How to Devise a Link Building Strategy

You might have heard of link building before if you’re in the industry, but you may not be sure about what it entails and why it’s so important for SEO. If you haven’t come across the term before, however, you’ll need some more guidance on the matter, and that’s where we come in. In this article, we’ll be explaining what link building is, why it’s important and how you can devise a strategy of your own.

What is link building?

Link building is essentially the practice of building one-way hyperlinks to a different website, also known as backlinks, with the sole aim of improving visibility in the search engines. Some digital marketers will refer to link building as  “link juice”, and there are various ways in which you can link-build successfully. Other link building strategies could include one or more of the following things:

• Content marketing
• Building useful tools
• Broken link building
• Public relations
• Email outreach
• Using social media to share content

Why is link building important for SEO?

Link building is important for one reason, generally, and that’s to enable search engines to discover new website pages. It will also help to determine which pages will rank higher up in the search engine results pages (SERPs). When it comes to link building, the focus should be on earning links, simply because you have gone out of your way to produce quality content, so it should be shareable and easily accessible. As well as link building, the following factors are also important for Google:

• On-page SEO
• Site loading speed
• Mobile-friendliness
• Trust and authority of a website
• User experience elements

How to devise a link building strategy

Devising a link-building strategy isn’t always as straightforward as people think. But an experienced digital marketer, like the ones we have here at Kumo, will make short work of it. However, if you’re a novice in the practice, then here are a few things you can do to ensure you devise the perfect link building strategy.

Get to know your audience

This should have already been done when you planned your content piece. But then again, you should know your target audience by now if you have your own website. If you’re writing content for someone else, then ask them who they typically do business with. If this isn’t possible, then do some investigating using tools such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console and other tools, especially ones that allow for the use of heat maps. Find out the demographics and target your content directly at that audience.

List the sites that appeals to your target audience the most

Do some research about which sites would be relevant to your industry. There are thousands of third-party websites online today, so at least one of them will provide you with the right, targeted platform upon which to place your well-written articles and/or blog posts. Make a list of all of those websites and platforms and send your content to all of them. 

You’re bound to hear back from one party at least. But again, make sure the website is relevant because if it’s not, it could end up performing extremely badly in the SERPs and no one will stumble across your site. That being said, if it’s completely irrelevant, then you’re unlikely to make it on the website at all, so use some common sense as well.

Write good quality content

Content is only going to be placed on a third party website if it’s worth bothering with. The platform will not wish to add low-quality content to their site, so make sure it’s of a good standard. But that could be easier said than done, especially if you’re not a content writer or a copywriter. 

Steer clear of using AI bots to write your content entirely as it can be repetitive and be grammatically incorrect when it comes to differentiating between American and British grammar. If you find you’re lacking time, then use such a tool, but give it to a person to read through and edit to give it a human voice and to go through the grammar and spelling meticulously. The quality needs to be second-to-none to make an impression and a solely AI-written content piece isn’t the way to go about it.

Reach out

After deciding which websites you want to contact, reach out to them. This will involve sending your article(s) via email or using another method, such as linking to them on social media, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Before reaching out, make sure you know the platform inside out and that you understand exactly what it is they publish and how it’s relevant to your target audience. Within your article, make sure you include backlinks to your own website, especially if you’re wanting to advertise a particular product or service. In your email, explain how unique the content is and why it belongs on that platform. 

Don’t make the email too long, either, as this could cause the recipient to completely ignore it. That being said, don’t be surprised if you do not receive a reply at all. It could be that your article appears on their site without you being notified, but it’s more likely that, if you don’t hear anything, your article didn’t make it onto the platform.

Kumo are able to provide clients throughout the UK with sterling, unrivalled digital marketing services, including SEO, PPC, website development, content creation and graphic design, to name a few. If you would like further information about how we can set your company apart from your competitors, get in touch with a member of our specialist team today – we’re always pleased to hear from you.