Learn How to Build Links With These 3 Painless Strategies

Links are like a road map for navigating the web. They help you move from page to page, website to website, and find the information you need.

Links are important for your search engine optimization (SEO), too. They help you build trust and authority and improve your ranking in search engines — that’s why you need to know how to build links.

Discover more about link building below, and be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter for the latest tips and tricks for all things marketing!

What is link building?

So, what is link building? Link building is the process of getting other sites to link back to your website, which forms a backlink. These links act like recommendations — when a high-authority page links to your website, it signals to Google that you’re also authoritative and trustworthy.

Link building is important for growing your business because it enables you to show search engines that you’re a trusted and reliable resource for information in your industry.

Best practices for building links

If you want to improve your SEO and rank high on search engine results pages, you should build links. Here are some proven link-building strategies you can add to your marketing tactics.

1. Publish high-quality and valuable content

Though it may seem obvious that you should focus on high-quality content, some businesses focus on quantity over quality. While you should strive to publish a wide variety of content on your site, only good quality content earns links. Other businesses and organizations won’t link to sites with grammatical or factual errors because this will lower their own credibility. 

Whether you’re publishing a few monthly blog posts or updating a service page, make sure the content is well-written before you publish it. To test your webpage’s readability before you publish it, you can use a readability tool, which will tell you whether your webpage is easy to read. 

Make sure the content you publish also adds value for the user. If you publish a blog post that seems to reuse information from other websites, you will struggle to gain backlinks because you aren’t offering anything new. 

When you publish content, think about your business’s unique information or insights to make the content original and valuable. For example, if you keep track of statistics that are relevant to your business, adding those numbers gives you content that no one else on the Internet has.

2. Add visual elements to your content

After you have refined the written content on your website, see what you can do to add to the visual appeal. Most web users prefer visual content over written content, so adding visual elements can make your information more appealing for website visitors. 

Having visual appeal helps with earning links, too. Authoritative websites want to direct people to helpful, digestible sources, and adding visual elements enhances that experience.

Some ways you can add visual content include:

• Infographics: You can share data-driven information using infographics. It helps to make your information and data easier to comprehend.
• Video: If you want to share information like a how-to guide, videos are a great way to do so. It’s an appealing component that can make your content more valuable because it’s more engaging.
• Original images: While you can use stock images, original images always work best. They add a unique look to your page and help it stand out from competing pages.

Leveraging visual elements will help you create more appealing content that generates links.

3. Build relationships on and off the web

Another great way to earn backlinks is to establish relationships with other businesses and organizations. Relationship building may seem old-fashioned in the world of online marketing, but in reality, we do it differently now. 

If you sell a product that might be useful to customers of another business, for example, that website might use the opportunity to link back to you. Backlinking adds value for users because they gain another source of helpful information or resources. It also helps you by earning backlinks. 

Another way to earn backlinks is through guest posting. With this practice, your business writes a post for another business’s blog. You can then add a link to your site in the author bio section of the post. 

When guest posting, only write for blogs that have real relevance to you. Search engines can determine when blog posts seem overly promotional or spammy. 

If your business works closely with the local community, you may already have relationships with other companies in the area. If so, this can be an excellent opportunity for backlinks as well. Reach out to your real-world contacts and see if they might promote your business on their websites.

WebFX can help you build links

Building links is an essential part of ranking well in search engines. Links allow you to showcase your website’s structure and demonstrate credibility. If you’re struggling with building links for your business, WebFX can assist. We have a full range of SEO services, including link building, to help your company rank online. 

Ready to give your SEO a boost? Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist!