Link building has always been a big factor in ranking at the top of search engines, but like with most things internet based, the process has changed over the years. It’s important to know why links, especially inbound links, should remain a big part of your SEO strategy.
Google states there are over 200 ranking factors, yet content and links rate amongst the highest. Just a few years ago, the focus was on the quantity of links, but today it’s more about quality and trust. There are several reasons why links are important, the first being it’s a vote of confidence – when one company links to another’s website, it’s them saying yours is a quality resource. Your ideal links should be from trusted and reputable websites, offering relevance. Search engines assume that quality websites link to other quality websites.
Another reason link building is vital for your SEO, it’s part of a long term strategy. Quality links, over time, will strengthen your position and build up your reputation. Domain authority, while not directly impacting search engine rankings, is a good indicator of which key words will push up your website rankings. As you build up more quality links, your domain authority increases too.
Over 50% of B2B marketers say that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation, so link building can’t be ignored. So how do you get external websites to link to yours? Here are a few ways:
- Create compelling content that people will want to reference and link to
- Submit your news to press releases and submit your site to directories
- Ask people you know and people you work with to link to your site
- Put your product, service or offering in front of influential bloggers
Link building this way can be arduous and risky – you have no control of what other people say about your product or service, or the quality of their websites. There is a safer way to build links to specific pages you want to improve search ranking for, and that’s through your anchor text. Search engines take into account the actual text a linking page uses to talk about your content. Building external links to your site is important, but focusing some of energy on internal links with rich anchor text to targeted pages, can provide you a big boost in ranking.
If you’d like to find out more on SEO and link building for your company website, contact us – we know all about the power of quality links and would like to help drive more traffic to your site.