• Maintain natural link velocity

Search engines like an organic growth of backlinks. Theoretically, backlinks grow randomly, except for the occasional spike. As such, when the number of backlinks suddenly jumps, search engines may view them as unnatural and penalise websites. So, make sure to spread your link acquisition campaign over a reasonable period of time.

• Build relationships

Join discussion groups related to your niche on Facebook and LinkedIn. Make positive contributions to the group and develop relationships with other participants. Once you’ve reached a stage of mutual trust, open the topic of reciprocal links. It’s much easier to say ‘NO’ to a random stranger than someone you’ve developed a relationship with. However, don’t pester and spam everyone in the group – they might just kick you out of the group.

Networking with people in your niche could lead to valuable reciprocal links. Image courtesy of Pixabay

• Give testimonials

Seek out a middling-level product, service or subscription. Use the product and write an honest review, preferably a glowing one. Contact the company with the link and wait. If they like the review, they might just post on their website as a testimonial and a link to the original post. Voila, you’ve earned a backlink. Now repeat the process with other products from different companies.

• Guest posting

Guest posting is such an easy way to earn backlinks. The only condition is, the content must be of excellent quality. Otherwise, websites will just decline. And don’t just focus on leading websites – new and upcoming websites with potential are also worth your time. As they grow in stature, your backlink would also become more valuable.

• Digital PR

Digital PR is what secures the highest quality links. Ever look at a website and think “if only I could get them to link out to me”? Those are the types of sites that digital PR can help you secure links on. In competitive industries, this is a necessity as without such links you have no chance of showing up on the first page. The idea is simple but execution is tough. A digital PR team creates engaging, newsworthy content backed up by primary or secondary research. Idea generation/brainstorming sessions are used to come up with innovative angles and stories that journalists will love. Expert writers then craft content and reach out to relevant media outlets and journalists to make them aware of the content. This in turn leads to news outlets and powerful websites sharing the content. Due to the amount of time and effort required to create such pieces, journalists usually credit the source of information with a link. This is what makes digital PR a truly white hat approach to link building. To earn these kinds of links for your site(s), you will need to approach the right link building SEO company.

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Spammy backlinks can ruin your SEO. Image courtesy of Pixabay

• Link Velocity

Backlinks should grow at a steady pace, preferably in line with the age of your website, the volume of content and search ranking. For most websites, link velocity is random, with the occasional spikes. If you acquire links too fast, too soon, search engines will get suspicious of the unnatural velocity and penalise your website.

• Backlinks from low authority sites

Backlinks from high authority websites are naturally hard to get. However, you shouldn’t give up and start accumulating links from low authority sites. Although they are far easier to obtain, they are also likely worthless from an SEO perspective. Even worse, search engines might classify them as spammy backlinks.

• Focus on content

The chief reason why people would give you a backlink is for the quality of your content. However, producing quality content takes time and experience. If you get ahead of yourself, and start soliciting backlinks before you have produced enough quality content on your site, you will be probably rejected by everyone who matters.

• Link spamming

Link spamming hasn’t worked for over a decade. Regardless of how many forums you registered with, none of the backlinks from your forum profile or signature line will count as backlinks. Similarly, none of the comments you made on various blogs will get you any link juice. All those backlinks are nofollow links.

• Don’t over optimise anchor texts

Backlinks should be featured on different anchor texts. If the majority of your backlinks use the same anchor texts, they will eventually be devalued with search engines. It’s not a big problem to use different anchor texts, so this shouldn’t even be a problem in the first place. Consult with an SEO professional for advice on this! Getting it wrong risks severe consequences.

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Why do we need a campaign?

You can acquire links on an ad hoc basis. However, by creating a long-term strategy, your chance of acquiring links increases. The number of backlinks will also be more because of the sustained effort. Further, a campaign will also allow you to create contact with your niche and build a positive reputation for your website.

Link building is a vital element of SEO. Image courtesy of Pixabay

Due diligence and homework

The worse thing that can happen during the long process is, you will acquire low-quality links. To ensure this doesn’t happen, you will need to prepare a profile of your ideal website. The requirements for your preferred website could include niche, website age, domain authority, and social media following. Once complete, you can filter out the websites which do not fit the profile from your prospect list.

