Backlinks are still one of the most important ranking factors for a website. However, 95% of websites still don’t have any going to them.

Backlinks from high-quality websites that are relevant and reliable tell Google, “Hey, this content is so helpful for people that other websites want to recommend it to their followers.”

In short, yes, link building is still relevant to SEO. However, the days of quantity over quality are long over.

What is Link Building?

Link building in SEO refers to the process of acquiring high-quality inbound links (also known as backlinks) to a website. The goal of link building is to increase Google’s confidence that your website can deliver a relevant experience for visitors. Links from reputable websites (such as trade organizations, trade publications, or suppliers) have a greater SEO impact.

Link building has long been a topic of discussion in SEO, but since Google’s Penguin update in 2012, this strategy has come under closer scrutiny due to the increased risk involved. In essence, link building started to be more closely monitored, so there was a chance that your website might actually be penalized if it appeared as though it was trying to monopolize this strategy and negatively impacted users’ search experiences.

Link building campaigns should be approached as authority-building rather than just backlink building. It’s time to consider how to naturally build authority (in the form of backlinks) by producing excellent content, assets, or promoting your company. Create something that users find valuable and wisely promote it rather than paying link brokers or cold-calling websites for guest posting.

How To Effectively Build Authority Links

Giving users high-quality content that meets audience needs is Google’s main objective, and this is something that must be remembered in order to gain authority. Think about how businesses gain the trust of their customers in the real world. They offer high-quality goods and/ or services in order to win customers’ trust. When customers trust you, brand loyalty soars as word-of-mouth advertising spreads.

The same strategy should be applied to link building. Create something worthwhile and concentrate on promoting your UVPs rather than purchasing backlinks or paying websites to post your blog and link back to you.

It’s crucial to keep investing in links that generate income once you’ve established a strong backlink profile. Analyze converted referral sources to find them and then replicate them. Although technically not link building, this involves looking more closely at sources that appear to generate income so you can maximize your investment.

Create a Valuable Asset

Building something that users will link to as a source or tool is one way to naturally increase authority and backlinks.

For instance, your company might be able to conduct audience research and surveying to compile a thorough whitepaper on your industry’s trends. Or perhaps your company can develop a customer-valuable tool, similar to how banks develop savings tools to assist customers in making plans for buying homes and determining how much they need to save.

If you produce something worthwhile and take the necessary steps to promote it, backlinks will naturally follow.

Encourage Excellence

If your company has a PR team, make sure to incorporate your their strategy with SEO. While online newspapers that link back to your website will increase your authority, word-of-mouth will help your brand stay relevant outside of cyberspace.

Asking publications to link back to your website is worthwhile if they are already writing about your company. It’s a win-win situation because linking to your website makes it easier for readers to learn more about your business and increases referral traffic and search engine authority.

Even better, you can start the outreach with the link request if your SEO and PR teams are integrated and working together to achieve the same objective.

Link Relevancy Versus Link Authority

How can you tell if your links are of the highest quality? The authority of the website that links to it and the link’s relevance are the two factors that Google takes into account when evaluating links.

Domain Authority and Links

Use Domain Authority as a practical backlink-building tool to find out how search engines will view your website and how websites for which you are considering requesting a backlink will be ranked. Generally speaking, links from sites with higher domain authority, such as a trade journal or an industry association, are what you want.

Backlink Relevancy

Domain authority isn’t enough for Google, however. The link in question must also be relevant (closely connected) to your site’s content. If you’re linked by the New York Times, but that article discusses golfing skills, not business skills, the link will be irrelevant, and may actually hinder your reputation in Google’s eyes.

Authority or relevancy in link building

But which strategy, relevancy or authority, is more important? You need two wheels to make a bicycle run, but you could theoretically balance on the back wheel and still move forward if you had to. Links with high authority are difficult to win unless you can harness high- end publicity to attract those links to your new startup. Until that happens, relevancy is key. Get links from sites that would naturally link to you because your content is aligned.

Quality vs Quantity

Even if the links aren’t of high quality, it might be tempting to go out and gather a lot of links to your website from anywhere in the hopes that the sheer volume of incoming links will improve your search engine ranking.

However, links from low-quality or irrelevant websites will actually impede your efforts to establish your own website’s reputation and harm its search engine ranking. It can be very challenging to get links from popular websites, but you can start your SEO link-building process there by getting a few from relevant websites. Building links is a continuous process that businesses develop over time.

TLDR

Link building is still important for SEO in 2023. While there are many factors that can affect a searcher’s rankings, correlation studies consistently demonstrate that a site’s capacity to rank for competitive terms is significantly impacted by its backlink profile. The best way is to build authority through natural backlinks: create great content, utilize relationships, become a thought leader, digital pr and other similar high effort endeavors is still important to SEO.

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If your website isn’t ranking in SERPs, if sales are in a slump or if calls from customers are down, something is wrong with your content. Unfortunately for many of us, the internet is littered with slick looking websites with terrible copy.

