A Guide to Link-building for beginners
Link-building is probably the most important SEO skill to master today.
Link-building ?
It refers to the process of getting external pages to link to a page on your website. It is used in search engine optimization (SEO).
To make it simple, for search engines can decide if they feel a page is of sufficient quality to be ranked well for relevant keywords. To do that, they don't just look at the content, but at the number of links that link to the page.
The more high-quality websites that link to you, the more likely you are to rank well in search results.
Check out Google's video that explains how search works:
Why?
- You’re looking for high-converting search engine traffic.
- Link building can often involve outreach to other relevant websites and blogs in your industry. So it will help you build long-term relationships.
One thing to know before you start; search engines today value quality over quantity.
And getting quality links from relevant sites isn’t easy.
Where to start ?
If you are completely new to SEO, I would advise you to read the MOZ guide to SEO.
A. WORK ON YOUR CONTENT & HEADLINES.
All link-building campaign start with something worth linking to! Content marketing.
So first of all, work on creating quality content. "Why would anyone care about this enough to link to it?" You need to be able to answer this question before anything else.
Google wants to reward high quality sites that contain original content. So invest your time & money on it!
And don't forget to be original in your ideas and to work on your headlines.
And whatever information you bring, explain to your readers how to apply it for their business.
Here is a great article on the subject from Kissmetrics.com.
B. START BUILDING YOUR LINKS.
1. The links you should be building:
"Natural" Editorial Links; These are the most valuable links. You have created amazing content and people share the links without you having to ask for it.
Links that you asked for; You need to reach out to people from your industry (blogs etc.) and ask them to link to your blog. Of course you need to give them a good reason to do so. Amazing content, a great piece you wrote, link trading etc.
2. Links you should not focus on:
Forum posts
Guest book comments
Blog comments
Editable Wiki pages (e.g. Wikipedia)
Yahoo! Answers
Guest post signatures
Paid Adverstisements
Because many programmer specifically choose to use the"nofollow" HTML attribute not wanting to give their vote of confidence for these kind of links, all these nofollow links won't be counted by Google and won't help your organic search ranking, so do not waste to much of your time trying.
But of course, visitors might still click on your links, so it is not completely useless.
3. Structure your link-building campaign:
It is the same as structuring any marketing campaign.
Build a company blog. That would be my irst advice.
Organize brainstorms with your team.
Find out how to be of interest to others. What are your assets ? Your service ? Your product ? Work on that before you can sell it.
Set your goals. I say it again, quality over quantity. Of course you can decide to reach a certain amount of links. But most importanly, set goals that will help you build natural links. Work on your content and your other marketing channels and social media profiles.
Define your target audience. Who will link to your site ? Who is your "linkerati"? The target of your linkbait campaign. Choose wisely the influencers in your industry and reach out to them. Read below how to come up with a list of relevant URLs. Ask them to link to your website. You have to realise that it takes a lot to get someone to care enough to actually link to you. It is not just about interesting them, it has to be more. You have to give them a reason to want to spend a few minutes on creating the link to your page.
Ask your customers/partners to link to you. Send out partnership badges/ icons that link back to your site.
Be patient, as any SEO campaign, it will take time to see the results.
Be consistent.
How to come up with a list of relevant URLs?
So, imagine you create a content titled "The perfect workout outfit for curvy women".
Who could be interested ?
- Plus-size fashion bloggers
- Fashion bloggers
- Body activist bloggers
- Mother bloggers
- Plus size brands
- Fitness brands
- Weight Loss websites
Then you just type each category on Google. Example: "List of plus size blogs"
And you start there. Save the lists of URLs.
You can do the same on Twitter with a Tool like Followerwonk (app by MOZ).
Once you have your list of URLs, you need to sort them out to see which ones are relevant.
You could just open each website and go through them, read the blog posts headlines etc. But it is quite time-consuming.
You could for example use a tool like TagCrowd, with which you'll just have to put in the URL and it will give you a list of the words more mentioned in it, so you will easily and quickly know what this site talks about and if it is relevant to you.
Well, now you are all set. Start with the websites ranked the higher and the blogs with the biggest amount of followers.
What should you write in your email?
Be genuine. Cut out fluffy compliment stuff. Open up, show that you are not a spammer, and tell them why they should care about you. Don't be pushy. Call them by their name, use a good subject line, and your signature. Also, I would suggest that you mind your email address so it is not mixed for a spam.
I think it would be a plus that you can relate your content to theirs, which means you should know enough about what they do to be able to talk about it.
So ask them if you can write a guest post on their blog linking back to you, or if they would write an opinion blog about you or your content linking back to you. Offer to do the same of course, even if you are much smaller. Or just ask that they share your content on their social media pages. If you search well, you might find that many bloggers actually talk about other blogs on their website as a regular topic. For instance, if we go on with the plus size fashion example, the famous blogger Marie Denee from the Curvy Fashionista not only offers a repertoire of links to the best plus fashion blogs, she also has a weekly blog posts that features the blogger of the week. You should know this kind of things and specifically ask to be featured.
Then, follow up ! It is super important to be organized, exactly as you would be when you are looking for a job and yoou apply to hundreds of job offers. Keep track of who you contacted so you can follow-up about a week later. I would suggest you save all the URLs with contact names in an Excell sheet.
Or if it seems a little too much, you might want to use a special tool for thatm like Raven or BuzzStream, or do what I do, I installed the FREE Boomerang plug-in to my Gmail, and it offers the option to remind me to follow up with the person IF THE PERSON HAS NOT REPLIED within X days. Which allows you to avoid to follow up with people that have already replied!
Well, I think this is a pretty good start ! Please contact me or comment below if you have any questions !
From guest blogging to ego baits, I will write soon a blog post on the kind of content you should be sending. Come back & Keep reading;)
Anna B.
