Your website’s popularity is important to how you rank on search engine results. If more people are clicking on your site, your ranking will be higher.
In-bound links are one effective tactic to increase your website’s popularity in the eyes of search engines. These can play a critical role to your SEO and overall marketing goals. Whether you’re just now starting to build out your SEO strategy or you’re in the process of inbound link building, this post will help you out.
What are In-Bound Links & Link Building?
Inbound links (also known as backlinks) are links that are pointing to your website from another site. They’re valuable because they increase the volume of traffic to your website. The more inbound links you have on high-quality websites, the better your search engine ranking will be.
Link building is the process of actually obtaining inbound links on other websites. If you’re website already has a high volume of valuable content, other websites may already be linking to your website content without you even having to ask. However, if you’re like many other small businesses, you may need to spend some more time on your website content.
Tips to Get Started with Link Building
If you want to get started with link building, you can follow the methods below:
1. Conduct keyword research
If you haven’t done so already, you should do keyword research to determine what your audience is searching for when looking for ways your business could help them. This will give you a better understanding of what their major challenges are and what types of questions they’re using when searching for a solution. If you’re new to the concept of keyword research and are not sure where to start, check out our last blog post, “How to Develop an SEO Keyword List for Your Small Business”.
Once you conduct keyword research, you can determine sharable content ideas that you should consider producing. You can also see which websites you should reach out to in order to get in front of your target audience.
2. Focus on creating high-quality content
You may have heard the phrase ‘Content is King’. This is true in the case of link building. Established websites will only link to content that they think is worth sharing. If you want people to share your content, you’ll need to make sure it’s insightful and useful to your audience.
Even though blog posts can be useful, keep in mind that you can get creative with your content. Consider also posting infographics, videos or even podcasts to mix things up. It’s also a great idea to spend some time focusing on local content. This will resonate well with a local audience and may increase your chances of getting inbound links on other local businesses’ websites.
Once you create the content, make sure to actually promote it on channels where your audience spends time – whether that be Facebook, LinkedIn, local forums, or another relevant channel.
3. Make strategic and local partnerships
Another great way to get inbound links is by teaming up and forming partnerships with other local businesses or organization. It’s important that these partnerships are strategic. Consider other local businesses who you may refer when a customer is searching for something that you don’t provide.
Once you’ve developed partnerships, you can link to and share each other’s website content. You could also write testimonials for your partners that they can use on their website and link back to your site.
4. Get involved in your community
Another great tactic for link building is getting involved in local community events. Not only does this provide value to your community, but it also often allows you to get inbound links on the event’s sponsorship page or website, which is great for local search engine ranking.
Further, many local community events get media coverage. If news outlets are talking about the event, they may mention that you are involved and link to your business’s website.
5. Get added to local citations and directories
Another great link building tactic is to get your business's site listed in any online local directories. Make sure your site is listed on your local chamber of commerce directory. It’s also valuable to have your business listed on Yelp and Google My Business. MozLocal is a great tool to manage your listings. It will send accurate listings to the important directories, search engines and apps that are the most important to your customers. It also ensures that all of your business information is consistent, accurate and up to date across online listings.
If you take these measures, you’ll be on the right track to improving your search engine rankings with link building.
