For search engines that cruise the vast oceans of the web, links are the lighthouses that guide them. With the help of comprehensive link analysis, the spiders can determine the relations between web pages.
Foe a very long period of time search engines have regarded links as marks of good reputation and approval given by the internet community. The engines themselves have turned the link analysis into amazingly complex mechanism. Robots employ difficult algorithms to perform detailed appraisals of websites and pages based on the gathered data. Links are the only part of SEO that need to be mastered, but the industry experts believe that a big piece of the spiders’ algorithms has something to do with link and their characteristics.
Link building is actually a creative work. People who have never done that professionally associate it with spam or something that requires technical knowledge (coding). Although it is one of the most challenging tasks of SEO, it does not involve coding. Link building requires time, imagination, dexterity, and often, money. All link building campaigns are unique. People who are responsible for link building create often reflect their inner believes concerning it. There are people who disregard it altogether and pay very little attention to it. To prevent such negligence shrewd managers entrust link building only to those people who are ready to do it full-time. Below are the basic elements of link-building:
“Organic” trustworthy backlinks
Links that are awarded by website or blog owners to websites and webpages that they found genuinely interesting or important. This method at first seems very easy to do: just sit quietly and wait for people who will add your URLs to their own websites. But, in reality it is very difficult to do. Your content must be superb and cutting-edge to get some juicy backlinks. People will give you this back-up only if it is a shame not to mention your article or website. People who do that, do because they found you outstanding in one way or another. Sometimes, it can bear a negative meaning. For example, there is a blogger that collects the worst webdesigns ever and gets a lot of visitors every day.
Handcrafted “Mingle with strangers” Link Building
The SEO experts produce these links by contacting bloggers or website owners/editors for links, adding websites to different directories and listings. If it is done right, it does not look like spamming or begging, but can be annoying. Write something really good to be worth the backlinks.
Do-it-yourself, Non-Editorial
There is an opportunity to leave a comment on a lot of web platforms and blogs. Users may also create links in their signatures or user profiles. It is not difficult, but does not have that much value as the other ones. However, sometimes webmasters get lucky and attract a lot of people just by using this method. However, on average it is not as effective as the previous ones.
Competitors’ sources
By analyzing inbound links of websites that are already well-optimized and appear at the top of SERPs for specific keywords, you can get precious data on the initial sources (websites) with which help they got this ranking. There a lot of online tools (for example, Open Site Explorer) that can help SEOs find out these sources and try to win inbound links from them too.
Domination of Links on a Page
According to the original PageRank formula, the value that is given to a link is reduced partly or entirely by the co-existence with other links on the same page. This means that assuming that other factors are the same, a page with less links is better a page stuffed with them.
Partnership/customer linking
Ask your partners or customers that enjoy working with your for the links in their projects descriptions or articles. If you were really helpful to them, they will be glad to help you in their own turn (more eagerly, if you promise discounts).
Build your own gallery of high-quality photos and infographics
This method is very expensive and should be taken only by the companies who take this as a long-term investment (targeting certain niches). There are thousands of website owners who need original pictures that they can use. You give them the images for free or provide access to your private gallery and in turn they add your backlinks.
Outdated content acquisition
The content on the web has its life span. It ages and dies when the website owners delete it. But you can give the a second life by buying them over. Reviving can create a lot of opportunities for link building. These outdated articles or other types of web content may contain a lot of links. There is a special tool for you: Greenlane SEO’s Outdated Content Finder. It searches for under-maintained content that you can convert into something useful.
Get in touch the website owner and try to buy the outdated page, and have it redirected to your new version of the page located on your domain (with some new data on the topic). Another option is to help the blogger update the content using new data that you provided and get a link for the good deed.
Celebrities’ referrals
Doing interviews of famous experts (in specific business areas) has been one of the most successful tricks in link building, especially for websites that are just starting up.
Creating a platform for guest blogging
It helps to be not only on the giving end (content sharing), but also on the receiving side, attracting content written by smart bloggers.
Another well-known method is converting existing content into other formats that are adjusted for long-tail search keywords. For example, creating videos Youtube or Vine, presentations and manuals for Slideshare and Scribd, infographcs and comics for Pinterest and Scribd.
There is another approach to target long-tail keywords – finding questions that are related to the areas of your expertise and business and answer them. People always ask questions, even if Google can solve them quicker than real people linking straight to the source. However, what Google can not provide is real-life experience. Even an unlinked mentioning of your company now gives your some sort of optimization and recognition. It is as good as a link (based on the concepts of co-occurrence and sentiment analysis). Using this technique you decrease the chances of getting reputation as a nasty spammer by forum/community moderators.
Getting the Links back
This is probably the longest-living trick in white-hat link building. Despite all the changes in SEO link reclamation is still believed to be one of the greatest methods. Reclaiming links starts with saving the broken links, or linking the unlinked mentioning of your company. Use Google Alerts to search for all the mentions of your brand name (and resident authors) and use Topsy to track people mentioning your brand (or your site’s homepage) on Twitter. It’s not so hard to ask for links from the blog or twitter account owners, because they’re already talking about you.
As you can see all of the mentioned techniques and tasks are pretty simple and do not require any IT background to accomplish. But when all of the above is combined together it spells into a big chunk of workload. And the last thing you want is to lose the chance to reap the rewards from such a great tool as link-building, you should delegate it the best marketers and link-builders who have an extensive experience in the field of link-building and can help you attract thousands of new leads to your site. You can get a free consultation here.
