Link testing has proven to be such a reliable method of understanding content quality that after almost 20 years and hundreds of updates, they are still one of Google’s most valued ranking signals.
It’s no surprise that link building has been a crucial element of SEO ever since. By taking the following steps to develop your SEO link building strategy, you will be able to come up with a plan to increase your website’s authority and generate valuable referral traffic from key sources.
Why is link building valuable for SEO?
To understand how to create an effective SEO link building strategy, you need to know What makes link building valuable in the first place?.
Improved search rankings
The quality of a page’s backlinks is one of the main factors that search engines consider when awarding SERP placements. The more relevant and authoritative sites link to your content, the more trustworthy and useful Google will consider it.
Improved brand visibility and high-quality traffic.
If you have links on popular sites related to your content, audience members on those sites will find your content more frequently and organically. You’ll start to get more attention from the right people, and those people will start to recognize your brand as an important voice in your category.
Greater trust and credibility
If trustworthy sites are willing to link to your content, it will demonstrate to both search engines and your audience that you are considered credible. The better your backlinks are, the more trustworthy your site will look.
Partnerships and relationship building
To build credibility and brand recognition within any category, you’ll need your audience to understand how you relate to your peers (and stand out among them). Link building is one of the best ways to do this.
By earning links from other trusted sites in your category, you are also entering into mutually beneficial relationships with these sites. By connecting your audience members through links, you can gain trustworthiness and authority while solidifying the differences between your brands.
What makes a link valuable?
In modern SEO, the number of links you receive matters much less than the quality of those links. An effective SEO link building strategy is not limited to trying to get as many links as possible; you get the right kind of links from the right kind of websites.
Search engine algorithms evaluate what makes a link valuable using hundreds of factors. Although they keep these factors secret to avoid exploitation, companies like Google have provided generalized explanations of your evaluation process. Based on these guidelines, SEO experts have extrapolated several of the primary evaluation metrics.
Relevance
Search engines consider the contextual relevance of links to your site above all other considerations. The more useful the link is to the user who clicks on it, the more valuable the search engine will consider it.
For example, if you are running a site about computer software and you receive a link from a site about something completely unrelated, like lawn care, then that link probably doesn’t count for much. Meanwhile, a link from a highly relevant site, such as a software review service, can be very valuable.
When it comes to your SEO link building strategy, consider relevance as your main goal.
Authority
A page’s authority refers to how trustworthy search engines consider it within its category. The higher the authority of a page, the more valuable its link will be, as long as both the site and the link are relevant to its content.
Search engines like Google also keep secret the exact calculations they use to determine a site’s authority, but there are SEO tools that can Approximate how Google will evaluate a site’s authority.like Semrush Authority Score and Moz Domain Authority.
Authority is a great secondary consideration for your link building strategy. Consider relevance first and then try to find the most relevant sites that also have the highest authority.
6 Steps to Develop an SEO Link Building Strategy
1. Identify the most relevant link opportunities in your category.
Focus on quality over quantity and start by evaluating relevance. Highly relevant links come from sites that are well known in their category and are directly related to your topic.
Consider which sites your ideal audience visits right now for information related to what you offer, then make a plan for how you could get links from these sites.
2. Verify authority with relevance
After making a list of the most relevant sites, verify it based on site authority. You can use SEO tools like Semrush and Moz to find the top authorities in your category.
Your best opportunities will be highly relevant domains with authority scores (according to SEMrush) of 50 or higher. Arrange these opportunities from highest to lowest to create a “wish list” of backlinks.
3. Compare your listing to competitor links.
Create a list of your competitors and start comparing their sites’ links to your wish list. Various SEO tools can provide backlink analysis features to make this process much faster.
Identify overlapping link sources with your competitors and add their successful sites to your wishlist. Evaluate and include any valuable links your competitors have that you initially left out, and look for differentiation by searching your wish list for links your competitors lack.
4. Build long-term relationships
The tried and true way to get backlinks is to produce great content and increase your domain authority. Align your content strategy with your audience’s pain points and produce content that is inherently valuable to link speed up this process.
Consider Get straight to your biggest opportunities. You could start a mutually beneficial relationship with these brands or influencers by exchanging links or even collaborating on future content.
5. Optimize your internal link structure
The more easily search engines can find, organize and index The more content on their site, the easier they can deliver the right pages to the relevant SERPs. The more frequently they do it successfully, the more authority they will find in your content. Smart internal link structure will also help you pass page authority to the rest of your linked pages.
By optimizing your internal links, prioritize user experience above all else. Make your website as intuitive as possible for someone to navigate by minimizing the number of clicks required to access any given information, clearly labeling all links, and making links easy to find.
6. Maintain and improve over time
Review your SEO link building strategy as often as you check your SEO results.
Continue to maintain and update your internal linking structure to make it easy to use as your site continues to expand. Identify your top-performing content and determine why it resonated with your audience so you can create similar content in the future. Update your backlink wish list with wins and new opportunities, and continue reaching out to the most valuable sites you identify.
If you follow these six steps, you’ll be well on your way to creating an SEO link building strategy that helps Google and other search engines find your site, increases your brand authority, and gets your content in front of the right people for the right time. . reasons.
Learn more about how SEO fits into the broader scope. B2B marketing strategy.
