Link building is without a doubt one of the hardest jobs in SEO, but on the other hand, it is also the most rewarding.
And so? What is link building? Simply put, link building is the job of acquiring links/backlinks from other sites to yours.
It may seem like something simple but it is one of the main ranking factors. Want to know why?
Search engines (Google, Bing, etc) have always given importance to backlinks. It is through them that they find the most diverse types of sites and are able to add them to their index.
Today they are very important, but they are not the only ranking factors, but they are one of the main ones.
This happened mainly due to the evolution of search engines, mainly Google.
It updates its algorithms several times over the years. With each major update, the ranking criteria get more accurate and smarter.
There was a time when having thousands of backlinks from any site meant to Google that your site was relevant and deserved to be number one.
Today, thousands of backlinks without much context means punishment.
Now that you understand what link building is and how important it is within the SEO universe, how about having access to 5 very practical tips that you can put into practice right now?
That's what this post will talk about
Tip 1 – Use Guestposts in your strategy
Guest posts are posts made by guests, that is, when a person is invited to write on a website or blog that they do not own.
Guest post is different from pub post. In a guest post there is no financial transaction. The website owner authorizes the guest post because they believe the post will add value to the blog or website.
This post is a guest post. We at Search Lab are writing for the Lahar blog.
In order to get guest posts there is a fundamental point which is to know the subject of the site to which you will address.
Ex: We know that SEO is important for the Inbound process and we have not seen content about link building on the blog. Therefore, we suggest this content and we believe it will add value to the blog readers.
We see a lot of companies that seek in the guest post strategy only the acquisition of backlinks and not good content, where the backlink will be part of it.
How to find opportunities for guest posts?
When you want to search for something, you use Google, right? To pursue guest posting opportunities, you'll do the same thing.
Point 1 we have to keep in mind: How do companies identify guestposts?
- “Guest post”;
- “Guestpost”;
- “Guest author”;
- “Submit your post”;
- “Submit your article”;
- “I accept guest posts”.
These are just a few ways to identify blogs and sites that accept guestposts. Perform these searches , navigate between pages and see which sites fit your business.
In this case, it is worth navigating to page 4 of Google. =)
Also read: How to perform Google searches – 4 practical tips
How to contact the owners of websites or blogs?
Once you've found the sites and listed them all in a spreadsheet, it's time to get in touch with them.
There's not much mystery.
If you have good content to add to the site, just send an email or contact form and be very objective and polite with your request.
Below is a template that can be used:
Hello, [person's name]!
[greeting – good morning, good afternoon, good evening]!
I'm contacting you because I would like to know if you accept guestposts.
I'm from [company], a company [time to explain what your company does].
[Paragraph where you should expose some achievements of your company to the person, such as content with good performance, webinars with good performance, content on large portals, etc.]
As we are experts in [theme], we can talk about [what topics you can talk about about?].
We thought of some ideas, such as:
[Content Idea 1]
[Content Idea 2]
If you accept guestposts and have liked the topics, please let me know which one is most interesting for the blog's audience.
[Greetings – Hugs, Yours sincerely…],
[Name – Position or Name]
[Company]
Tip 2 – Broken link building
Imagine the following situation: you are reading a very good piece of content on a certain topic, it is clarifying some problem you have and it indicates to you another reading through a link. When you click on the link, it lands on a 404 page. =/
Have you ever been through this situation? She's pretty embarrassing, isn't she?
When this happens, you have clicked on a broken link.
You can help those people who have broken links with your content, as long as it makes sense.
For this you will need a Google Chrome extension, called Check my Link , which will help in the process of identifying these broken links.
Also, you will need to know where there are backlinks related to your niche or competitors.
How to contact the owners of websites or blogs?
With this data in a spreadsheet, you will need to contact the owners of the websites or blogs to request the exchange of broken links for an active link of yours.
As with the first tip, if your content/link brings value to the blog, there is nothing to fear. Just send a polite and objective email explaining your idea.
Below is a template that can be used:
Hello, [person's name]!
[greeting – good morning, good afternoon, good evening]!
I'm contacting you because I read your content [name and content link], which was very good.
It has a broken link to the page [Broken link url]. We have content on the same topic [URL].
If you find the content interesting, could you replace the broken link with our content link?
[Greetings – Hugs, Yours sincerely…],
[Name – Position or Name]
[Company]
Tip 3 – Quotations without a link
If you work with the press office, eventually your company may be mentioned in vehicles and releases without links to your website.
