IN BUSINESS, WE OFTEN HEAR THAT IT’S NOT WHAT WE KNOW, BUT ALSO WHO WE KNOW THAT CAN HELP US FIND SUCCESS.
As the business world and the Internet become increasingly intertwined, it’s becoming apparent just how relevant that platitude is to the success of your business. Particularly when it comes to search marketing, as it is necessary to accumulate inbound links from other sites to your own
The average business typically doesn’t have a significant amount of time or resources to dedicate to gathering links or citations, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. What it does mean is that they should take a basic approach to link building that will greatly improve their SEO efforts without requiring major investments in their most valuable resources (time and money). Fortunately, there is a simple approach to link building that breaks the practice into two primary categories: content creation and networking. Here’s how you can get started without losing sleep or breaking the bank.
As with all search-related practices, content is the backbone of link building efforts. Content drives interest in your site, establishes you as an authority and, ultimately, gets you links. Thus, you must establish a content plan for your website. To do this, identify and learn about your target audience.
Before anyone will want to look at your content, they have to find it, which is why you should also identify widely searched keywords related to your niche that signify user intent, and then include them in your site’s content. Using these terms helps interested and relevant parties discover you, a crucial step in the link building process.
Once you know what you want to write about and who you want to write to, it’s time to start publishing content. Arguably, the best way to do this is by starting a blog and updating it regularly. You can blog as often as multiple times daily or as infrequently as weekly, but keep a consistent, regular schedule to make your audience feel familiar and comfortable. Don’t forget to make your content easily linkable or shareable (usually with social share buttons), so that visitors who enjoy it don’t have to work too hard to share it with others.
One great method to increase traffic and save yourself some time is to only submit part of an article (or one installment in a series) and include a link to the rest of it on your site.
See where your own visitors are coming from, such as other websites or directories, and then visit those pages to see where else they’re sending users. Some of these could provide good link leads from more established sites. Finding the best sites to target shouldn’t be difficult, because as a responsible publisher, you’ve already studied your audience and know what kind of content they like.
Source: Michael Garrity, associate editor, Website Magazine, November 2012
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