Backlinks are all the buzz. Even those not in the SEO industry understand that to rank at the top of the search engine, quality backlinks are very important. Unfortunately, building backlinks isn’t as easy as guest posting on other websites, or is it?
Actually, link building is pretty easy. It’s convincing someone to give you a backlink that’s difficult. If you want to build backlinks, you need to first build relationships. When you have a strong relationship with a website owner, getting a backlink is as simple as adding value.
Link Building Through Relationships
If you’re a good person and are nearing adulthood, you should have access to plenty of backlinks. If you are not a good person, well, perhaps you need to read an article titled “How to Build Backlinks When You’re a Bad Person.” This article will probably begin with how being a better person is the first step to relationship building.
The next step to link building through relationships is content marketing. Not on your own site, but on theirs. Providing great content to a website owner, helping them drive traffic is better for your backlink and the right thing to do.
Add More Value Than You Receive
No, even exchanges here. In the Bible, Acts 20:32-35 says “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
We find some of the best business lessons in the Bible and this one rings true. We find the greatest link building tactic in this verse. Provide more value than a guest post before asking for a backlink, then thank them for the backlink afterwards with another gift.
Whether it’s another blog post, business strategy, helping them with a technical SEO error, or taking them to coffee. The what is not as important as the effort you put forth.
Relationship Link Building Tip #1: Friends and Family
Building links is easiest with those who are eager to support your business, especially when it doesn’t cost them anything. Is there anyone within your friends and family who will send an inbound link to your website? People hoping to improve their SEO rarely implement this simple yet effective outreach strategy.
This is one of the offline SEO strategies for online success that we commonly recommend to our clients.
Relationship Link Building Tip #2: Your Community
Who have you interacted with more than once and would say that you have an excellent product or service? Often, thinking through this process is a great way to earn local links with minimal outreach effort. Sometimes, these end up being more than a quality backlink, as it could even create a further business relationship.
If you have spent any time relationship building through your social media marketing efforts, this is a good place to start. But don’t simply ask for a backlink through DM. Instead, create a conversation either over the phone, Zoom, or in-person where you can find out how to best help them.
Relationship Link Building Tip #3: Your Industry
If you have been in an industry for longer than a few months, you will have backlink building opportunities. Here is a look at several examples of where you can find websites who can provide an external link to your website.
Vendors: Do you buy products or services from people that will list your website on theirs? Sometimes this is in a “where to buy” whereas other times it’s in a testimonial.
Publications: Use your experience for relationship building. Send an outreach email to people who run local and trade publications that can use you as a future reference.
Bloggers: Every industry has a handful of bloggers whose job it is to create conversation around your industry. Often, these bloggers don’t run a tight ship. These bloggers have broken links on their website which will hinder their search engine rankings.
Reaching out to these bloggers with “what to fix” is the first step to a broken link building strategy. After nurturing the relationship, find a way for your site to fit into a broken link.
Relationship Link Building Tip #4: Look To Podcasters
A link building strategy we take seriously at 805 SEO is podcast outreach. Our systematic process identifies the right link prospects who have a podcast and act as a website owner.
We then create a linkable asset that we can use as a resource for this podcast before asking to join their show. This helps guide the conversation and helps our content marketing efforts.
After the podcast, we follow up to make sure that the contact places backlink on their show notes. While these are not high traffic pages, they still help improve our ranking in search engines.
Creating the Perfect Backlink
Quality links are the first step, but you cannot build one hundred links with the same anchor text. Google sees this as unnatural, which can hurt your overall ranking. Instead, quality links should have diversified anchor text that covers a variety of search terms, including long-tail keywords.
This is exactly what we do as a part of your link building campaign. Every blog post goes through an internal link anchor text analysis. Whether it lives on your site or is a guest post for another. At 805 SEO, we leave no backlinking stone unturned for your search engine optimization strategy.
SEO Link Building Agency
Want a team to help you build high quality backlinks through building relationships? We’ve got you covered. At 805 SEO, we build links for all of our clients. We carefully create each high quality link to help you rank for keywords that matter most to your business.
Our SEO agency will help you find the right opportunities, determine the best way to add value, create the guest posting content, and set up the anchor text. We carry the heavy weight in your link building effort to make certain you get the highest position in the search result.