Importance of Link Building in 2020
2 Min Read
If a link to my site brings in targeted traffic, ideally with long dwell time and multiple page impressions per visit, I consider it to be a good link
Marcus Tandler, in his talk during SEO fight club at SMX Munich
So, let’s begin with this food for thought. What do you think the value of link building is in the post-penguin SEO world? There was a time the real value of link building was shadowed with black hat techniques like link farms, hidden links, spammy content, etc. But after the very significant penguin algorithm update in 2012, all these techniques were finally put to an end and marketers began focusing on various white hat techniques and quality content.
But, is the debate really over? As a part of the same narrative(SMX Munich), many SEO experts voiced their opinion with a contradictory attitude about the importance of link building.
Sure, SEO today is all about fulfilling user intent and one must definitely focus on writing valuable, relevant, and interactive content. But how will it do the trick if your content does not receive the attention of your target audience, especially if you’re just starting out? So what better way to achieve that? Yes, Link Building.
Is Link Building Still Significant?
Of course, yes. It always will be. But it’s no longer a black and white process where your target audience isn’t properly researched and your content doesn’t provide enough value to the audience. Today, we focus on being deeply personal and understanding what the user wants so that we can make a connection and build a relationship that benefits everyone involved.
When you have a link to your site, you are getting a vote of confidence from your audience, which is essentially an important skill to master in your business. You ought to carefully create a promotional strategy for your content and reach out to opportunities and follow up on them as well, to get your website in front of an audience who would love to explore it. It’s like becoming a brand ambassador for your website.
And the criteria remains the same for creating a link that is worthwhile:
- A credible source: you might want to avoid getting links from spammy or penalized domains. It must be a trustworthy website with a good reputation producing valuable content.
- Also, a relevant source: of course, relevancy must not be compromised because it can do unexpected harm to your link profile. You need to find a website that is the ‘best fit’ for your niche.
- Number of links to your site: the fewer the number of links that are directing to your website, the more valuable your link would be.
- Sends valid referral traffic: the traffic the link sends is of utmost importance. The traffic must be those readers who genuinely spend time on your blog to explore the content and services you provide
Link Building Tactics that Still Work
A survey conducted by SEMrush in 2019 revealed the most popular tactics that are still applied by experts in the industry.
And we learn that guest posting still remains the most popular tactic that has been vouched for.
Let’s take you through the tactics that we as an SEO agency practice for link building.
Guest Posting
Yes, guest posting still has the potential. You can obtain significant traffic, brand exposure, and build relationships with industry professionals. You as a website reach out to opportunities to become a guest author on their website blog, which usually looks like another blog update.
The tactic still remains as relevant and valid for getting links to your site, as long as it is approached in the right way and not in posting on any random website that would take your content. Matt Cutts did call out on the spammy techniques of doing it back in 2014.
The key to do it right is simple: regularly post valuable, relevant content on your blog and get your pitch right; make it more persuasive with a compelling piece of content already present on your blog as a sample. Here’s an example of a pitch email:
You can pitch via any medium like email, form, social, etc. This tactic not only helps you obtain links directing to your website but also helps you build your profile as well.
Broken Backlinks
Broken Link building is a strategy wherein you find relevant pages in your niche that are able to link out to you and have broken outbound links. You can reach out to them and notify them that their link is pointing out to a dead page and would offer to replace it with a valuable one.
You can do it with the help of free browser plugins like ‘Check My Links’ or there are tools like SEMrush available in the market, wherein you can find your competitor’s broken backlinks with the help of its Backlink Audit tool.
Note: You can avail of a free trial subscription for 14 days right here!
Link roundup and Resource pages
There’s a key difference between Link roundups and resource pages. A link roundup enlists recently published content and takes place on a regular basis whereas resource pages are a one-time update that links out to evergreen content. Also, in link roundups, the pitch takes place before you create the post, wherein you ask for a link for the upcoming post. And in resource pages, you ask for the links of your published pages to be added in their listings.
You can find opportunities on the web with the help of Google search engine operator like as shown below:
Make sure to pitch to relevant listings related to your niche and you really have the commodity/thing which they are enlisting on their resource page.
In the case of Link Roundups, you might want to look for titles like “Top Posts of the week”, “Monthly Blog Roundup” etc. Make sure it is a fresh and relevant piece of content that you’re pitching.
Lost/broken Link Reclamation
Your website is bound to lose links over time which is natural. You can track down links that have been lost/broken and ask websites to link it back. But the important thing to understand here is the reason for which your link was removed/lost. It could have been due to a change in URL or migration of the website or they just simply decided to remove it.
You can scan through the links of your website and monitor lost and broken ones with tools like Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, etc.
SEMrush’s Backlink Audit tool is again very helpful for viewing lost backlinks to your website.
After you have found the backlinks that are broken, all you need to do is to reach out to the website that removed the link.
Final Thoughts
Creating great resources and useful content for your audience and reaching out to webmasters of great websites suggesting a link to your website will always be a successful technique that you can master as an SEO expert.
If you are looking for experts to do it for you, we are here to help you! We have slogged it in the industry for over 9 years and know what it takes to rank on the search engine and have never stopped learning and adapting! Avail our SEO Services if you aim for the best results!
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