Link building is considered by experts to be one of the most effective ways to boost SEO of any website. While it's natural for blog posts and online articles to contain links - both internal and external - some websites abuse this scheme just for the sake of optimizing their site's appearance on search engines. In this article, I will be sharing the perfect backlink strategy that won't get you penalized by Google and other search engines.
A Brief Background on Backlinking
The Internet is designed to be a complex network of machines that transmit and receive data with each other. The same can be said about webpages: it's natural for pages to link to another website (probably for the purpose of referencing, copyright, or further information).
A backlink is created when website A contains a link to website B. In other words, you may say that website B has a backlink from website A. As your site receives more backlinks from external websites, it creates a naturally growing online buzz about your site, which Google may perceive as strong online reputation or votes of confidence by other sites.
By doing a quick online search, you can already discover a lot of strategies to make your link building plans work. Make sure that you know how to choose the best link building strategies from the wide array of options out there.
Tips To Maximize Your Backlink Strategy
You don't want your backlink strategy to fall on its face, do you? The tips on this article should help you come up with an optimized backlink strategy that will produce favorable SEO results for your site.
As the owner of Opportunities Planet, I dish out several tips on helping people boost their online presence, such as SEO, digital marketing, and social media. Let me share with you some of the best ways to ensure that your strategies in backlinking and link building don't bite you:
Focus on Google's preferences
Let's get one thing straight: You need to make Google your friend. While there are a lot of search engines that can help your website get noticed by online users, nothing beats Google in terms of reach.
Having said that, you need to adhere to Google's quality guidelines on link schemes. There's a lot that you will learn about properly and naturally using links on your site, but everything boils down to one primary motive: ethical link building.
Here are some of the backlink schemes that Google frowns upon:
- Excessive and extremely obvious link exchange agreements for the sake of cross-linking between participating sites
- Large-scale guest posting campaigns that clearly manipulate the use of rich keywords
- Rich keywords and concealed links that appear randomly in comments, widgets and footer areas
If you find your site implementing any of these strategies, this might be a good time to remove or revise them to avoid getting penalized in terms of SEO.
Being a content influencer in your chosen niche will make your website noticeable by owners of websites with high domain authority. This makes them more likely to put your site links naturally on their pages, as they reference your content.
In addition, when people recognize your website as a valuable resource for your chosen keyword, your site will naturally become more popular.
All of these immediate results will increase the likelihood of new backlinks to your site from other websites, which search bots can smell from miles away.
Guest blogging has emerged as one of the easiest backlink strategies that mot search engines allow. This involves you writing content for another website, with your article containing a link to your website.
Some SEO experts say this takes a lot of time and effort to pull off. For starters, you need to write dozens of articles for other websites before you can see significant results in your site's SEO. You also need to convince high authority websites to approve your articles so that they can publish them on their site.
However, if done right and with tons of patience, guest blogging can bring in a boatload of backlinks that will make you and your site an authority in your chosen niche.
You don't have to start approaching extremely high authority sites to publish your content. Instead, you may reach smaller sites that welcome guest bloggers freely, and grow your reputation from there.
Give out freebies in exchange for a link
Hold your horses! I'm not saying that you pay people to post your link on their sites. What I'm saying is that you can offer free online tools in exchange for link attribution. Note that a lot of bloggers and online influencers may not have the means to take their own pictures or create their own auxiliary content, and this is where you can offer your expertise on the table.
You may choose from the following ideas to make use of this nifty backlink strategy:
Offer free photos and images
On your website, put up an online gallery containing images and pictures that people can grab and use on their pages. In exchange, all that you will ask is to include proper attribution to your website.
Make sure that your images are related to the niche of your website. For example, if your website talks about nutrition, your pictures should contain references to vitamins, fruits, healthy food options, and the like. That way, your website will be associated with these relevant keywords.
Offer original data and graphs
Some bloggers need data to support their articles - say, the percentage of people who like pineapple on pizza. You may do your own research or survey, and then present your data on your website as tables or graphs. That way, others can grab your data and cite your webpage as reference. And there you have it: an instant backlink!
In coming up with the right backlink strategy for your site, don't think about "get rich quick" schemes. Building backlinks is a painstaking process that yields minimal to nil results in the first few weeks. But eventually - and by following the tips that I shared above - you can rest assured that your backlink strategies will work to your advantage.
Image source: https://pixabay.com/en/chain-metal-chain-link-257490/
