Is Link Building Dead in the Water?
Link building was quite the buzz-word a few years ago, and it made an effective tool to get your website noticed and your prowess as an authority in your field established. However, the technique was used and abused, and eventually Google invented a new black and white animal to wipe out invalid or bogus link-generating activities.
[bctt tweet=”high-quality backlinks – or earned links, will still earn you a lot of credibility”]
Although some people will still roll their eyes at the mere mention of link-building, the process has gone under a lot of changes in recent years, and has been re-named as ‘link earnings’ to give it a more positive spin, and now involves more natural, associated and strong inbound links.
Something worth monitoring
The emphasis these days is on producing quality content at a consistent level, and that knowledge is what is what we need to impart to our readers rather than hitting them with constant keyword stuffed articles that offer no value. Good content will always attract natural links from other bloggers and websites that like and appreciate your work, so it is worth monitoring your inbound links to see what sort of content specifically attracts the most attention, and then writing more of it.
Although the importance that Google and other search engines place on links for rankings has declined over recent years, genuine links still offer a boost and do contribute to your overall site rankings.
Write the right content to attract natural links
There has been some analysis done by research companies that found the best sort of content for attracting more natural and related links were those that were research-backed pieces, how-to articles, and ‘why’ posts. Interestingly it was also found that longer posts of more than 1000 words tended to attract more links than much shorter pieces.
Guest posting isn’t just for link-building any more
Not so long ago, many people wrote guest posts for other related websites simply to gain a link back to their own sites. However, these days it is quality content that matters more to the search engine rather than the link back. Writing a piece solely to earn a link will be pretty meaningless if the content you actually write for your guest post is of poor quality, or offers no value. No-one will want to click back to your site to read more of your work, or find out about your company if they didn’t think much of your guest post to begin with.
In 2015, successful guest bloggers work on establishing themselves as credible experts in their niche, and creating more quality posts to get shared by others. The more posts they get on more sites, the higher the chance of getting their content indexed and ranked. This activity will also help to build their relationships with other high-quality sites, and any #back links created will be of a higher value in the search engines eyes.
Turning unlinked references into linked ones
References and mentions by others are of value for rankings, and it is worth contacting those who have mentioned you to see if they would accept a followed back link to your site. You can monitor for your brand and site mentions using something like Social mention or BuzzBundle that allows you find where you are being referenced online.
Image and infographic link-building
The internet is becoming more visual than ever, so even though text-based links have been around for many years, and they are still the most prevalent, using video and image links can be a useful part of your link-building activities.
Infographics have grown in popularity in recent years, but tracking where your infographic is being shared isn’t being utilised as much as it could be, and the same could be said of linked images, charts and graphs. There is a lot of potential for quality back links through your visual media.
Again, you can use Google search or a tool like TinEye Reverse Image Search to find out where your images and infographics are being shared. It is quite simple for you to then check to see if you have been given the proper attribution for your image, and if not, you can ask for it to be included in the form of a link to your site.
Conclusion
Building valuable links can be a very useful tool in your SEO approach, and high-quality back links can help to boost your rankings across the search engines, and ultimately attract more traffic through referrals from other high-ranking sites.
Despite Google slightly decreasing their importance in favour of quality content, back links are still used by the search engines to determine the quality of your content. Whichever way Google chooses to go next, high-quality back links – or #earning links, will still earn you a lot of credibility in your field, and encourage a sound and loyal following.
