May 20, 2018

The Importance of Link Building

The Importance of Link Building

The Importance of Link Building

BrightonSEO taught us a lot about the value of link building and the impact it can have on driving traffic to your website.

Keep it local

@greggifford from Dealeron, Winners of The Best Blog in the World, gave an awesome talk on how to get awesome local links. Here were a few of our key takeaways:

  • It doesn’t matter if it’s a follow or no follow link – it still carries weight and adds value
  • There is real world value beyond SEO for local links - think small and great things could follow
  • It’s easier to get lots of low authority local links for less effort than high authority links
  • Take advantage of current relationships - i.e. with partners, clients, local organisations, surrounding businesses etc.
  • Utilise community surrounding your clients location and take advantage
  • Compare yourself to competitors - what links do they have, that you don’t? Take their unique links if possible, because whilst it will not be a unique link for you - it successfully devalues that link for them
  • High authority backlinks are worth much more than very low authority links
  • Think outside the box, get creative. What connections can be made for your content and your desired audience
  • Have clear goals - Create a spreadsheet of opportunities (site, cost, timeframe, contact info) and tick them off one by one
  • Focus on relationship and value add for your customers to drive better back links

Valuable Links for £0

@Lauralouise90 from Rice Media, raised some really valuable points on how to get good quality links for absolutely free!

  • Set up Google Alerts for you clients names and see where it appears in the media

    • Contact the journalists to add in a link to your website if there is not one already
  • "Journo requests"

    • Proactively ask journalist to write about your clients
  • Automate all you can! Use Source bottle, Journo Request, Tweetdeck (#PRrequest, #journorequest.. other)

  • "Newsjacking". This is when you jump on popular news stories and cleverly make a connection with your product or service:

    • Oreo dominate social media when it comes to news-jacking
    • Always keep it positive and consider what you want your brand to be associated with
    • University’s love Case Studies, so write one for them and get them to publish it
    • If you’ve got a success story that would benefit a publication – write one and go for it. Aim high!
    • FOI (Freedom of Information) give out statistical information, so take a free stat, make a relevant connection and link it to your client in some way in order to make an effective article out of it
    • Big Birthday’s and Anniversaries do really well in local news (don’t forget it’s our 20th Birthday next year!)
    • Find a hook or expertise and use it for coverage – make them an expert
    • Take risks within reason to get attention from national broadcasters

The Benefits of Link Building

Link building is an important part of SEO. The popularity of a website or blog is determined by the number of inbound links. The number of inbound links from quality websites is also a big factor in determining your Google Page Rank. Incoming links from an authority website are always rewarded in Google Search. Effective link building doesn’t mean building unlimited links; it means getting genuine links from reliable websites.

To summarise, some of the benefits of link building include:

  • More visibility of your website in search results
  • Receive traffic from other websites linked to you
  • Builds exposure
  • High-quality incoming links mean your site will be admired as a valuable resource
  • Link building also helps in getting indexed in search results quicker
  • Link building is considered an important aspect of SEO
  • If you're looking for advice and assistance with your Digital Marketing or SEO, get in touch, [email protected].