In the infancy of link building, there was a lot of link stuffing; however, now people are being much more cautious about how they link build. Regardless of concerns over how to link build, links are a strong factor toward creating organic rankings. Moreover, in spite of the algorithm updates, link building isn’t likely to take on huge changes in the near future.
In order to build links safely through the changing link-building rules, consider following these guidelines.
-
Link Out to Others
If you only link to your brand, it is a clear sign that you’re link building. However, if you mix it up and add links to other websites (informational content, news articles, etc.) it will add credibility to your content.
-
Include Links from Top Level Domains (TLDs)
Most people consider links from educational institutions (.edu), the government (.gov) and the military (.mil) more trustworthy. For this reason, people are more likely to trust what you’re saying if you’re able to link to one of these ‘higher authority’ sources.
-
Topical Relevancy
You should pay attention to topical relevancy. For example, if you’re creating content for a law firm, you should not have links pertaining to a dating site because it will look unnatural. Moreover, Google has gotten more vigilant at identifying web content that has links that are not relevant.
-
Creativity Makes for Better Content, But be Prepared to Fail Along the Way
Being innovative will help your content stand out from the crowd, but doing something for the first time could mean it won’t work—and that is ok. Nobody can predict what topics will and will not go viral; therefore, you just need to learn from your mistakes and improve the next time.
-
Less Is More
Having a ton of links should not be your ultimate goal; rather, you should focus on creating projects that will generate higher quality links. To do so, you should also find (and use) the most authoritative sites within a niche and create a plan to approach them.
-
Discover What Type of Content Ranks and Attracts Links—and Use It
As with most things, learning is an important step to link building. More specifically, understanding what will work best (and what doesn’t work at all) for you and having knowledge of what your competitors are doing can prevent losing time on bad content choices. In addition, this information can lead to better campaigns overall.
Along with knowing the kinds of safe link building practices, it is also important to know which to avoid. Read here for more information about When Link Building Goes Wrong.
The world of website content and link building is changing all the time. Continue reading our link building blog, and check back often for our bi-weekly SEO news roundup features where we dissect current trends in the link building and SEO world.