Identifying link opportunities

Websites generally won’t give you backlinks for free. As such, you must present potential backlinkers with some value. Spend time reviewing their site. Can you detect any critical factual errors? Send them an email, and they might credit you with an edit. Or, are their articles incomplete? Offer to write a guest post article for them to address the gap in return for a backlink. Do they need a video to accompany an awesome article? Offer to make one, in exchange for a backlink. These are just random examples – you might find even more!

Pro tip: Make sure your backlinks use different types of anchor texts to avoid over optimisation of certain key phrases.

How can offer the best link building campaigns?

Generally speaking you will want to go with an expert SEO company for your link building campaigns. The resources required for truly high-quality and powerful links are not easy or cheap to come by so building them yourself will prove difficult (if not impossible).

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Websites which accumulate these links are penalised severely in search rankings. So much so, they are sometimes used as a weapon by competing websites. Webmasters should steer clear of backlinks which are offered for free. Nothing good can come of it. Conversely, even backlinks which are sold, sometimes at pricey rates, should be avoided as well. They are usually from private blog networks, and over time, their link footprint would be detected.

So, what are your options?

In link building, it’s always about quality, not quantity. Image courtesy of Luis Osorio

Editorial Links

Editorial links are the best and perhaps, the only type of backlinks a website should have. These are basically links which were not asked for or purchased, and were given out voluntarily by other websites. They are called editorial links because the decision to link to your website is an editorial decision.

To obtain these links, your website must have high quality, relevant and topical content which could attract writers and webmasters. This is hard to achieve but not impossible. The good news is, once a website has obtained a few editorial links, they will develop a reputation for reliability and quality. This will encourage other websites to use start linking to their content – the cycle will feed itself.

As a bonus, Google loves this type of link, more so if the referring website is of the same niche.

Outreach links

This is the most common form of link building. Basically, you reach out to reputable websites and ask for a backlink. Sometimes people would be willing to give the link because they like your website. At other times, it’s a big, fat no. However, you have the option of sweetening the deal by offering reciprocal links, a guest post,  or even a shout on social media. Find more information on this and how you can find a link building SEO company.

Forum and profile links

These are the links found in your profile or signature on forums and online communities. They carry no influence on SEO. However, they might generate some referral traffic if you’re active at those websites.

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Search engine algorithms have long relied on links to help rank websites. There is a belief that when a website gives an outbound link to another website, it is giving it a seal of approval of its content and authority. Over time, certain websites will develop a large number of backlinks. In the eyes of search engines, this makes them more authoritative, and a sign of their authority. While there are obviously numerous other factors behind search rankings, backlinks are very influential in how websites are ranked in search results.

Link building is an integral component of SEO. Image courtesy of Pixabay

What is link building?

Link building is a major part of search engine optimisation (SEO). It is a strategy of obtaining backlinks from authoritative websites in a similar niche or topic. When search engines’ robots crawl through the millions of websites on the internet, it calculates, among others, the number of backlinks every website has as part of its search algorithm. A website will potentially be ranked higher than a competitor if it has a larger number of backlinks.

As such, link building is geared towards giving websites the highest possible number of reputable backlinks.

Are all links good?

During the dawn of the internet era, websites were hoarding backlinks indiscriminately. Webmasters and marketers would submit spammy content to article directories and generate hundreds of backlinks. Many others would create websites which farm out backlinks. There were even software which could churn out thousands of backlinks within minutes. However, since these were not editorialised links, they were of terrible quality. The authority they were supposed to provide was non-existent.

As a result, search engines changed the game and fought back. Search algorithms became more particular with the types of backlinks a website has. As a consequence, the values of many links, as well as the originating websites, were degraded.

Today, search engines have become even stricter about backlinks. So much so, websites can be penalised for accumulating low-quality backlinks from spammy websites. To avoid this, you should approach an agency to carry out a link building campaign on your behalf.

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