Link Building Strategies for 2013: Make Your Website “Link-Worthy”
With Google’s latest Panda and Penguin updates, old school link building techniques are quickly becoming a thing of the past. In Google’s eyes today, a few high-quality, relevant links are vastly more valuable than a large number of low-quality links that have nothing to do with your site’s content. Because of these changes, getting quality links requires other sites to naturally want to link to yours.
As a result, websites that still rely on artificial methods of link building are tanking while “link-worthy” sites that have a significant number of organic back links are skyrocketing. If you’re in the process of planning your link building strategies for 2013, consider these options for making your site “link-worthy.”
Keep Content Fresh and Interesting
If you’ve been involved with online marketing over the past few years, you’ve probably heard the phrase “content is king” thousands of times. Although it may be a tired expression at this point, it is still an important concept for keeping your website competitive on the internet. One of the most important factors for driving traffic and building organic links is content.
Whether you’re producing blog posts, infographics, videos, or podcasts, your content needs to be captivating and unique enough that other web users will link to your page instead of your competitors. Over time, the accumulation of these links will ultimately lead to more traffic, higher google rankings and online marketing success.
Be the Authority
Producing “buzz-worthy” content that stands out on the web can sometimes be a daunting task. If you want make sure that your content will rise about your competitors, you’ll need to distinguish yourself as an top-level voice in your industry or niche.
I mentioned in a past post on how to write a blog post that content creators should strive to be thought leaders in their category. By making yourself the authority on a subject, you’re effectively positioning your brand at the top of your category while encouraging others in the space to link to your content. A little creative thinking and research goes a long way when creating content.
More Link Building Strategies for 2013
While trends indicate that content will ultimately play a major role in your SEO success this year, you’ll still need to cast a wide net when creating your overall SEO plan. Here are a few more tactics to consider for strategizing this year.
- Social media can play a significant role in getting links to your site. Posting to content to a large group of followers on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ will often results in links being shared around the web. Likes, retweets and +1’s are also being a valuable asset for SEOs.
- Blog outreach can be crucial for getting your content out in the open and shared among websites in your category. Since old school link building methods are all but dead, focus should be placed on building relationships with other bloggers and getting links the honest way.
- Stay vigilante for broken links on sites in your category. Alert the the website’s owner about any broken links you find and the old link may be replaced with a shiny new link for your site.