The problem is that content does not need to be decent. It needs to be outstanding. Good content sets you apart from other websites and delivers relevant information to the hands of your customers. This means that the success of your website depends on content.

Content opens the wallets of customers and other components such as design, images, videos and others provide support.

Content is important because it drives traffic to your website and persuade customers to buy. This is why you need to improve your website’s content.

Here are some tips when planning a copy.

Plan Ahead

Solid research should always be the basis of content. Most of the time, website owners think that they already have “useable” content and there is no need for strategic thinking.

This is a mistake because good content should revolve around the customer’s preferences. Content should always begin with market research to determine high value customers and to define the persona of your website. This will make it easier for you to write targeted content.

Knowing who your customers are and what they’re buying is a good start when planning a copy.

Editing Is Important Too

There is nothing more unattractive than a copy littered with misspelled words and grammatical errors. Even great writers look over their work and so should you. Editing is a good skill to master and very important when it comes to copy writing.

Editing is more than just proofreading. If you like what you read then make sure that everything is spelled correctly and has the correct punctuation and grammar. If it doesn’t, it’s usually because of these reasons: poor writing and failure to address the subject.

A good editor can rectify this situation. If you’re not good at editing there is professional help available.

Ensure That Landing Pages Are Amazing

The copy should be as good as the landing page. Copies are generally short so your landing page is a good vehicle for adding more value to your product.

A good landing page addresses the problem. Is their garden too untidy? Is heating a home expensive? Once you’ve established an emotional connection, explain how your product can help. Point out that other clients have successfully solved this problem by linking to testimonials.

The icing on the cake is the call to action button (CTA).

Generate Ideas For Blogs Regularly

Blogs are great for SEO but that’s not its only purpose. For many websites, its main purpose is to sell. Problem is we don’t always know what to write about.

A good way to get yourself out of the rut is to take a look at what your competitors are writing about. Take a look at their most shared and most successful post to get ideas on what people are reading about and sharing. Another good strategy is to ask for ideas around the office or your audience to find out what other people are curious about in terms of your product or service.

Always remember that content is important not only to your website but also to your sales. Good content can generate leads which can turn into sales. Paying attention to what you write about is a good start when it comes to improving content for your website.

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However, search engines are also becoming stricter when it comes to spammy SEO tactics. The old strategy of stuffing backlinks doesn’t work anymore. Content spam, link farms and low quality directory listings are just some of the things that need to be avoided. But there has to be a way to get links without being spammy.

Link Building Strategies You Can Use Today

Here are some ways:

Video Marketing

Create a YouTube channel to highlight your products. Video marketing is now a great way to bring products closer to your target market. You can also ask social media influencers and bloggers to share your link.

On-Site Content & Blogging Strategy

Develop lots of linkable content on your site. Your blog is the perfect venue for getting the most traction in organic searches and building links. Create good content with compelling information that is relevant to your audience and contains important keywords.

Brand Ambassadors & Influencers

Leverage your super fans with big following to help you increase awareness and drive sales. This strategy can also help you with backlinks. Look through your customer data to find out who your most loyal customers are and see if they have a blog or website that would make sense to link to your site. Research relevant influencers and establish a relationship with them and see how you can build links.

Sometimes exchanging products for articles or reviews is sufficient but there are bloggers that require payment. Contests are another way to get super fans and influencer on board with your brand. Always follow FCC guidelines when working with bloggers.

Internal Links

Having internal links in your site is just as important as external links. Use internal linking to the content you are producing on your site.

Don’t overdo it with internal links though. Use varied anchor text to link to various pages of your site. Your blog is a good platform for internal linking.

Wholesale/Retail Accounts

Find out if other businesses carry your products. Request that other businesses that sell your product to link back to your store. If it’s a particular product or category, ask them to link directly to that page or product for deeper linking.

Run Discounts

People love discounts so this is a good way to get them excited and share links to your site. You can also offer coupon codes to bloggers and influencers which can give you good ROI if done correctly.

Competitive Link Acquisition

Analyze your competitors’ links and determine the opportunities to acquire some of those links. It could uncover opportunities like sponsorships, blog guest posts, niche directories and industry relevant sites that could be leveraged in different ways.

Link Reclamation

This refers to analyzing links on your site to see how they can be improved. Clean up your current link profile by ensuring that anchor text and links represent the keywords you are intending on targeting. This audit is an easy and immediate way to help your site.

Brand Mentions With Links

There are software that can help you identify when people mention your product or brand name but not include a link. This type of listening software can help you reach out to the site and request for a link.

Promotion

You can find other businesses that compliment your business but are not in direct competition with you and ask them to post your links. You can reciprocate so it’s a win-win strategy.

Link building is clearly a time consuming and laborious process. However it is very important when it comes to organic searches. Just like most things in life, quality rather than quantity is important so make sure you’re focusing on practices that yield the best results.

