Ways to Get Link Building

I always try to get link building integrated into the DNA of my client's daily activities. Links as "votes of confidence" shouldn't be requested, but earned.

Being conscious about the activities that promote linking is the most important step to improve your ranking. That doesn't mean you can't actively hunt for links. In heavily competitive industries you need continuous link building to maintain your current ranking and additional boosts to improve your ranking on selected topics.

The following activities should be streamlined and mixed for best results.

1. Participate in the Online Community

Any media attention for your brand can attract links as long as you have additional background information on your website. Online mentions of your name without a link should be seen as a lost opportunity, so learn what background information is needed for each mention type.

You should also make someone responsible for your corporate response to relevant hot topics and create an active role for your website within your field of expertise. Participate with insightful content contributions, clear opinion pieces, and openness about the challenges your company faces. Try to communicate through many platforms and empower ambassadors to promote your brand.

2. Benefit From Regular Partnerships

Votes of confidence are logical when people are enthusiastic about your brand. Provide testimonials for the services of your business partners and request something similar in return. A clear description on what they like or dislike about your services is sure to be relevant and looks much more natural to Google than a site-wide footer link on their website.

Promotional partnerships offer great link building opportunities, but most forms of advertising should be nofollowed to be safe with Google.

Joint promotions and member discounts are situated somewhere between advertising and votes of confidence. That's because bigger brands wouldn't just risk their reputation by promoting supplemental services that they don't fully trust.

"Buy a Samsung interactive TV and get 6 months Netflix for free" will probably be accompanied with additional info on Netflix including a couple of links. Interesting joint promotions like this can be found in many industries and even bigger brands like Samsung link (dofollow) to their partners.

3. Continuous Partner Search

In the previous activities there shouldn't be a clear focus on the ranking improvement for specific keyword combinations. Diversity is a much stronger signal of a broad-based authority to Google. That doesn't mean you shouldn't focus on ranking.

For keywords in more competitive industries additional link building will be needed. This part of your link building effort should focus on groups of related keywords and the most relevant partners you can find for them. This starts by looking for well ranking sites and finding methods to convince them to link to you.

After having contacted the most relevant partners you keep broadening your search for partners until you've attracted enough links to outrank the competition. The anchor text and the text surrounding the link should be on topic, which can even make up for less relevant partners that have a great link profile.

4. Viral Boosts

In really competitive industries link building by requesting individual links just isn't enough. You need messages that spread themselves and hopefully attract a lot of links from a wide range of websites (and social media). Viral link building is the best way to achieve this. Virals with product innovation, targeting weird niche audiences or research with a newsworthy outcome can all be used to attract links.

It is important that your viral incorporates multiple storylines so everybody can find their own unique media fact in them:

Is it funny?
Can someone feel offended by it?
Does it seem unbelievable?
Is your type of company an uncommon sender for these messages?
Is it interesting for a wide range of audiences?
Is the topic controversial with both protestors and proponents?
These are just some of the questions that make a good viral. As long as your website holds a central role in the message, links are sure to follow.

Use sites like BuzzFeed for additional inspiration. Highly competitive industries like dating, insurance, and gambling often provide the best examples of viral link building. Once you detect one, try to reverse engineer their strategy and learn from it.

Evangelism to get Everybody Involved

Link building isn't just some activity you do. It should be an integral part of all your activities, even outside regular marketing.

Awareness to detect chances and just some small changes to regular activities can make link building an automatic flow. That's why 90 percent of your SEO effort should be to get everybody involved. Online mindedness can be taught, but it takes effort and a lot of patience.

Using Anchor text

To put it in simple terms, Anchor Text is a clickable text in a hyperlink, which will take the users to the concerned page. Search engines too use Anchor text to find the subject matter of the document. The quality of the anchor text is responsible in ensuring a better ranking of your pages for specific keywords.

Search engines collect data by browsing the various web pages through links, which indicate the topics of the pages. The keywords that have to be ranked should be featured in your anchor text. However make sure that all the links do not look the same. This can be done by making slight alterations in the Anchor text. Remember, it won’t take long for Google to find that there is something fishy if a substantial amount of links are pointed to just one page of your website.

Using text Linking Between Pages: 

Text linking between pages will help the web designers to keep the page content short and interesting where the viewers need not scroll down long pages. Text linking is a smart option to let the users jump from page to page and to take them around the site at a pace that they want. These simple navigational tools will take the readers bang n target on the page that they want. Most of the viewers are hard pressed for time to go through all the texts before finally reaching the section, which is of use to them.

Basically, page jumps are links that use the text linking code example element as all other links, but links that point to a certain part of a document. So if you want a link to the top section of your page, you need to add a link  in the body of the text. These can be used to link back to the top of the page from the bottom as well. The users who have scrolled down a bit might find it a bit confusing to inch their way back. Text links can be used for navigating to other pages or to specific sections of a given page.

