Link Building – Links need to be earned by having interesting, intriguing, engaging content that will (must) stimulate ‘people’ to both connect with the subject matter and link to your website.
“Link Building isn’t an effective strategy in comparison to Link Earning” – Rand Fishkin
Building Links
As I have stated before; all links are not equal, the same is said about content.
Some content is better than other content for a specific target audience.
No different to say, the content put out by Television Stations in Australia as an example.
The content on the ABC and SBS is significantly and culturally different to that of the commercial stations – Channel 7, 9 and 10.
People will follow, engage and relate to what is of most interest to them; be it the daytime drama such as “Days of our Lives”, prime time reality shows such as ‘Big Brother’ or cartoons for the kids.
Now take the same concept and principles to the content you published and how it is presented to your target audience… be it;
- Text,
- Video,
- Surveys,
- Images,
- Infographics,
- Give Aways,
- Reports or
- Competitions… let’s call these ‘Assets’.
Link Building – Compiling Your Assets
Having the following assets within your content will increase the likelihood of engaging with your audience.
Visual Assets
- Images, we all know the saying ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’
More examples can be found on our Facebook page – Havoc Digital Marketing
- Sometimes, Images can express more with a little text – “Memes“
More examples can be found on our Facebook page – Havoc Digital Marketing
- Infographics not only use images to convey an idea, they can easily communicate data.
Natural Mineral Makeup – Ecominerals Australia & USA
- Videos, informative and can be entertaining.
Pest Control Brisbane – Eclipse Pest Control.
- Charts, Tables and Lists
Just the facts, the facts and the whole facts, to simple right!
30+ Google.com.au Position 1 Rankings.
Work In Progress – 6 months into a campaign.
Work in Progress – Across 4 Markets, USA, Australia, UK & Thailand.
Alternative Clothing Brands – Beserk, Australia
Office Plant Hire Melbourne – EcoGreen Plants, Australia
Weight Loss Camp Thailand – Palapon, Thailand
Content Research and Data
Credibility is essential and in producing any content, it is very highly recommended that you undertake appropriate research and collate the necessary data to support any statements of facts made.
Every industry will have it’s own pertinent data and there would be no doubt sources to get that data.
“Fact – Position 1 in Google gets 32.5% of the Traffic”
“Fact – Position 10 in Google gets 2.4% of the Traffic, yet Position 9 gets 2.6%”
So now back up these statements of fact…. Source https://chitika.com/google-positioning-value
Build Powerful Links – Outreach
To build links you now need to reach out to website owners, journalists and bloggers with your Content so that it gets published and linked back to your target website or landing page.
Competitor Analysis
Competitors Backlinks
In Part 1 of Link Building Guide 2017, I provided a list of high authority sites to which you could get published, but they may be difficult and pricey to get your content published on.
Another alternative is to checkout where your competitors are getting their backlinks and reach out to those site owners.
I wrote an article on Competitor SEO Research, so check it out.
Link Building – Email Outreach
Reaching out by email can be tricky as it easy to have your email simply deleted and therefore fail in making contact.
A tip to avoid simply being deleted is to personalise your email both to the individual and the subject matter.
Here is a tried and tested example of an email which has worked well for Brian Dean of Backlnk0.com.
Hi [First Name],
I was looking for content on [Topic] today, when I stumbled on your article: [Article Title].
Good stuff! I especially enjoyed [Something specific from their article].
Also, I just published a new guide on [Your Topic]: [URL].
As someone that writes about [Topic], I thought you’d enjoy it.
My guide may also make a nice addition to your page. Either way, keep up the awesome work with [Website]!
Talk Soon,
[Your Name]
Remember to personalise and approach the site owner with content that would be to their advantage and interest.
Black Hat SEO Link Building
Black Hat SEO
The Google algorithm focus is to present genuine, valid and relevant returns and as links are a fundamental component in their calculations then it stands to reason that they have mechanisms to identify and penalise those who try to manipulate their rankings in the index.
Buying Links goes against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and are black hat – risking your sites rankings and the potential to be totally removed from Google search results.
Considering that you have to;
- Produce content of interest and relevance to your target audience
- Be it Text, Images, Videos…etc
- Find the websites of relevance to your industry, product or service
- Approach the owners of those quality sites
- It takes time to do all of the above…. tick tock… then
- Successfully have your content published or linked to….
Then one has to seriously questions these offerings to Buy Backlinks!
Link Building – Algorithmic Penalty
Link Building or more apt Link Earning is neither easy, quick or cheap.
Should this be your experience and case then expect Google’s Penguin algorithm which targets sites that have such spammy links to be penalise as a consequence.
What happens when Google penalises a site, well take the following as an example.
Case Study #1
Now factor in that the dollar value for a potential client contract in this industry would easily be in excess of $200,000 … so how cheap were those poor quality backlinks?
To come crashing down from the heights of Position 1 would be and was financially devastating for this or business owner.
Link Building – Manual Penalty
Should you be penalised by Google via a Googler manually reviewing your Backlink profile, they will notify you of such and send you a message via your Google Search Console.
Google Search Console notification.
Unlike a Penguin Algorithmic penalty, you are able to work with Google to overcome the Manual Penalty by Disavowing Links and then submitting a Reconsideration Request.
The best and advisable way to avoid either an Algorithmic or Manual Penalty by Google is to have a sound Backlink strategy -focussed on quality content on relevant sites linking to yours.
Link Building Guide 2017 … in summary
We have reviewed many extensive link building research articles over the years in order to fully understand and discover how and why people link to a website.
We found that Contextually Themed Editorials work best as they cultivate engagement and they value the content – this is hard to replicate by your competitors.
The above is our guiding principle, a common-sense approach to Link Building.
Our primary purpose here at Havoc Digital Marketing is to make you and your brand stand out as being the Authority in your industry, product or service.
Links, like many other signals will follow organically as a by-product of your Authority and Popularity.
Footnote: This post has been compiled from the following sources:
backlinko.com/link-building
emarketed.com/seo-guide (image)
dejanseo.com.au/link-building