Sustainable Link Building: Increasing Your Chances of Getting Links

Link building efforts shouldn’t have a start-and-stop date – they should be continual, continuing to gain you links over time.

In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, please cordially welcome our guest host Paddy Moogan as he explains techniques to accomplish sustainable link building, the kind that makes your content efforts valuable far beyond your first campaigns for them.

Link building efforts shouldn’t have a start-and-stop date – they should be continual, continuing to gain you links over time.

In this edition of Whiteboard Friday, please cordially welcome our guest host Paddy Moogan as he explains techniques to accomplish sustainable link building, the kind that makes your content efforts valuable far beyond your first campaigns for them.

Problems

Now, there are a few drawbacks with link building that make it rather risky, and I want to speak about these problems first before providing you some potential remedies that assist make your link building less risky. So a few problems first:

1. Content-driven link building is dangerous.

The difficulty with content-driven link development is that you’re producing some stuff and you don’t really know if it’s going to succeed or not. It’s extremely hazardous, and you don’t actually know for sure that you’re going to get links.

2. A great content idea may not be a fantastic content concept that obtains links.

There’s a tremendous difference between a fantastic concept for content and a terrific idea that will generate links.

Knowing that difference is incredibly, really crucial. So we’re going to speak a little bit about how we can sort that out.

Solutions

So those are some of the challenges that we’ve got with content-driven link-building. I want to talk about some methods of how to mitigate the risk of content-driven link development and how to boost the chances that you’re actually going to receive links and your campaign isn’t going to fail and not work out for you.

Don’t attach content to certain dates or events

So the first one, now, when you coming up with content ideas, it’s incredibly easy to relate content ideas around events or days of the year.

If there are things going on in your client’s industry that are fairly important, current festivals and things like that, it’s a terrific method of connecting a piece of content into an event.

Now, the problem with that is if you generate a piece of content around a certain date and then that date passes and the content hasn’t worked, then you’re kind of left with a piece of material that is no longer relevant.

So an example here of what we’ve done at Aira, there’s a client where they launch a piece of content around the Internet of Things Day.

It turns out there’s a day recognizing the Internet of Things, which is actually April 9th this year. Now, we generated a piece of content for them around the Internet of Things and its rise in the world and the influence it’s having on the world.

But significantly, we didn’t attach it specifically to that day. So the item itself didn’t mention the date, but we launched it around that time and that outreach talked about Internet of Things Day.

So the outreach concentrated on the date and the event, but the content piece itself didn’t. What that meant was, after July 9th, we could still advertise that piece of content because it was still relevant. It wasn’t tied together with that precise day.

So it means that we’re not gambling on a certain occurrence or a specific date. If we get to July 9th and we’ve got no links, it definitely matters, but we can keep working.

We can keep pushing that piece of content. So, by all means, generate material related into dates and events, but try not to incorporate that too much in the content piece itself and bind yourself to it.

Look for datasets which provide you multiple angles for outreach

Number two, many of content ideas can lead from data. So you can receive a dataset and develop content ideas off the back of the data, but produce angles and stories utilizing data.

Now, that may be fairly risky because you don’t always know if data is going to give you a narrative or an angle until you’ve gone into it.

So something we try and do at Aira when attempting to build content around data is from actually different aspects you can take from that data.

Top Link Building Strategies

As with any strategy, it’s crucial to design one with your final aim in mind. Link building takes time, effort, and patience.

As your campaign moves on, you must re-evaluate your strategies to discover what’s working and not working.

Below are five link-building tactics that you may implement right now.

1. Publish Link-Worthy Content

You must generate content that people want to establish links to. Link-worthy content has broad appeal and most often stands at the top of the marketing funnel.

Most editors prefer to link to pages relevant to their audience, so the more relevant your website is to their audience, the higher the possibility they will link to it.

Link-worthy content is also informative and informational. It solves a common problem or answers common queries an audience could have.

However, many SEO specialists produce link-worthy content by answering common requests.

That is to say, to earn backlinks, not only does your material have to answer questions and solve issues, and it also has to do it in a unique way.

