Slow and Steady Link Building Wins the Race in the SEO Game SEO is a game, a game that is like a battle with no quarter given. And like every game, even this one needs a strategy, especially for link building which is the very foundation of SEO. Let’s me press the rewind button and go back to a time when a standard SEO practice was to get as many links as possible (the more the merrier), to rank right at the top of SERPs. So, morning, noon and nights, SEO professionals were busy link building, they wanted links, any which way possible. So, it didn’t really matter whether they submitted to poor directories or used generic resource pages and link exchanges or spun content to submit to article directories, as long as they kept building links they were a happy lot. What’s more, it worked, but this kind of SEO was like a house of cards, liable to fall any moment; and fall it did… when Google started restoring link order, relevance and quality through its various algorithmic updates, namely the Panda and the Penguin.
SEO Link Building
What these updates meant was toxic link building was to be thrown out of the window and the focus needed to shift to quality link building; This article, 10 Types of Unnatural Link Building Tactics + 10 quality alternatives will give insights on which tactics led to unnatural link warnings. This means that you don’t really have to go all guns blazing into link building, but need to take it slow and steady. Build quality links, and win the SEO game with quality and not quantity. As an SEO, you need to focus on ‘Earning’ links and this takes time. Build a Reputation How do you earn links? Forget this question and answer this one – How do you earn money? You do this by ensuring that your services/talent/experience/education adds value. Well, earning links is also about making a value added contribution to your target audience’s lives. You need to build a reputation for yourself and your site. And this reputation is not built in a day.
Interact and contribute on forums and blogs that are centered on your business domain. Positive contribution always helps build respect. Answer queries, offer helps participate in discussions, this helps drive traffic to your site and will help you build quality links, as well. The Problem Solver Approach You are not the first person who has thought of creating value for your target group by solving problems they might encounter. This is a great way of earning links, but again a time consuming process. Your site shouldn’t just market your products or services (every site does this), it should be something, so make it a problem solving resource for your target customers (irrespective of whether they’ll buy something from it or not). Linking to authority websites becomes easier if your site’s content provides a solution or acts as a practical problem solving tool. Content in the form of research results, video tutorials, a help manual, helps improve website credibility and also helps build links. This, as you can very well imagine, is a long drawn out process, but a solid one. You can’t go wrong with it. Guest Blogging Building links through directory entries is the life blood of an SEO strategy, but as your focus shifts to building quality links, you will realize that the proportion of lower quality directories as compared to topical directories that can add value to your internet presence is significantly higher. So, you need more weapons in your armory to build quality links, and one such weapon is guest blogging. Submitting great posts to authority websites that are willing to publish it is a great way of building quality links, but again something that is time consuming. But, it pays rich dividends by helping you build authority and quality links. Rand Fishkin had some amazing guest blogging strategies on offer in a whiteboard Friday discussion; don’t forget to take a look at it. Social Media Outreach With 1 billion active users on Facebook and with more than 200 million active users on Twitter, the opportunity of using social media as a stepping stone towards quality link building is immense. It’s the ideal way to get your content viral; if you want to tell your target audience, your content is out there waiting to be read, you need to use a clearly defined and extremely sustainable social outreach strategy. Impact amplification and Reach Extension are benefits of social media that no other channel of communication can match. You can interact with your target audience directly, especially the ones that can influence audience opinions and who can turn into your brand advocates. Keep creating ‘share worthy’ content to make the best of the opportunity that social media channels give you. Sharing links to your updates, your recent blog posts, recent videos on YouTube/website, a recent case study etc. helps Link Building Services. You need to keep your social media fans and followers busy; your name should never be too far back in their minds. Again this is a process that takes time and a whole lot of effort, but as they say, great things never came easy. End Words Winning the race in SEO is all about building a rock solid, highly respected, online reputation. This in turn is built by painstakingly linking to only quality sites and authority figures in your niche. Now why would these sites and figures link to your site? The answer is ‘quality link building’. Even they want to improve their SEO efforts by building quality links, and your site is ‘quality’. This dependence on quality means you need to go about your SEO in a more surefooted manner. The focus must be on ensuring that your site is worthy of attention, and this takes time. A quick fix approach towards link building is not going to work now. I am reasonably sure that there are still plenty of SEOs that are still not giving Google’s quality guidelines, the importance it deserves. But, the thing is, they are going to find sooner or later that
Google is not easily fooled. If it says quality link building is what will help a website rank in SERPs, then this is the way it will be. So, go at it slow and steady, build a quality link juice and reap the dividends.