Wait, we’re actually talking about link building? Isn’t that, like, a very old marketing method? These are like two (2) questions any marketer would ask whenever they encounter a topic about link building. And yet, a lot of marketing teams and brands still make informative pieces on link building despite this perception.
Why is such an antiquated marketing method relevant today? Well, if we consider the fact that 60-percent of Top 10 pages in Google search rankings are actually three (3!) years old, perhaps we can start with the reality that great link building can yield lasting results. And maintaining the top spot in Google’s first page can be such an awesome boost to your branding opportunities.
What else can we do with link building, though? Why is link building important, and why do we have to rely on organic link building methods to reap the most benefits from this marketing strategy? We’ll explain link building basics in this piece.
Link Building: What Is It?
Before we proceed to the importance of link building, we need to understand what we mean when we say “links.”As you may have guessed, links are simply “hyperlinks” – as in, the digital address of a website or a webpage.
If we use an analogy to the real world, think of a hyperlink as landmarks or signs that point to where your store is. We need signs and advertisements so people and customers go to our store in the real world, right? Well, we use link building to spread our hyperlinks all over the internet so readers and potential customers can go back to our website.
In the above, a hyperlink consists of several parts that, when combined, builds our digital “signpost” to our website:
1. Our digital signposts work by using HTML tags. In the case of a hyperlink, they’re called anchor tags. Our hyperlinks start and end with <a> and </a>.
2. Our link referral location pertains to the link we want that hyperlink to “go back to.” This can be our website, or any page in our website we want people to view.
3. Our anchor text is the text that, when clicked, goes back to the link referral location. We should use anchor texts so that when people read our content, they don’t get distracted by a random website link appearing in the text.
These links can only serve as our digital signposts when they’re placed in other website content such as blogs and other posts. Our hyperlinks, when located in other websites, are called backlinks and can help gather more traffic to our site.
However, we can’t just put our links in random websites – we have to plan this process carefully and make sure we get in contact with websites related to our niche and industry. That way, the relevance of our content and our backlinks can increase. This process of building relationships is called link building. Why is this important, though?
Organic link building lets you build lasting relationships within your industry and niche
One of the most effective link building strategies out there is called organic link building. Unlike conventional link building that focuses on getting backlinks to as many pages as possible, organic link building focuses on helping a website build its relevance in its niche.
This can be done by making context-centered content, user-focused articles, and an effort to provide value to the industry. In fact, any great link building company may recommend using organic link building to make a lasting impact with your campaigns.
1. It’s important to note that 62-percent of pages located on Google’s top ten results are actually older than three (3!!!) years old. This means these pages have done far more than just “targeting” a keyword, but rather created content that’s naturally relevant that new pages always refer back to it.
This is the kind of content we should aspire to make – we’re not just targeting to rank in a keyword, but rather provide relevant information to our audiences.
2. When we do organic link building, this means creating campaigns focused on making content not just for a keyword, but concepts and other words surrounding the keywords we want to target.
This makes our content marketing approach more “holistic” and increases our coverage for backlinks. Not only that, but when search engines crawl our content, they can recognize that we’re tackling the industry as a whole and not just trying to earn links. This makes our link building approach much more authentic and organic.
Link building can boost your local coverage
When we talk about digital marketing, we’re not always talking about building a brand on a global level. While this is ideally our goal in the long-run, we want to start strong and start small. If we have a business we want to have a local presence, we most likely will rely on local SEO. However, link building can actually give local SEO that boost we need to make our brand a more prominent member of our target industry.
1. Given how “near me” searches have increased 900-percent in the past years, and how half of searchers will likely visit stores they searched for within a day, great link building can expand your brand to reach greater local SEO.
Plus, with 82-percent of smartphone users also wanting to find stores near them, imagine how many people you can tap to go to your brand given the right content? Using link building to let your content reach them can give you the influx of leads and conversions you need.
2. Link building can also make your content and posts in general be more tailored for local SEO. Since your keywords and concepts used most likely fit a niche audience and location, efficient link building can help search engines “push” your content to your target.
You don’t necessarily have to invite all of your friends to like your page on Facebook, anymore. With tapping into the right guest posts and using smarter captions and texts, you can have social media doing this for you.
Ensure your content stays meaningful with proper leverage
You can take advantage of link building to make sure content you release will be relevant to your niche and audiences. For instance, you can create the fanciest ads or even the most well-researched blogs, but without good link building, you can’t maximize their reach.
Aside from organic link building and local SEO, we can also tailor-fit your other content offerings to your target audience with good link building. This ensures that all your content – from blogs to multimedia and advertisements – will be useful for your campaigns.
1. For instance, video content can be great help to give you a much-added boost to SEO. In fact, posts that have embedded videos can get a 157-percent boost in their search traffic and earn more backlinks.
This means, while your videos simply mention or even have your keywords in texts inside them, they still matter in helping you generate traffic. To maximize this benefit, we have to make sure that when your videos do include them – be it while talking, as captions, or even as text in the video – they have to be included naturally.
2. In the same vein, infographics and other forms of visual media work better when your keywords and links are embedded into captions and into the graphics themselves.
Thanks to smarter search engine algorithms such as Google’s BERT, we can create more context-reliant content and expect search engines to understand how they’re related to relevant keywords and concepts our brand wants to tackle.
Link Building Basics: The Importance of Building Relationships
If we can describe link building with an analogy, it’s akin to building a network in real life. As a businessman or an influencer, you want to get word out of your brand in order to get famous.
However, we want as much as possible to make sure our content and branding get connected with people (in this case, brands and websites) that matter to our chosen niche. Not only that, but “smarter” search engine algorithms mean our SEO no longer rely solely on how “smart” our keyword insertion is in pieces, but that we actually create pieces based on context.
Hopefully, the reasons above have convinced you to start researching and adopting organic and natural link building methods to maximize your branding and your reach. If you have other suggestions and insights, please feel free to add them to the comments below!
Watch this space for updates in the Hacks category on Running Wolf’s Rant.
Like what you just read? Join The Wolf Pack! Subscribe To Our Newsletter.
Explore our website, check out our Featured Articles or scroll down to see the articles that are related to this article below. We've been around since 2008, so there's plenty of content.
If you're in South Africa and looking for something to do, check out The SA Gig Guide (on our sister site SA Music Zone).
If getting more knowledge is part of your DNA - Check out the latest posts on Interesting Facts.
