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As a business owner with a website, you’ve likely heard the phrase Search Engine Optimization, or “SEO,” before. SEO is crucial for boosting your rankings on search results pages. There are several SEO strategies to help improve your site rank, including incorporating keywords, making your website mobile-friendly, and creating high-quality content. An optimized website helps to ensure that you rank where people can find you.
A lesser known (but very useful) strategy you should implement is link building. Here's how link building can help.
What Is Link Building?
Link building is an SEO tactic that involves placing links on other websites that lead back to yours with the goal of improving your visibility. Known as backlinks, search engines like Google use these, with other SEO factors, to determine how to rank your site. The search engines "crawl" the links that lead to your pages to determine their source.
It's not necessarily the number of backlinks that you have, but the quality. The more reputable and authoritative the sites linking to yours, the more reputable yours will be considered, and as a result, you're likely to rank higher.
The Benefits of Building Links
While it’s possible to rank fairly high on search engine results pages without link building, there’s no denying that it’s a very useful strategy. Benefits of link building for small businesses include:
Link Building Tips
Now that you know the benefits of backlinks, here are a few strategies you can try:
No matter how small your business is, never underestimate the power of link building. With so many incredible benefits, it’s a great strategy to help you boost your rankings and gain more business.
A lesser known (but very useful) strategy you should implement is link building. Here's how link building can help.
What Is Link Building?
Link building is an SEO tactic that involves placing links on other websites that lead back to yours with the goal of improving your visibility. Known as backlinks, search engines like Google use these, with other SEO factors, to determine how to rank your site. The search engines "crawl" the links that lead to your pages to determine their source.
It's not necessarily the number of backlinks that you have, but the quality. The more reputable and authoritative the sites linking to yours, the more reputable yours will be considered, and as a result, you're likely to rank higher.
The Benefits of Building Links
While it’s possible to rank fairly high on search engine results pages without link building, there’s no denying that it’s a very useful strategy. Benefits of link building for small businesses include:
- Increase visibility: Google’s algorithms change constantly, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of links. Combining backlinks with other SEO strategies can help your site appear at the top of the results page.
- Increase website traffic: A link from another site puts you in front of a new audience. Since they likely already trust the other website, they’re more likely to trust you, too.
- Build relationships: Influencers and other leaders are a great source for backlinks. Networking will help you land reputable backlinks and establish relationships with other members of your community.
- Boost brand awareness: the more mentions your business gets, the more well-known you become. At the same time, those who see your brand frequently are likely to begin trusting you more.
Link Building Tips
Now that you know the benefits of backlinks, here are a few strategies you can try:
- Skyscraper content: this strategy involves finding content in your industry that’s already performing well and improving. Using this tactic, you research popular trends or topics that already rank well and create something even better. You add on to an existing list (instead of 12 Activities to Do at Home with Your Kids, you might create a piece that offers 20 activities), update statistics to create a more current article, or make a more visually appealing piece of content. When it's finished, you need to reach out to the right people (such as influencers, bloggers, and brands who have already linked to similar content) and ask if they'd be interested in sharing it.
- Roundup posts: these posts feature the opinions of industry experts. The posts provide valuable information for your visitors and promote the experts you include. In many cases, those you feature are likely to re-share your posts, giving you quality backlinks.
- Social signals: You can build links to your website using your social media profiles. Being active on social media and consistently creating quality content lets Google™ know you’re active, which can help boost rankings.
No matter how small your business is, never underestimate the power of link building. With so many incredible benefits, it’s a great strategy to help you boost your rankings and gain more business.
