It’s well known that in order to produce a good backlink profile, you need to earn high-quality backlinks to your site and disavow low quality domains. However, we all know that link building can be a dangerous game to play at the best of times, especially when you need to keep in check with Google’s guidelines. The rules change regularly and spammy link building techniques just won’t do any more!
In order for you to be successful, link building essentially needs to be a natural process, which is where social networking with others in your sector comes into play.
Today I will be running through a few tactics on how to develop relationships with key influencers in order to earn high quality links.
Blogging
Starting a new blog in order to obtain links can be a long and tedious process. It can, however, be very effective in the long run, depending on the quality of your content and how it is promoted. Patience and persistence are required to grow the blog in order to build your online reputation.
Targeting relationships with bloggers within the same industry can be a good way to get links to a blog from other blogs; however, this is not something that can happen overnight.
Moz recently carried out a study with Buzzsumo about the types of content that have a strong positive correlation of shares and links. Research backed content and opinion forming journalism proved to be great contenders for earning high quality links. Also, content that contained 1,000 words or more seemed to accumulate more links.
Before setting up your blog, brainstorm ideas about your audience, goals and strategy, as only high quality content is worth linking to!
Social News and Tagging Sites
The focus of social news and tagging sites is about being a positive contributor and active member of the community. Don’t try to game these sites as you will get caught out! The sites below can place your content in front of audiences that are actually interested in your content, therefore providing you with potential link opportunities.
Forum and Blog Posting
Posting comments and questions on others’ forums and blogs enables you to engage with them and possibly develop a relationship. Set up a Gravatar account and start to develop a name for yourself in the community. Establish yourself as a trusting and helpful member, as this may increase the chance of obtaining a natural backlink. Signing up to create a few spam links is not a great strategy – be helpful to others!
Question and Answer Sites
Question and answer sites such as Quora, Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers are great networking tools for building authority and gaining potential link opportunities. Many people post questions about specific topics, in search of an answer. You can include links in your answers to their questions – an example of a good strategy is linking to a blog post from your site. Don’t add in a link that doesn’t relate to the question asked, otherwise you will lose trust from the users on the site and will appear to be a spam user.
Quora especially is a great site to use, as you can actually link to your websites in your bio:
Offline Relationships
Do the major players speak at conferences? Go to these and introduce yourself. You can then contact the publisher of an authoritative site and offer them a free webinar/seminar with you as the speaker. You can then begin to build relationships within this space.
Social Media
Social Media can be great for amplifying content, but do bear in mind that this is an indirect link building tactic, as the content you share will be nofollowed. The more you interact on your social sites, the more exposure you will receive, giving you potential for building quality relationships and, in turn, earning natural links.
There we have it – a few ideas to use when thinking about developing relationships for link building. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to comment below, or alternatively you can contact Koozai today.
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