Link Building Strategies
The two most important factors in getting a website to rank in search engines is great content and backlinks. A backlink is defined by Google as, “an incoming hyperlink from one webpage to another website.” Not all backlinks are created equal – our goal at Online Business Creators is to create great content for you and to get you as many quality backlinks as possible. This way, we can make sure your website ranks for as many keywords as possible. Getting your website to rank in organic search may only be one of our goals, but it’s a major one. Here are some ways we work to get backlinks for your website:
POWER PAGE
20 Hour page that is specifically targeted to a key term and actively marketed.
Power Page
A power page is a “best in class” page for a particular topic on the internet. Once we’ve done the keyword research, we write a “power page” on a particular topic. This is a 1,500+ word article that represents a “best-of-the-internet” piece of content on a given topic. For power pages we use generally use the 2/3/5 ratio – two parts planning (keyword research and topic research), three parts content creation (writing and graphics), and five parts marketing (prospecting, planning, outreach, follow up).
The goal of a power page is to be a best-of-the-web resource for the given subject matter so that internet users will turn to the page’s content to answer their particular questions.
Power pages are broken up into three phases:
- Planning – We do a deep dive in to the keywords that matter for a given subject area. We start with an idea, and then enter common questions related to that idea into Google to see if any authoritative answers are already provided. Depending on the results, we then look into the keyword volume for the chosen term and related key terms. Once we find a key term with significant volume and good secondary keyword volume, we plan out a strategy for a piece of content that addresses the questions.
- Writing – After planning keywords and topics, we then write the content that best addresses the questions we seek to answer. This content is written with the user in mind, and should provide the user with as much helpful information as possible.
- Outreach – Once we have a 1,500+ word piece of content written, we being to plan the outreach. This generally includes finding websites that link to similar content, websites that would find your piece of content helpful, and any other websites that can benefit from the content. Then, we begin the outreach process. Outreach usually starts with following prospects on social media, such as Twitter, Google+, and Facebook posts. The goal here is to get on different companies’ radar in order to build online relationships. This way, when we eventually ask for the link share, the website/business in question is receptive. Outreach is a difficult task; the difficulty of this process is directly related to the quality of the content. The better the content, the more successful the outreach. All three steps feed into each other, but the basis of all good SEOis great content leading to quality links.
Niche News
Are you a thought leader in a particular niche? From biometric measuring equipment providers for mice, to currency seizure law, to estate planning law, you can show website visitors the latest trends in your industry and provide useful insights. Creating content that answers visitors’ questions, is timely, and helps to give visitors a better understanding of their questions will help you to gain trust with your visitors and improve your long tail search results.
NICHE NEWS
Updates on a niche field for which your organization is well versed and actively participate.
Different industries vary, but a few different post types that are relevant include: time-specific news, industry change news, current event development, interviews, interview surveys, humor gifs, colleague-focused posts, company updates, company victories, sharing of your company’s process, answering common questions, article roundups, and countless others. They key to using a niche news strategy is creating a writing process and timeline and sticking to it. For any niche news strategy, we encourage clients to share the latest articles on their homepage – this helps to show users that they are thought leaders in their industry, thereby building trust with the website visitor.
REVERSE ENGINEERING
A back link analysis of your director geographic competitors, indirect national competitors and similar national businesses.
Reverse Engineering
Who is your direct competition? Indirect competition? Who are the non-local industry leaders? Once we identify 10-20 potential websites based on the above questions, we examine their backlink profiles to see what they are doing successfully and how they are earning their website visitors. We always analyze backlink opportunities, but sometimes we find new strategies, tactics, and opportunities that can be employed to earn visitors and increase a website’s SEO value.
