Changes have been made with regards to how link building is done today. Using outdated methods could mean harming your SEO more than helping it. Below is a quick, easy summary of all you need to know regarding link building in 2019.
What’s Link Building?
It refers to the practice of generating links that point back to your own website. One of the key ranking factors are links to your website since they signal to the search engines that others find value in your content. Unfortunately, links are not all created equal. The impact a link has to your site depends on the website it originates from.
For instance, if the New York Times website was to link to your website, this is likely to provide more value in terms of SEO as opposed to a link from a friend’s blog that was created last week. The reason for this is that high authority websites tend to pass more link value because they are highly trusted websites in the eyes of the search engines.
Always keep the information provided above in mind since link building always aims to gain links back to your own website from credible, high-quality websites, as opposed to amassing numerous poor-quality links via shortcuts such as link schemes.
What Changes Have Been Made Regarding How Link Building Is Done?
Buying links used to be an acceptable and common practice, but that was all in the past. In 2019, you must shun link buying at all costs. Google considers exchanging links for money a link scheme and may penalize a website with a lower ranking if it participates in such behavior.
Old link building techniques, therefore, are more likely to hurt you than they help. As the search engines continually become better at recognizing and favoring strong content, your link building efforts need to make the shift to being content centered too. If in doubt speak to an established SEO company who will be up to date on the latest developments.
– 1. Content Creation Should Be Your Focus
Focusing on the creation of compelling, unique, and shareable content is the easiest link building tip. Instead of investing your time trying to find a way to trick the search engines into believing that you have a strong link using link schemes, it can be better to direct all that energy towards the creation of helpful content for other users. It is easier said than done, right? Everybody, after all, has a different interpretation of what “good content” is all about. To create content that has the highest possibility of generating links, use the next tip.
– 2. Offer Helpful, Unique Information That Fills a Gap
When coming up with content ideas for your link building, you need to think about the information you can share that will be most helpful to others. Have you searched online for an answer but left unsatisfied with the results? Perhaps you were unable to find an answer at all or you found a poor explanation.
If you are able to provide new analysis, research, or even findings on a topic that’s relevant to your site, the content is likely to gain links since others will have to credit you if they reference the helpful information you provided on their own websites.
To get more insight on some of the potential gaps in content to fill, use a keyword research tool or review your Google Analytics data to identify the types of questions that people are searching on in your industry and create content that answers those questions.
– 3. Make It Easy to Find and Share Your Content
Ensure that your content is as easy to find and share as possible to help others link back to your website. Sharing your content on social media is one of the easiest ways to do this.
If somebody links to your content in a social media post, it won’t count as a backlink to your website. However, it is still an excellent way to share your content online. Users are more likely to find and share your content with a link on their own website.
If you mention a specific brand or person in your content, you should consider getting in touch with them to let them know that you wrote a piece that references them and that they are free to share it. It can be an effective strategy, particularly if the content includes findings or research that the other party is likely to benefit from by sharing.
Use the 3 simple tips above to help guide your approach to link building in 2019. Don’t buy links, and most importantly, invest your time in the creation of compelling and unique content that others find helpful.