Examples of link-worthy material include: \sHow-to articles.

Data and trends.

Research that benefits your industry.

Educational content.

Entertainment.

Inspirational material.

Evergreen content.

If your objective is to develop more link-worthy material, you may assess your present content to discover where you have gaps.

Then, by going through the several techniques outlined above, you can plan which content to start with and how much you’ll need.

2. Outreach

Outreach is the act of approaching a site for a backlink.

When you generate link-worthy material, it’s crucial to distribute that content with sites you think will benefit from it.

Gaining a backlink from high-authority sites is one technique to tell Google that your site is an expert on a subject.

These backlinks operate as “votes of confidence” from one site to another.

Additionally, backlinks from diverse sites might assist widen your target demographic, bringing additional prospective clients to your website.

Often, outreach consists of SEO specialists sending articles to a site editor explaining why they would profit from their post.

However, there are many other strategies that outreach can do, including:

Press releases to gain links from relevant sites.

Promote fresh content.

Seek linkages in existing material.

Fix unlinked mentions.

Outreach can assist create professional ties between SEOs and site editors.

While outreach may seem like an easy technique, there are outreach best practices that you should be aware of:

Personalize all your outreach. You don’t want to send generic messages.

Keep it short and to the point. Site editors don’t have much time to wade through a long email.

Explain why connecting to your site or post is useful for them.

Provide the anchor text for them. The easier you make it on them, the better.

3. Do News-Worthy Things

This method may sound ambiguous, but there are several benefits to acquiring connections from a news site.

For instance, many magazines have a significant audience, some of which are driven to your site.

Additionally, several magazines are authoritative in their sector, and a backlink from them can go a long way with Google.

While you may think anything your company does could be considered noteworthy, it’s crucial to analyze what is relevant for your organization and your target media.

Consider the following tactics:

Host an event.

Donate to a cause.

Launch a nonprofit.

Create a new product or solution.

Announce a new alliance.

Offer a scholarship.

After you’ve decided on your news-worthy techniques, you must pitch your idea to contributors, magazines, and other relevant media contacts.

Then, it would help if you convinced them why your narrative is significant to them and their audience.

4. Technical SEO

One technique to obtain links is to run a technical audit on your backlinks.

Sometimes links break.

Pages go down.

And site editors are unaware that links to your site is no longer working.

By completing a backlink analysis on your site, you can keep in the loop on how your backlinks function. Get the help of a good Digital Marketing Agency for your technical SEO and content parts. 

Some techniques in this strategy include:

Finding broken links: You may email the site editor with the right link, expressing the value it adds to their site.

Fixing 404s:

You may provide a completely new link to a similar page.

Removing redirects: Make sure any redirects are linking to the end destination. Whenever feasible, delete redirect chains.

HTTP vs. HTTPS: If you recently switched to HTTPS, ensure all links are updated from HTTP.

Fixing these problems helps to re-establish the connection from one location to another.

A redirect link or a link to a 404 page has absolutely no value; it’s crucial to reclaim these connections to enhance organic traffic to your site.

Additionally, correcting these links makes it easier for bots to crawl and index your site.

5. Thought Leadership

A thought leader is someone in an industry who is regarded an expert. They continuously produce new information and put forth new thoughts concerning their sector.

As a result, many people are prone to accept them and use their information as proof. So as you can see, being a thought leader in your business may have many benefits.

Thought leadership articles can also assist your ranks on Google. The more individuals that point toward your content as a reference, the more Google will look at you as an authority.

Google wants to provide its consumers helpful material and thought leadership content is just up that alley.

To be an a successful thought leader, consider the following tactics:

Guest writing on relevant sites.

Posting answers on Q+A sites.

Creating material on social media.

Creating online classes or certifications.

Updating readers on the news in the sector.

Hosting a webinar or a podcast.

Remember that thought leadership starts with original research, developing a solid presence, and keeping up-to-date on industry news.

There are several free backlink analysis tools that you can use to research your backlink profile.