link Research Tools to help with this.

Write Blog Posts

Writing blog posts and posting them in blog directories is one of the best strategies for getting links. Knowing what content and answers your recipients are looking for in writing on these topics, you will turn your blog into one that many people in your market will want to return from time to time. Using online tools like Google Trends is an easy way to find this information.

You want to make sure that your blog entries are correctly associated with the site and subdomains in every post you write. It will also provide more ammunition for search engine directories to ensure link popularity.

If you are too busy with your business to write blog posts, consider hiring a freelance writer from sites like guru.com or elance.com to take on this job for you. Look at their writing samples and make sure their native language matches the target market to provide you with the best content.

Guest posting on blog directories is an ideal way to get high quality traffic to your website… Click To Tweet

Some of the best blog directories to write for are: EatonWeb, Jayde, OnTopList and Blogarama.

Even better than writing for your own blog is writing as a guest blogger on other popular blogs.

Although this is generally easier said than done, you can try a Guest Posting Service such as the popular “The Hoth”. This site is really a professional service that sources and composes high quality blog posts on your behalf and submits them to high PR blogs – again, on your behalf.

Their service isn’t free, but it is guaranteed, and your money is well invested, as you’ll see your brand and your website see a marked increase in traffic.

Commenting on blogs

By participating and commenting on blogs that your target market can read, you can get useful links to your website or blog. Again, do not be a spammer, just share with your readers, answer questions, or ask questions that are meaningful and poignant .

Blog commenting for traffic? Isn't that dead by now? Hardly. There is a proper and effective way to do it… Click To Tweet

Although it might seem like an outdated method from a bygone era, blog commenting still works, and it’s now almost devoid of any real competition. Although it’s from last year, you’ll still want to check out Smart Blogger’s definitive guide for blog commenting.

Press Releases

Press releases are a great way to get backlinks to your website. You must send out press releases about any special event, grand opening, prize, the launch of a new book, or event. There are various sites where you can publish free press releases. Make the most of these pages.

Write press releases about various events in your company. Post them on these sites and hyperlink them to encourage readers of these press releases to visit your site.

It might be tempting to write this method off as too old-school, but that would be a mistake. The website Class PR has an excellent guide on how to write a proper press release, that doesn’t suck, that doesn’t look like it’s from 1992, and is still capable of driving traffic to your website in 2020 and beyond.

Conclusion

Link building is an essential part of driving direct traffic to your online content, and you’ll need a lot of traffic for successful marketing.

Building links is really just another part of search engine optimization (SEO). For many of these free link building strategies, you’ll also enjoy the added benefit of seeing an influx of traffic to your site, especially when it comes to social media and guest blogging.

When you have many high-quality links in one direction to your site or blog, search engines will see you more favourably, giving your site a higher ranking and therefore send you more highly targeted traffic that you can turn into customers.