6 Great Ideas For Ethical Link-Building - Social Media Explorer
6 Great Ideas For Ethical Link-Building
6 Great Ideas For Ethical Link-Building
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When you want to build solid links pointing to your website,
there are right and wrong ways to go about it. Guest blogging is a fine example
of a sound link-building strategy; an improper strategy would be something like
spamming links into other sites’ comment sections. The sort of ethical
link-building that boosts your site’s visibility is referred to as “white hat” (as opposed to “black
hat”) link-building.

White Hat Techniques
For Link Building:

Guest Blogging

Writing guest posts for blogs on other sites is an efficient
and potentially powerful way to build good links. There are more websites out
there than you might expect that are open to guest article submissions. Writing
a quality guest blog is an opportunity to make yourself more visible while also
improving your site’s SEO performance.

Another benefit to guest blogging that you shouldn’t overlook is
the way it cultivates a positive relationship with other website owners.
Forging a strong tie to other owners makes it easier to do more collaborating
and build more links in the future.

Conduct a little research and compile a list of websites in
your niche that welcome guest posts. When you start considering candidates for
your posts, make sure your work will fit with the tone and subject matter of
the site. This improves your post’s odds of getting accepted. It’s usually a
good idea to contact the site’s operators in advance and feel out the
relationship before you start composing your guest post.

Any seo company knows not to turn a guest post into a hard sell
for your site. Make sure to leverage your guest post’s impact when it gets
published. Announce it on your own site and through your social media. If you
take effective steps to boost the site’s readership, its owners will be more
inclined to invite you back for more guest posts.

Use Personal And
Professional Networks For Link-Building

Running a website or a blog is no longer the rarity it once
was. You probably have friends, relatives, and acquaintances with web presences
of their own. Don’t be shy about talking to them and asking them to link to
your site.

You can follow a similar strategy with professional contacts
through your business. This sort of link-building is usually reciprocal, so
have a method in place to provide links on your site for partners and vendors
who give you a link.

Directory Submissions

A tried-and-true strategy that still has some positive
benefits, submitting your website to an internet directory makes it part of a
larger index. These days, you need to exercise discretion when picking out
directories. Make sure any directory you submit to has an appropriate category
for linking to your site. You should also check the directory’s general
reliability and look at its domain authority (DA) and page authority (PA)
figures.

Directories that have poor DA and PA are best given a wide
berth. Avoid sites that have spam links, too. Directories with poor reputations
won’t just waste your time; getting your site on them may end up hurting your
search engine performance. Do your homework and make sure you’re choosing
directories wisely.

If you feel you need help why not hire an?

Make Brand Mentions
Into Backlinks

This is an excellent way to amplify your visibility and turn
it into better search engine performance once you’re already getting some
online attention. You need to use social listening tools to find places where
your brand is being talked about. The idea is to find positive mentions –
recommendations, positive reviews, testimonials, and so forth – that don’t have
a link to your site and then try to get one included.

When you concentrate on finding positive mentions, getting
links added can be surprisingly easy. Simply reach out to the site operators
with the link you’d like incorporated and a polite request to add it. This is
the sort of change that ends up helping both parties, so site owners are highly
likely to do you this favor.

Use Local Directories

Presenting your business to its best advantage on local
directories is particularly important if you’re a small business that’s looking
mainly for local customers. Google is the key directory to get on, but you
should make sure you’re listed accurately at other popular sites, such as Bing,
Yahoo, Yelp, and so forth.

As should be obvious from the name, local directories are
designed to guide users to helpful results that are in their geographic area.
If you rely primarily on face-to-face business with people in your community,
it’s tremendously important to make sure they can find you online. And since
you can include a link to your website in your local directory listings, this
step also boosts your general search engine performance.

Keep A Regular Blog
Running

A blog is a much more powerful tool for SEO than
you might realize. Blogs pop up on a host of different websites because it’s a
convenient way to post fresh content, drive traffic to the site, and build
links. Equip your site with a blog and update it regularly – but bear in mind
that you should keep your posts relevant to your business.

Although it’s fine to think of your blog primarily as an
optimization tool, always put your readers first when you compose posts. You
can pepper your posts with effective backlinks, but the content itself needs to
be useful and appealing to visitors.

Spice things up by including pictures and multimedia content
when you can. It’s also productive to give readers the ability to comment on
your posts and to add on-page buttons for instant social media sharing.

Conclusion

The techniques discussed here can help you build plenty of
links to your site. Remember, though, ethical link-building is an organic
process that takes time. Have patience as your network, your audience, and your
reach expand. Resist the temptation to stoop to black hat link-building;
getting caught is inevitable, and the penalties the search engines impose can
be severe.

Have white hat link-building tips of your own? Share them in
the comments section!

SME Paid Under

About the Author

David
David van der Ende is a full-time blogger and part-time graphic design enthusiast. He loves to write about a broad range of topics, but his professional background in both legal and finance drives him to write on these two subjects most frequently.

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