Link building for businesses – Where should you start?

Link building is one of the many important factors that govern your ranking on search engines. According to reports, 72 percent believe that link building is one of the most crucial ways of achieving a high SERP.

Regardless of which industry you belong to, your online presence can benefit immensely from linking building services. Unless you already have a link building company on board, the chances are that you might be confused about how to start. Don’t worry. We are here for you. Here is a comprehensive guide that will help you understand what link building is all about.

What is Link Building?

Before identifying how you can start your link building campaign by availing the services of a link building company it is essential to understand what link building is and how it works.

With a link building campaign, an SEO company tries to actively increase the number of websites that link back to your website. The more there are links to your website, the higher it’ll rank in SERPs. This is because backlinks are naturally generated by businesses that are authoritative and credible. The more links you have, the more credible Google thinks your business is, thereby improving your rank.

What are the rules of the game?

Making a successful link building campaign is not as easy as it seems. A lot of businesses make the mistake of going with any agency to create links for them.

However, this doesn’t just work to improve your rankings. In fact, it may affect it negatively. Therefore, it is essential to partner with the right agency when building links. To do so, the best approach is to create value for your readers. This way, the links that are cited back to you are likely to be relevant to your industry and hence the business.

Your job should not end with creating quality backlinks. You need to ensure that when potential customers are re-directed to your website, they are met with quality content and relevant information to initiate a purchase. Give them a reason from the get-go to choose your services or keep coming back for more. This doesn’t mean that you bombard your content with fluff and keywords. Everything present on your site needs to be relevant and contextual. If you don’t do so, Google might assume that you are trying to manipulate its algorithm and rank you poorly.

All in all, there are two rules to building links. First is to ensure that you build link through quality websites. The second is to work on your website to attract customers once they are redirected to it. Make sure that the company you invest in follows these two rules to the tee.

The art of finding high-quality links

You must begin your link building campaigns by identifying high-quality links. The success or failure of your campaign singlehandedly depends on this. If you manage to get quality backlinks, you will watch as your website’s SERP increases organically. However, weak links will lead to a Google penalty and a negative impact on your ranking.

Therefore, rather than just building links on all websites, identify links that are worth the effort. Here is how you can do so.

Look at the authority of the page

Just like your website’s SERP matters, the ranking of the page that is linking to you also matters. Think of it this way, the higher the rank of the website, the more visitors it will have. This will translate to more probability of people being redirected to your site.

It’s also a fact that high ranking pages are known to be credible and authoritative. If their content links back to you, you automatically get credibility as well.

Assess the relevance of the website to your industry/business

Merely being a high-ranking page isn’t enough. Instead, the page must also address your target audience. If it isn’t tailored to attract the type of customers that will enjoy your product, you won’t benefit at all from the traffic that comes to your website due to the backlink.

Therefore, you must look at how relevant the website is to your business model. Google’s algorithm has also been changed to take relevance into account. Not only does it demand your website as well as backlink content to be optimized, but it also requires it to be relevant to the industry being searched for.

Your link’s position on the page

Whether or not potential customers detect your website link and click on it also depends on where the link is placed in the content. Let’s say that your link is present in the footer of the page. Do you think that people will detect it? It won’t be! Regardless of how high ranking the site is, such a link will not benefit you in any way.

Make sure that when conducting your link building campaign that you only invest in sites that feature your link as part of the content. If your link is located in headers, footers or sidebars, they won’t be worth much.

Try to be an expert through your website

Google doesn’t just want content linking back to your website to award you with a high rank. Instead, it wants links that are editorially placed. In other words, it wants people to link to your website because of the quality of your content. If you create a profile on a site and drop your business as a link, it won’t work.  Instead, the links have to be vouched by site owners and placed by writers.

So, to build quality links, you need to work on your content and brand image. Relay a sound and credible image to the world. Make sure you are treated as an expert in your field so that other websites are tempted to link back to your content as a source of information.

Conclusion

The start of link building is to attract quality links. Once you do so, your ranking will soar high.