Guest Posting
Traditionally, a guest post is a piece of content written by one author and posted on a website that is owned by another individual/party. The benefit of a guest post is two fold: first, you get your content in front of a new set of visitors. For example, if you write a guest post on, “How to Fix Your Broken Bumper,” and a car dealership website that gets 3,000 visitors to its homepage posts the blog, then there is a chance that many of those same visitors will see your blog post preview, and that a percentage of those will click the article and read your blog. This enters the post into a conversion funnel. Second, you get a backlink – a link from another site to yours. These backlinks show Google that your site is important and give your website more SEO power – this helps you to improve in search engine rankings.
GUEST POSTING
Searching, Prospecting, and Contacting websites that would be interested in posting content owned by you on their website.
SCHOLARSHIP LINK BUILDING
Offering scholarships to members of the community can inspire 3rd party websites to show your offering.
Scholarship Link Building
Scholarship link-building is a way to get highly valuable links from authoritative .edu websites while also giving back to the community. As we often write about, the quality and quantity of good links contributes to how highly a website ranks in search engines. It’s easy to get “bad” links, but these links do no add much SEO value. Building links through offering a scholarship and getting a link from a school website can provide a valuable and trustworthy link that will add significant link value to your website.
Link Roundup
A link roundup is an easy way to write blog or news articles that are also effective from both a user perspective and a link-building perspective. Link roundups are great because they:
- Are easy and quick to write;
- Help to build relationships with industry experts;
- Build trust with visitors; and
- Generate both links and visitors.
LINK ROUNDUPS
Blog or News posts highlighting developments in your industry and “best of” content for the past month or week.
The process to generate a Link Roundup is simple. First identify a particular topic that’s related to your business. Let’s say’s for example you’re a law firm that practices bankruptcy. The topic could be: “Bankruptcy Law Link Roundup” Then you would list and summarize 5-10 of the best bankruptcy articles for the past x amount of weeks or month.
The goal should be to find GREAT pieces of content that you would link to send visitors. Then, summarize the article, include WHY it’s great content, and provide a link to the article. Some link-building pieces also include links to the authors’ social media accounts.
Once you’ve written the piece you need to do three things:
- Reach out to the author on social media –
- Follow, Like or Circle them on whatever social media channel they are most proficient;
- Find their contact information – namely their email; and
- Send them an email telling them that you linked to their great piece of content.
Link-building is about forming relationships with people online. The greatest way to get links is to give links to industry experts. Showing and flattering industry experts by giving them links will increases the likelihood of you getting a link in the future when you reach out to them.
AWARD BAIT
Content which highlights the top X companies in a particular industry and an associated Award for listed companies to place on site.
Award Bait
Link-building tactics often take many forms. Sometimes, we use pull methods to entice other websites to link to our client sites, and sometimes we use push methods instead. One type of push method is offering a website’s owner/manager an incentive for linking to us. One such incentive is presenting a link-embedded award. Creating a piece of content such as, “30 best X Companies,” or, “The top 27 X in 2015,” and then offering a link out is an effective strategy for incoming link generation.
Donation & Sponsorship Link Building
Supporting different causes, especially business-related causes is a great way to earn backlinks. Maybe you’re a personal injury attorney and you want to sponsor a helmet awareness bike race; maybe you’re a big supporter of open source software and want to sponsor a new company on GoFundMe.com, KickStarter.com, or Indiegogo.com; or maybe there’s something else entirely that you’re passionate about. Whatever it is, supporting different causes in return for a linked listing on their sponsor page can be advantageous for both parties.
There are a lot of organizations and causes that will gladly accept a corporate sponsorship or donation, and in return will link out to a site of the donors or sponsors involved.
DONATION & SPONSORSHIPS
Some organizations include a “thank you” note with a link for donations or sponsorships to their event or organization.
Link-building is one of the most essential parts of developing an online presence and attracting website visitors. The strategies for effective link building include the creation of a power page, niche news posts, a focus on reverse engineering, guest posting, scholarship offers and school links, award bait/incentives for link sharing, and donation and sponsorship link-building. At Online Business Creators, we’re ready to help you get to work on building your website’s authority today.