Text links can be compared to indexes of story books, which tell the readers the exact page of chapters that they want to read. Thus they can reach the climax and the most interesting part of a suspense thriller without having to plough through mounts of text.

Things to Avoid:
PDF Files

PDF files are slow to load and often snap the pace and rhythm of browsing. The layouts might not match with the browser’s window size, which makes it difficult for saving or printing a PDF file. Navigating the content in a PDF file is an arduous task for the users. PDF is suited more for documents that has to be printed out rather than for content that should be read on the screen.




Non changing Color of Visited Links:

Links are the basic units in any navigation process. Users should be able to make out the links that have already been opened and fresh links. Thus the users should be able to tell the difference between visited and unvisited links. The sites should show them in different colors so that the users do not visit the same pages unintentionally over and over again. When the visited links don’t change color, users would find it difficult to make out finished reading pages from the unread ones. The changing colors in links work just like a bright colored fabric bookmark that we all use while reading storybooks to mark the read pages so that we don’t read the already covered pages yet again.

Mounting the Text:

A huge chunk of text without any subheads or highlighting might make it boring and a pain to read for the users. Make sure to attract users into the site by using sub heads, bulleted lists and short and concise paragraphs and more importantly an engaging and interesting writing style. Make sure that the users stick to your site by providing authentic information and quick facts, which will make the site interesting and value added. Just imagine that you are in an Express Highway and you lost your way. When you ask for the road directions from a passerby, you expect quick and concise answer as you are not in a position to wait for long nor do you have the time. Similarly the website content should be short, crisp and informative so that the users get what they want in the first few clicks without rummaging through piles of data and texts.

Same Font Size:

Most website owners disable the “change font size” button and specify a fixed font size. This standard font size is often very small that the users over the age of 40 find it difficult to read the information. Let the users have the choice to select the font size that is easy on their eyes.

Page Title  keywords:

Users discover websites by simply typing the keywords in the search engine. The title tag should be used as the headline on search engine result pages (SERP). Page titles become the default entry in Favorites when users bookmark any site. So make sure that the home page contains your company name and a brief description of the site instead of the customary welcome paragraph. Meta tags also should contain all the keywords and explain the services and products offered in the site in simple and short texts. Page titles are just like your personal profile in your resume, which quickly summarizes who you are and what your merits are. It should be short, interesting and above all informative.

Google Hummingbird and Content Marketing strategy in SEO

Are you familiar with the Google Hummingbird algorithm update, the latest tech-update from the search giant? It’s been over a month now that Google’s search engine has been tweaked from its very core. Now, slowly the changes are being felt across the cyber landscape. Talking about changes, if you want to  understand what effect it’s going to have on businesses that mostly operates online, then read on.



First of all, Hummingbird update took a long time coming. Although, we have seen multiple versions  of Panda and Penguin SEO updates periodically, after 2005, there was no significant search algorithm change from Google. According to leading Search Engine Marketing experts , Hummingbird update would help refine Google’s search engine results and free it from clutter, that it has accumulated over the last decade. Google was aware of all these clutter building up and hence, they strategically started cleaning up the mess! First with Panda updates, Google prompted business owners to dispense with junk content for their websites and other web entities. Then, with the Penguin 2.0 Google prevented content marketers and SEOs from using chunks of fabricated links to their websites and other web entities. In the third phase of the cleanup, with Hummingbird algorithm changes, Google is now forcing online businesses to get real serious about using “only” quality web content on their web pages.


What Hummingbird update means for your business?



No more playing with manufactured links to get an overnight website traffic rush. Yes that’s the first criterion Googled has put up on the warning list for search engine optimizers and content marketers. Till now, online marketing experts were playing a hide-and-seek game with Google’s search bots. But now with a rehashed search engine algorithm in place, all fishy links and malpractices will be shunned upfront by Google, a content directive is available for everyone on the official Google Blog.


Here’s our takeaway from the extensive list for easy reference –



1. Create online authority (Google authority) by dishing out fresh, unique and relevant content for all of your online marketing channels. Whether it’s your company blog, webpage, blogger profile, Google+ or e-offerings like white papers, ebooks and online newsletters, make sure you do not have any duplicate content in them.



2. In the field of content marketing, any form of sales starts with educating your target audience. You would see that those websites and blogs that are driving audience to the point of sale (POP) are the ones that are acting as educators. Particularly, they are educating their audience about the benefits of conducting business with their company. In due course, such strategies have resulted in establishing search engine authority contributing to an exponential growth of those online businesses. Hummingbird algorithm further helps this approach to a great extent.



3. Turn your hardcore “salesy” business content into stories that your audience won’t get bored with. The concept is to “use” your brand related stories and engage your target public and readers. This would help convert visitors into followers and potential leads into paying clients.



Make the most out of Hummingbird update! Get your content marketing strategy fixed and turn your business into a profitable venture.