Growing your lead-generation website through backlinks is a surefire way to increase your ranking on SERPs—provided you use a smart backlinking strategy. Just like everything with SEO, there is a right way to go about it—and others that are completely wrong. Choosing the latter can create negative results and threaten your overall success.
While backlinking strategy is not a part of the campaign packages here at Geekly Media, we are still able to build a custom strategy for clients as an additional service! If you are interested, please reach out to your account manager. For everyone else with some spare time on your hands and an urge to tackle a project, here are some things you need to know about generating the right kind of backlinks to boost your rankings.
What Not to Do
If you don't want to hurt your rankings, you should avoid any practice that involves paying for links or doing anything that would, in general, feel dishonest. Google is pretty good at knowing the difference between a link that was earned and one that was farmed—so farming links is bound to drop your ranks. This includes:
- Trading links with your webmaster friends that aren't relevant to your audience
- Purchasing bulk backlinks from online sellers for your property management website
- Posting your site URL to comments sections of pages without any relevant content attached.
The common theme throughout these is that they provide no value to anyone. The top theme of SEO is relevance—if you're using strategies that aren't relevant to a user, it is easy to tell—and Google will be sure to prioritize content from someone who is. So, how do you generate backlinks that are relevant?
What to Do
Guest Post
Do you have vendors with a blog? See if you can write a post for them! Not only will you create an opportunity to connect with the vendor on another level, but you'll also be able to link back to a related post of yours on your website and delight readers with your expertise. Don't have vendors with a blog? Other opportunities for guest posting include:
- Professional memberships
- Groups related to your industry
- Blogs you are a fan of and follow.
How do you become a guest poster? A well-worded email suggesting some topics you are willing to contribute and asking for the opportunity to guest post is pretty standard. If you do not know who to contact at an organization, you can submit through a contact form—but reaching out to someone directly is usually a better option.
Expert Panel
People just getting started in your industry generally need some guidance.
- A lot of times, web forums are where people will start to gather information.
- Look for popular message boards such as Quora or Reddit.
- Take some time and look for questions you can help answer, and answer them.
- Don't try to sell your services; just provide your expertise to the question.
- Leave your name and a link to your website.
- Let them know if they need any more help, they can get in touch with you.
This is not about finding clients—rather, it is about the backlink. With this strategy, you should only have to spend a few hours a month helping to rightfully earn that backlink.
Ask for Them
Hi (Name),
I saw your blog titled (put the blog name here and link it so it is easy for them to find). I have a blog about (related topic your blog is about), and I think it would be helpful to your readers, would you link to my post? I would be happy to share your post on my social channels to boost the signal and send some traffic your way.
Thank you for your time,
(Your Name)
Notice we're not asking to trade links, here: link trading when done too often and without other types of backlinks isn't as powerful as genuine backlinks. That said, if they respond asking you to trade, it is not always a bad idea. Just don't make it your entire strategy to depend on link trading—and be sure you have a place to link to them that makes sense.
An Edge on SEO
If you'd like to learn more about SEO, we built a DIY guide to SEO that walks you through fixing your SEO in one month—and you can download it on our resources page.
If you'd like someone else to handle your SEO—so you can make ranking gains right now while other companies are hesitating—get in touch! We do SEO as full inbound marketing, so your visitors have a reason to stick around.
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