When Scaling Your Link-Building Efforts, Don’t Compromise On Quality

You have started your company and with it your website. Now you want to drive more traffic to your website and build your brand presence.

You have probably heard of this popular and mystical tool – search engine optimization (SEO). And I bet you’ve found that having good links to your website is one of the top three factors that will increase your page rank in search results.

Now all you have to do is pull out a few backlinks, right? Easy enough.

Depending on your industry, you should scale your linking efforts sufficiently to meet the requirements or beat competition can be challenging, especially if you work for a small or medium-sized company (SMB).

Perhaps your competitors are industry giants with far more financial resources and human resources than you are. Maybe their size isn’t the problem, but they have found ways to generate an insane amount of links every month. So you might be tempted to get as many links as you can, no matter where and how.

But wait. It turns out that not all links are created equal. And focusing on link quantity rather than link quality can do you more harm than good. So, you need to learn how to create high quality backlinks on a large scale.

Here are a few tips for building a portfolio of high quality links on your website that will increase your business visibility.

How to create quality content that is worth backlinks

There is an old saying that “Content is King” and it is as true today as it was when it was uttered by none other than Bill Gates.

But just like your backlinks, the content has to be high quality to make a difference. And that means your website needs to have relevant, authoritative, and engaging content in order to earn backlinks.

The better your content, the more likely you are to generate organic links rather than having to create your own backlinks.

For SMBs who don’t have the time or the staff to create useful content in-house, there’s a cost-effective solution: freelance content writers. Freelance writers, of course, come at a cost. In fact, for experienced, high-quality content creators, you can expect up to $ 45 an hour or more. However, experienced freelancers are a good investment because they are extremely efficient and you can often get useful content quickly.

1. Create relevant content

When creating content, think about its expected lifespan. Content on a topic that is quickly disappearing from your audience’s minds will have limited impact on your backlinking strategy. So, you should consider how long your content will remain relevant to your potential audience.

Can you easily update content to reflect changes instead of just letting the content expire? Updating content builds your expertise and is an easy way to create new content with little extra effort.

As a general rule, you should regularly review your content to make sure it remains relevant or valuable, and fix or replace broken links.

2. Become authority on a business issue

It is a simple fact that people like to quote experts. Relevant, well-designed content will make you an expert in your field. Other writers create more organic links to your content, and you may even be given the option to put quotes in different parts, which gives you more opportunities to build backlinks.

Relationship building also helps build your expertise. Working with reporters or industry organizations can boost your status, and if they need a source to quote, they can call you.

Never underestimate the connections within your own company as these relationships will help you build your reputation. They also keep you updated on company activity that can serve as unexpected linkage opportunities.

Protect your reputation and the effectiveness of your backlinking strategy by monitoring who is linking to your content. Links from less reputable sites, or worse, spam sites will hurt all your efforts.

3. Use visuals or videos in your content

The attention span of the average internet user is relatively short and is getting shorter and shorter. So your content needs to grab their attention. And that means using visual hooks to grab the reader’s attention and break the monotony of long pages of text.

Images, infographics, and videos create an interaction for readers with your content and increase the likelihood that they will follow your backlink advice. Well-designed images also further draw the reader in by providing summaries and overviews of your content. But choose your images wisely: stock photos, for example, are much less effective than unique images that relate directly to the material.

Since you will expect the same from others who link to your content, make sure you correctly identify the sources of any images or videos you use from other sources.

4. Reuse your content

Regardless of how you created your content, you’ve invested resources in it: researching, writing, creating graphics and more. Make the most of these resources by reusing your existing content. It is infinitely less costly and time-consuming to modify content for other purposes than to create completely new content from scratch.

There are many ways to reuse your existing content. For example, has your research uncovered data that you haven’t used but that could be useful for another piece? Could you take a slightly different approach to a problem based on what you’ve already created? Have you created graphics to post on your social media accounts?

Remember, reusing content doesn’t mean putting the same piece in multiple places. You still need to create unique, high quality content that is more than a literal repetition of existing content. But you can certainly increase your content creation efficiency and speed by leveraging your existing efforts.

Yes, SEO matters

For high quality backlinking efforts, the more you know about SEO, the better. Most search results are never clicked, and the chances of a user clicking to your page if you are not in the top three search results are negligible.

However, if you manage to get into the top three positions, your chances go up dramatically. The top result is clicked 30% of the time, compared to 15% for the second and 10% for the third.

Keywords are still an essential tool in increasing your page ranking if used correctly. And as you increase your page rank by including commonly used keywords, you increase the chances of others creating links to your content.

While you are not directly tied to scaling your linking efforts, you should make sure that you have properly secured your site. Site security is always an essential task for any business in order to maintain the company’s reputation and customer base. And with cyber criminals now using the company’s SEO efforts as an attack vector, you need to remain vigilant when it comes to exploits as you ramp up your backlinking efforts.

Building an effective linking strategy involves more than just getting as many links as possible from anywhere, anytime. It takes the thought and effort that it takes to create content that people will consider worthy of their links. But companies that invest in quality content will find it pays off.