Do to Google’s ever diligent efforts to clean up SEO practices in the modern age, link building is becoming one of the most important tools you can use to get high ranking search results. Many highly effective techniques of just a couple years ago have become virtually ineffective leaving web designers with real work on their hands. Now, the best methods are often creative, self-made opportunities that are specific to the situation.
Specify your range of link prospects
There are some basic linking techniques that are transferable from one type of website to another. These include what you would expect with article hosting sites, directories, and supporting social medias. Others are specific to the type of website promoted and the field they compete in. You need to draw on different resources when building, say a blog vs a contracting company website. If you are working within a specific genre, you’ll have more time to get familiar with the link prospects that work for that type of website. But, if you are working with a mixture of different SEO customers from all over the spectrum, creativity and tenacity will be your best assets.
Blogging and content rich sites
Bloggers in any genre can have a social cooperation network that’ll be a benefit to all involved. The way to approach it is to be a genuine fan of your own industry. Seek out and make contact with people that are doing the things you respect. By inviting guest blogs, writing reviews or writing editorials that cite other people’s work, you can open doors for both links and increased popularity. That way, when you’re offering to swap links as a fellow blogger, it’s a more natural conversation and less a sales pitch. If your niche in cyberspace is rather narrow, and you don’t have many bloggers to network with, by seeking out just a few, you’re blog can become “the guy” or at least one of the guys. In genres where there is a lot of competition, where authority and credibility are hard to come by, look for bloggers that are closest to being your peers and network with them. It also helps to have a rather open link exchange policy. If someone asks you to host a link, they’ve already deemed your website to be of sufficient quality. If you’re willing to host a link to a person’s site, they’ll usually reciprocate. This all leans toward being visibly pro-active, engaging and taking advantage of the opportunities that arise.
For business and service websites
When looking for links to the website of a brick-and-mortar business, consider other real-world businesses. Contracting companies, retail stores, shops and factories all have a network of suppliers and customers that are perfect prospects for finding links. Also, you can use the other medias the business owner is advertising in. Whether newspaper, television or radio, they’ll have websites. Make your push as the proactive web designer to have the advertising dollars spent in these areas include links. If you work toward building a good relationships with advertisers, this won’t be a hard sell. Finally, look around the business owner’s neighborhood. If your customer has built up a lot of goodwill in his hometown, other local websites might be happy to do a link swap.
Content can work for you
Again, cover your bases in social medias and directories. Then, you’ll want to move on to articles, blogs and other content. Developing quality content is way more effective than worrying about keyword density so, make that your priority. Then, find quality sites to host your guest blogs, instructional or sales videos, photos or info-graphics and be willing to share it. Any content you offer other sites can be loaded with credits, hashtags and hyperlinks. Videos and photos can be labeled with digital on-screen logos. In short, share-friendly content can be highly promotional and loaded with links. Contact people by providing content and links in an email with your request, and their website managers will often do it without another word. Other times, you may need to get on the phone, talk to someone and make a deal.That’s a good thing, because your new contact may be working with more than one website with link potential.
There is a lot of focus recently on getting in contact with content scrapers, or people that use your content without permission. Google offers a service for tracking these as well as WordPress. Webmaster tools can also track them and notify you when your content has been lifted. Contacting those using your content is a good idea. In the end, however, the best idea is still to protect your content in advance. Make sure when it is lifted, it increases your web presence.
