Here are some SEO link building tips for those new to the world of Search Engine Optimisation.
Following SEO link building tips and regularly maintaining your website’s link profile is vital to maximising Search Engine visibility. Link building is the process of encouraging and sourcing quality, relevant links to your website, which in turn help it achieve higher rankings and driving traffic to your site. Find out how you can increase your Search Engine ranking and boost sales leads through these tried and tested methods.
Create quality content
One of the best SEO link building tips is to write quality content that other websites naturally want to link back to. If you haven’t done so already, you may want to incorporate a company blog, a news and views page and a media release page on your website that give you ample opportunities for content creation. Promote your material on your social media sites so that people can share it with their online communities and then potentially link back to your website.
Choose websites with high authority
You cannot control who is linking back to your website but when you are proactively doing link building activities such as writing guest posts and adding your website to directories (see below), you want to choose quality websites which are trustworthy, credible and have high authority*. You also want to target websites which have high relevancy to the subject of your website or content, otherwise, the link to your site will be perceived by the Search Engines as being less valuable and will not significantly contribute to your link profile and subsequent ranking for your targeted keyword phrases.
Anchor text matters
The anchor text (the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink) is critical to the success of any your link building campaign and helps Search Engines associate the keywords in the anchor text with your site. Use keyword rich anchor text but make sure you are varying the keyword themes. If every single link from 3rd party sites to your site uses the same anchor text, this may arouse suspicion with Search Engines. A natural profile will have a diversity of anchor text in back links.
Maintain your link building campaign
Another of the essential SEO link building tips is to continuously maintain momentum with your link development activities. If everything else is equal, a website with more quality links will be served up higher on the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages). To keep a competitive edge especially when you have launched a new website, it’s a good idea to focus on link building activities at least three times a week for half an hour. Some tried and tested link building strategies include:
- Listing your website in blog directories
- Blogging on related websites
- Participating in forums with a link to your site in your signature
- Creating a profile with your local community
- Distributing media releases and article marketing
- Posting on social networking websites
- Uploading videos (Video SEO)
Keep a close eye on your competitors
Analyse your competitor’s link building profile to try and expand your link portfolio. First of all, you need to know exactly who your ‘keyword competitors’ are. You can do this easily by doing a keyword search and jotting down the first 10 company names. From here you can do link profiling to look at not only the number of links but the quality of links. You should also look at their content to evaluate what’s the top content drawing in links.
Have a mix of do follow and no follow links
While it is preferable that you have back links from blogs that have ‘do follow’ links (do-follow back links get followed by the Search Engines and authority is filtered down to your site, ‘no follow” links do not pass on link value), a natural link profile will have a blend of ‘do follow’ and ‘no follow’ back links – thus increasing your rank in the SERPs. There are tools available readily on the web to help you find ‘do follow’ blogs such as dropmylink.
Build link profiles over time
Search Engines get very suspicious when a new website has developed 1000 back links overnight. The premise behind quality link building is to build an organic profile over time. Characteristics of a natural link portfolio is a variance of keywords, deep linking to different pages on your website, using a balance of ‘do follow’ and ‘no follow’ links (see above) and building links from a diversity of relevant sources – do not put your eggs in one basket.
Creating a quality link profile is critical to the success of your SEO campaigns. At SEO Works, we have a dedicated team of Link Development Analysts who tailor link building campaigns to each client and develop personal relationships with webmasters and websites across a wide range of industries to maximise your link and citation profile prospects. If you would like any SEO link building tips or like to know more about the SEO packages we offer – contact us today.