In this case of advice, it may be even easier to make the vehicle insert the link, after all, there is already a relationship with the vehicle.
The advisor will only need to explain the importance of the link, for example:
Hello, [contact name]!
All is well?
I saw that you published the story about [the topic or release you sent].
As [vehicle name] is a highly accessible portal/blog, having a link will help the reader experience.
If you have any questions about inserting the link, I'm at your disposal.
[Salutation],
[Name]
[Company]
Simple, isn't it?
There is also another way to track these quotes.
The SEMrush tool has a feature called brand monitoring that monitors the places where your brand is mentioned.
The coolest thing is that you can register writing variations of your brand in it.
From the results, all you have to do is contact the owners of the sites/blog requesting the insertion of the link.
The approach can be very similar to that of the advisor, you just have to introduce yourself as [name], [title] of [company].
As the vehicle has already mentioned the brand, there is a good chance that they will insert the link.
Tip 4 – Monitor your competitors’ link building work
As we mentioned at the beginning of the post, backlinks are very important for ranking gain.
However, a doubt will always hover in the mind of those who work with link building: how many links will I need to improve my positioning?
Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer to this question, however, by following the competition you can compare your movement with that of the competition.
Ex: If you got 5 backlinks in 3 months and your main competitor got 500 in the same period, it is clear that you will need to speed up your link building work a lot to be able to surpass your competitor.
The SEMrush tool has a pretty great visual report in this regard.
Through it you can track the volume of backlinks acquired and lost in the last 03 months or 12 months of a particular site.
Tip 5 – Important metrics for link building work
How do we find out that it's worth acquiring a link on a particular site? Through some metrics, which will be explained now.
DA – Domain Authority (domain strength or authority)
Domain strength (or domain authority) is the cumulative value of an entire domain. Instead of looking at the value of individual pages, we look at the domain as a whole to understand whether it is strong/relevant or not.
DA is calculated by Moz and runs on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being the highest.
It uses various signals taken from the Moz crawler and tries to predict how a domain will perform in search results.
To access a domain's DA you can use the following Google Chrome extensions:
- Mozbar
SEO Review Tools
PA – Page Authority (page strength or authority)
There will be opportunities to acquire links on a page that already exists on a site (as in the case of citations and broken link building) and there will also be opportunities on newly created pages.
In cases like this, you should evaluate how strong the page is so you know if it will be worth it or not.
For this we will use the Page Authority (PA) indicator, which is another Moz creation.
This indicator is very similar to Domain Authority (DA), except that it only applies to a single page rather than an entire domain.
The higher the page authority (PA), the more likely it is to help you with your SEO efforts.
To access a domain's DA you can use the following Google Chrome extensions:
- Mozbar
- SEO Review Tools
Anchor Text
Anchor text can provide Google with an indication of the subject of the page to link to.
So if I have linked to a page using the words “HR department routines”, it is likely that the linked page contains information about routines in that department.
Google can then use this information as part of its ranking algorithms .
In that case, they might decide that the page being linked should rank higher for the keyword “HR department routines” and close variations.
However, it seems that the strength of anchor text as a ranking signal is changing due to Google algorithm updates, but even so, anchor text remains very important, as it is a semantic trait of the backlink.
link position
A few years ago, people would link the footer or another part of the site that didn't attract as much reading.
But as we said, Google constantly updates its algorithms and today it can identify the positioning of the link within a page and can choose to value it differently.
If the link is in the footer of a page, Google may reduce the value of that link, as it assumes that it is not a great link for users (otherwise it would not be “hidden” in the footer).
Linking Root Domains (how many domains are associated?)
Associated/linked domains are relevant for ranking gain.
When we say associated domains, we mean the number of distinct domains that have backlinks to our site and not the total number of backlinks.
The number of domains is more relevant than the total number of backlinks as it is a better indication of a website's true popularity to Google.
At this point, it is also worth analyzing how much the domain is associated with your niche.
Having links from domains associated with your niche is even more relevant.
Conclusion
According to Google, backlinks still play an important role in the ranking process.
Therefore, a good job of link building is one of the main points within an SEO strategy.
In this post we saw only 5 tips / tactics. However, there is a horizon of opportunities, which makes it clear that this process is not simple.
However, with these tips, you can start a link building plan and reap results in DA, traffic and the gain of company authority.
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