Link building is an essential component of any successful SEO strategy. It can also be an impactful part of your business’s growth strategy, because strategic link building will attract new audiences to your website and increase your traffic.
Here are the five simple steps to follow when creating your link building strategy.
1. Learn About Your Audience
First things first: get to know your audience. Think about who your target audience is and do some research on what they’re like. Where do they live? What are their hobbies? What is their family structure (Are they single? Married? Are they parents?)? Once you have a good understanding of who your audience is, make a list of websites that they like, focusing especially on those relevant to your industry or niche.
2. Create Quality Content
With your target audience in mind, create high quality content for our website that is valuable and engaging. Think about what questions your audience might have, what they might want to learn more about, and what actionable advice you could provide to them. Add content to your website regularly in the form of blog posts, and make sure you have landing pages that address any core services that your audience should know more about.
Content that people actually want to read is the key to getting clicks from those links you are building. You need to prioritize writing content that is truly valuable and relevant to your audience, and not something that they could find just anywhere
3. Find Other Sites That Fit Your Content
Pull out that list of websites you made when you were learning about your audience. What are those sites about? Which ones are relevant to blog posts that you have created on your own website? Start with this list and add similar websites to it, focusing on websites that are trustworthy and have quality content.
Once you have a long list, go through it and note down any blog posts on your own website that may be relevant to the websites on the list. For example, if you are a plumber and you have a blog post with tips on how to save energy at home, that blog might be relevant to a website about helping the environment or a website with tips for living on a budget.
4. Contact Relevant Websites
Once you have a long list of relevant websites where you would benefit from having a link from, begin reaching out to them. Remember that you only want links from quality websites–don’t contact any sites that seem spammy.
When you reach out, be sure to include the specific blog post you would like to be linked from the website and explain how it is relevant to their audience. The more specific you can be, the better your chances are of getting a positive response. Keep in mind that a lot of the people you contact will likely not respond at all, so try not to get discouraged. A link building strategy is, in some ways, a numbers game and you will have to contact a lot of websites in order to hear back from any. Just keep at it, and if you are reaching out to the right websites with valuable content, you will get somewhere with it over time.
5. Share Widely on Social Media
In addition to contacting relevant websites and asking them to link to your website, sharing your content on social media is another smart way to get new links to your site. Make sure that you always share your newest blog posts on whatever social media platforms you use, including Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. You can even share blog posts with specific accounts or people on social media who you think may find the topic interesting.
Sharing your content on social media is a great way to get people seeing it, talking about it, and sharing it, which often translates to a few new links for you.
If you want a little help with your link building, content creation, or other digital marketing initiatives, get in touch with ThinkProfits today. Our team is made up of experienced digital marketing specialists who are ready to grow your business.
