As every small business owner knows, your website needs to be as visible as possible to ensure that potential customers can find it. As the old saying goes, “the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google results.” What does this mean? If your business isn’t at the top of the search results—or even on the first page—it might as well not exist.
While this sounds harsh, it’s not without reason. Studies show that 91.5% of people click on results on the first page of Google, while only 4.8% make it to the second page of results.
Link building is a crucial part of improving your website’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), which improves your site’s ranking and ultimately increases web traffic. Read on to find out why link building is still a vital part of SEO and how your brand can harness its power to boost business.
Why Is Link Building So Important in 2022?
Along with regularly creating high-quality SEO-optimised content, link building is one of the most effective ways your business can improve its search engine results. A whopping 58% of SEO experts believe that link building has a massive effect on your search ranking. If you want to rank higher in local searches and for certain keywords, building local and relevant links should be an integral part of your SEO strategy.
Along with boosting your SEO ranking and increasing traffic to your site, link building comes with additional benefits for your business. These include:
- Heightening brand awareness
- Improving your relationships with other businesses
- Creating new opportunities for joint ventures and partnerships
- New opportunities to reach a wider audience
- Increase your credibility
- More referral traffic
- Greater revenue opportunities
If you aren’t already incorporating link building into your SEO strategy, there’s no better time to start than now! As an essential part of any SEO campaign, link building has the power to reach and convert new audiences.
1. Link Building Expands Your Local Citations
One of the most important benefits of link building is its ability to expand your local citations. But what exactly are local citations?
It’s pretty simple—local citations are websites that mention your business’s name, address, phone number, or other crucial information that enables potential customers to connect with you.
Not only do they link customers to your business, they also help improve your brand’s visibility in search engines. When trusted online directories link to your business, this shows Google that your business exists and is trustworthy, making the search engine more likely to increase your visibility in its results.Ultimately, this makes your business easier to find for potential customers and drives more traffic to your site.
2. Get Other Sites to Link to Your Business
One of the most common questions marketers and business owners ask when creating their link building strategy is, “How do I get other people and websites to link back to my business?” While there is no single answer that will work for all industries, here are some of the methods you can utilise to heighten your chances of getting links:
- Create attention-grabbing content: In the digital world, content is king. Creating original, high-quality content is key for building credibility and encouraging other people and businesses to link to your site.
- Partner with influencers: Contact people who have a large following and ask them to promote your business or talk about one of your products in their posts. Remember, the more followers an influencer has, the more they are likely to charge. Small businesses may want to consider partnering with micro-influencers or niche influencers to make their budgets go further.
- Submit guest posts: Every business wants to upload great content on their website—but sometimes they don’t have the time to do it themselves. You can offer to write blogs relevant to your industry for other websites, in exchange for a link back to your site.
3. Finding Local Backlinks for Link Building
Over the past two decades, Google’s algorithms have become incredibly smart. Not only can they locate plagiarised content, they can also deduce the quality of the content. That’s why it is so important to ensure that your content is hyper-relevant to your niche or industry.
For example, if you own a dog grooming parlour, you may want to pursue a link building strategy that works with veterinarians, local shelters, dog food manufacturers, dog toy makers, and dog sitting agencies. You won’t want to create a link building strategy that partners with tractor manufacturers or florists because they simply aren’t relevant to your industry.
If you aren’t sure which relevant businesses exist in your city, here are a few ways to find them:
- Local directories: Check Yelp or the Yellow Pages to look for businesses in specific categories.
- Local news: If you can get your business featured in a local news website, there’s a chance that they will include a link to your website. If they forget to include a link, you can always send an email to the publisher and ask that they update their article with a link.
- Industry websites: If you belong to a governing body or industry-wide organisation, send them an email or give them a call to find out whether you can publish a relevant guest blog to their website.
- Resources pages: For example, if you write an article about dog health tips, you could get links from online resource pages that list the best dog health tips.
4. Create a Link Building Strategy
If you’ve been ignoring your link building, it can be tempting to want to hit the ground running in order to improve your SEO as quickly as possible. But, before you do, it’s important that you create a link building strategy to guide your efforts.
Not sure where to start? Here are a few tips to help you create an effective link building strategy.
Set measurable goals
Before you launch your link building strategy, take a moment to figure out exactly what you want to achieve through your link building campaign. Do you want to increase brand awareness? Improve your search engine ranking? Drive traffic? Once you’re clear on what your goals are, you can tailor your strategy toward achieving them.
Scope out the competition
When putting your strategy together, it’s crucial that you understand what other businesses in your industry are doing so you know what the best practices are. Are they guest posting on blogs? Getting links from directories? Being featured in local news sites?
Identify Target Sites
Make a list of relevant, credible websites that you want to get links from. As we’ve mentioned, these can be local news sites, directories, niche industry websites, or resource pages. Once you have a list, send them a friendly email to find out whether they would be willing to feature your business or accept a guest blog from you.
Conclusion
As the internet has evolved, a lot has changed in the world of SEO—but link building remains one of the most important aspects of ensuring your business raises awareness and drives traffic. Now that you understand why it’s so important and how to get started, it’s time to get started and give your business the exposure it deserves!
