A healthy website link profile is one of the most valuable search engine ranking factors. One of the benefits of ranking organically, for many businesses, is that you can show up in search without the added cost of advertising.
A link is a signal between two sites that acts as a vote of confidence and relationship between the two.
This guide is designed to help a business of any size work from the ground up to attract strong links. We start with things that can be done immediately, and work our way up to strategies that can pay off months, if not years down the road.
Let’s get started...
Directories are websites like Yelp, Angies list, the BBB and your local chamber of commerce. Search engines reference local directories to verify location details. These are often referred to as citations. Citations are mentions of your business name and address online, even if those outside websites don’t link to you.
Create a Google My Business Page, which is like a Google+ page for local businesses. This will help tie your website to a specific location, which Google uses in its search results.
TIP: Embed a map into your contact page as another sign to visitors and Google where exactly you are located.
While it takes some time, building relationships is one of the most effective ways to keep your company top-of-mind for people who might be interested in linking to your site or connecting with you.
TIP: Be a good neighbour by linking to others. This helps them gain a link as well as improves your chances of getting recognized and linked back to in the future.
Not all links are created equal. Make sure that you're earning high-quality links, and not focusing on quantity. High-quality links come from authoritative and relevant websites.
Open your preferred Page Performance tool:TIP: Looking at top contributors to industry websites and magazines is a great way to spot thought leaders.
Create a "best-of" list or a resources list. Give credit to sources and authors.
TIP: Not only might these thought leaders help you write your content, but they'll typically help you promote it! You'll gain new visitors and a new link to your content.
Create a blog editorial Calendar or download one here: kyak.mobi/1p5SdlB
Assign someone to write the post, and choose the topic of the blog post. If you maintain a steady blog with quality content, people will naturally link to your articles. We recommend blogging 1-2x per week. It’s a great way to keep your site and your message fresh. (Don’t be self- promotional.)
TIP: Keeping each blog targeted on a single topic and specific will make it easier to follow for your readers as well as create stronger SEO value.
Search engines love to see fresh content. Be the first one (or one of the first) to blog about the news, and you'll have the potential to be on the top of searches on the topic! Set up a Google Alert to follow the news of your industry.
TIP: If you’re not one of the first to write about the news, you can still analyze the news or do a recap of it.
Include one relevant link per article to useful outside content, especially content from industry thought leaders. While people may leave your site, they’ll also remember you provided them with the good info. Be sure to link text that contains relevant keywords (in a phrase) that you'd like to rank for.
TIP: Be sure you include all on-page SEO components to fully optimize your page for search engines.
Infographics, videos and interesting image. If you can create a visually appealing, informative, data-driven infographic, and get it in front of enough people, it can go far. Use tools such as slideshare.com to publish infographics and slide presentations.
TIP: Videos are a valuable addition to your content. How-to’s, demonstrations, and even well made company promotional videos can attract interesting links and return visits.
Include social sharing buttons on your blog posts. If your blog does not have sharing tools, add them. Include a link to your website on your social tools and in the profiles. Encourage readers to share the post to their personal social networks. This will help you get new visitors to your blog, and will also help increase the number of links to your website.
TIP: Social sharing buttons should be at the top of the blog post. This will encourage more visitors to share the content as many people share based on headline or image, regardless if they read the whole article.
An RSS feed provides a simple summary of your blog posts for readers that is constantly updating. If your customers have a "RSS Reader" installed in their browser they can receive updates to your blog by subscribing (clicking the RSS icon on your blog). If you don’t have an RSS feed, add it.
TIP: We strongly recommend choosing a full text RSS feed instead of a snippet RSS feed so readers can view the full article.
Share your content with industry thought leaders and those you've formed relationships with. Promote your content in social media. Write your message and include a link to your content.
Including an image in the post can dramatically improve its success on social media - because people are visual creatures. We like the bling.
Schedule out a couple of additional messages you can publish over a few days to promote your content on social, making sure to change the language each time.
Don't stop at just one tweet, but don’t spam either. Social is meant to be sociable, not broadcasting. Include a “Click to Tweet” link or button in your emails and in content if possible. And join the conversation on websites such as inbound.org and quora.com.
TIP: Don’t just share the link, introduce it.
Spend time reading articles and blogs written by industry leaders, competitors, news sources and industry journals. If you have something intelligent to add to what they have to say, leave a comment. The best comments add to the conversation and show other readers and people leaving comments that you have valuable information to share.
If the blog or article’s comment section allows you to post a link to your website along with your name or email, use it - but make sure you link to a relevant content page on your website instead of your homepage. And always use your real name when commenting.
TIP: Don’t just drop in a link in without joining the conversation! If you “link-drop”, most platforms will give you the boot.
Do outreach to journalists when you have news or a big piece of content. Write a press release about interesting company news. Publish it to your website (not on your blog – if you have several – set up a separate blog just for press releases) and send it to news sources.
If you can, do a joint press release with another company. Throw an event, like a meet-up, a dinner, a lunch-n-learn, etc. Invite local thought leaders and journalists.
TIP: Put the time and effort into building relationships with journalists and news companies, your focus can result in major media coverage and exposure. Get a sense of what so “news worthy”
TIP: Note: Press releases are considered advertising content. As such, it is unlikely to rank without serious support in the form of sharing and engagement. Seriously!
Look for quality sites to guest blog for. You should know the site well and be able to vouch for their legitimacy. Those relationships you've built will go a long way here. Include links in the text (as hyperlinked words) that direct readers back to your pages. Partner with another blog to trade writing guest posts. You'll both get the benefit of reaching a new audience and sending links back to your website.
TIP: When looking for a site to guest blog for, weed out sites that have too many blog posts (they might be spammy or low-quality) and sites that never have guest blog posts (they probably won't accept your offer of a guest post, so don't waste your time). And the biggest tell of all, no engagement = no fun.
TIP: There's a fine line between mutually contributing and swapping blogs with other businesses. Avoid swapping blog posts as it's considered black hat SEO that may affect your Google rankings. best practice to simply contribute for the content and knowledge sharing and let SEO come naturally.
16. Create profiles on these domains to generate high quality links to your site:
Congrats! If you did even 20% of the things I mentioned, you have an opportunity of domainating search engine results.
Don't stop! The closer you get to the top, the tighter the horse race.
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