Link building is a hot topic in search engine optimization (SEO) circles. Links have been a key part of our promotion and ranking of websites for many years. Off page SEO is one of the "three pillars" of SEO and is based on the model I use to explain it to people who don't understand how it works. Yes, off-page has changed over the past decade, but that doesn't mean it's no longer part of the game. For those unfamiliar with the concept of "off-page", here are the areas that I consider to be the three pillars: Technical SEO - These factors determine how crawlable your site is for search engines and the quality of experience you get when visiting your site. Technical SEO isn’t about keywords or links, it’s actually about technical factors. On- page SEO – As one might guess, on-page SEO includes everything you can actually publish on your website. This includes content, images, meta tags, headers, sidebars, and more. Keywords are an important part of a page and are often considered a major part of SEO, especially for non-SEOs. Off-page SEO – As opposed to on-page, off-page SEO , it’s about everything you can do from another website, web page, directory, etc. that affects your website’s performance.
While the rules have tightened what is and isn't allowed off-page, it's still an important part of the SEO puzzle. So we could cover up any of those three, but this post is about off-page. When you're talking about off-page, you can't ignore the most important part of it: link building. Why Link Building Matters Based on my previous comments, you might think link building is optional or less important. Rest assured, dear readers, it will never be out of date. I've seen estimates that your off-page work can improve your site's performance by 18% to 60%. If you break it down, off-page is clearly the industry mailing list of this estimate. Technology operates a lot like a gatekeeper. If your performance, UX, architecture, etc. are not right in the first place, search engines may not be able to index your site at all! If your homepage loads in under 29 seconds, you may forget to get traffic from search engines, especially on mobile searches. On page helps you "feed" search engines with keywords and topics relevant to your website and content. Without proper on-page optimization, search engines must rank your content based on their best guesses about the content. So basically, on-page SEO can help you appear on the right SERPs. But showing up on the SERPs doesn't increase traffic on its own.
No one will see you on page 379 or even page 122. You need to improve those rankings, which is why we pursue link building. The idea of "link earning" that was widely supported a few years ago is a good one. But to get a link, someone has to see it first. Once your site is live and ready to show, you have to take control (or hire someone to do it on your behalf) and start building links. Complacency does not move the needle in a vacuum. It pays to be proactive. So link building is important...a lot. 7 Steps to a Successful Link Building Campaign If you're reading this, you probably want to manage link building yourself. This is a great approach, and if you have the resources, you can have this method entirely internally. I've always thought it's best to try it out in-house first. When the workload increases and the amount of work required increases, I highly recommend that you consider hiring an SEO expert to manage link building on your behalf. But let's move on to the topic and get to the first step. 1. Know your audience Before you start your organic link building efforts, take the time to learn more about your audience. What type of content will grab their attention? What motivates them to read or share it and buy a product or service like what you offer? In the world of internet marketing, you may have heard of web personas.
These are hypothetical profiles of typical target customers for your business. Did you create some for your own website? If not, this is a good place to start. Logically, good content is written to appeal to a specific audience. This applies to what you create and where you go to build links. So know your audience before you start. 2. Find out where to find them Once you know exactly who your target audience is and what to say to them, the next logical step is to determine where to find them. Different target audiences can be found in completely different places. An older audience can be reached through email marketing, Facebook, and content. Younger audiences are more likely to prefer Instagram or Snapchat, and more visual and/or multimedia-based content (such as YouTube videos). This is just an example of how to target based on age, but it's not the only dimension to consider. Are they tech-savvy or less tech-savvy? Start a business or focus more on employment? Cable subscribers or unlimited? You can take almost any angle when slicing and dicing customer data. Find out which data points will best help you track your target audience and know where to find them. 3. Generate linkable assets and content Before you go out looking for links, you need to have content that someone is willing to rank for.
This can be in the form of blog posts, unique research not found elsewhere, infographics, one-of-a-kind videos, in-depth guides, tools such as the site audit tool on our own site, and more. So make sure you have 10-12 linkable assets before you start linking. Otherwise, you will find it difficult to place links to your own domain on external websites. 4. Identify which sites may link to your properties Once you've clearly identified your target audience, determined where to find them, and created a special content asset they might like, it's time to turn your attention to link prospecting. Link prospecting is a simple concept - it's about building a list of websites where you can request links of one type or another. The list you built in Step 2 is a good place to start, as these sources will not only earn you links, but may also send referral traffic your way. Always look at potential targets for other attributes, such as brand reputation, quality of existing content, and domain authority (this is one of the best proxies available for showing how "strong" the link from this domain to yours is). Remove sites that fail any tests and finalize the list of remaining sites. 5. Promotional Links or Guest Posts Once you're happy with the right target list of links, it's time to start pitching. Guest posting is the most common and safest (using Google) link building technique.