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Search engines like Google use backlinks and other measures to figure out the relevance of your website. If links are found in sites with poor quality content, search engines will think that it is not relevant. However, if links are found in high quality sites, Google will think that your website is credible and reward you with a high ranking.

Link Building Strategies For Bloggers

When it comes to search engines and backlinks, quality is more important than quantity. Here are some link building strategies that bloggers need to note.

Guest Posting

Links become live and backlinked (when followed) through guest posting. More importantly it is critical that your link gets published on the right website.

Guest posting can help you do this. Start by creating valuable content that attracts links. Next, promote content to the right audience so that it can be seen by people in the same industry or niche as you. The objective here is to get trustworthy sites to publish your links and create backlinks to the desired link. The only way they will do this is if they view your content as valuable.

Showcase Experts & Influencers

Experts and influencers like to give interviews. This can be a win-win situation because your readers will be more interested in hearing what they have to say. Additionally you can easily connect with them on social media so one of your strategies should be showcasing experts and influencers.

This works because they will want to share the link of the interview on their blog, website or social media. If they are experts, they will have high quality site. Luckily you don’t need to meet them in person for an interview; you can easily chat with them through video calls.

Be Relevant

People are more likely to read trendy subjects. Writing about relevant topics is a good way to bait for links.

Keep up with what’s hot in the news and make sure to read every day to find out what’s exciting and new in your niche. You also need to figure out what your target audience likes to read.

Be sure to include infographics as they are easier to understand and share. Also people are stimulated and excited by visuals.

Have A Strong Opinion

Readers want a strong opinion. Don’t be afraid to let them know what you think and how you feel. It is also alright to rant from time to time. However, if you do decide to publish this type of content make sure to support your views and opinions with fact.

A little controversy is usually a good thing especially if you want to hold and engage your readers’ attention. Just don’t overdo it with drama and always avoid being hurtful.

Research & Analysis

As we all know, credibility is very important in the internet. Always use statistics and data to support your articles. Factual information is very important to readers because they want valuable information. Not all posts need to read like a user-guide but it’s best to stick to the truth and be comprehensive.

You can create this type of article several times a year. They usually take more effort but they also result in high-quality backlinks.

Strong Keywords

Aside from content, keyword optimization also plays a key role in search engine optimization. Don’t hide the keywords when creating your website and building pages. Be keyword friendly when it comes to URL page names and descriptions.

Link building strategies for bloggers should be more than just about getting a bunch of random links. As a blogger it is important to create relevant content that is linkable and considered as valuable by your readers.

What do you think about our strategies? Do you want to share strategies you’ve tried on your blog? Tell us by leaving your comments below.

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SEO is ubiquitous. According to the Search Engine Journal, SEO is important to SEO success because 93% of online activity begins with a search. Avoiding search engine optimization can impact your business negatively and can be lethal to your e-commerce goals.

Here are some of the best reasons why SEO is important to e-commerce.

Traffic Creates Sales & SEO Creates Traffic

SEO can help target potential customers and there is a big chance that these guests will become buyers. According to Monetate Ecommerce Quarterly, conversion rate is at around 2.5%. This means that for every 100 guests, at least 2 of them will become customers.

This means that a properly executed SEO strategy will drive a number of people to your website and with a 2.5% conversion average, for every 1000 guests 20-30 will become paying customers all thanks to your SEO efforts.

When compared to other traffic generating strategies like PPC (pay-per-click), SEO requires more effort. However, SEO is also more resilient compared to PPC since “leased” traffic can disappear as soon as your campaign ends.

A strategy that contains both long-term and short-term marketing methods like SEO and PPC can greatly improve your e-commerce traffic.

SEO Can Reduce Overhead

Many people think that online businesses are cheaper compared to their brick and mortar counterparts. However, according to WebStragies Inc, small to medium sized businesses allocate approximately 12% of their revenue to their digital marketing campaign.

This money usually goes towards purchasing advertising such as ad targeting on e-commerce websites, SEO efforts and other traffic generating strategies. Businesses including online ones are forced to pour astonishing sums of money on programs that might not yield real ROI.

This sounds like a waste of money but they are really investments within a highly competitive and complex environment that has the potential to reveal itself to the whole world. This is because SEO can provide a powerful boost in organic searches and general visibility that is not possible with programs like PPC.

Instead of investing heavily on purchasing online advertisement for your website or a new product, pour more efforts into your SEO strategy to gain a significant amount of traffic. This way your website will get a lot of traffic even after your campaign ends. This means that SEO can prevent your website from sinking into obscurity once funding for PPC or paid advertising runs out.

SEO Is An Industry Standard

It is a fact that nearly 75% of web users never travel past the first page of a search engine result. Therefore, SEO’s worth is clearly seen because un-optimized pages will forever be relegated to the dregs of search engines results page where users seldom go.

Because SEO is now an industry standard, the absence of SEO leads to an absence of visibility. Simply put SEO improves all aspects of your e-commerce experience. It is clear that SEO is not only here to stay but will also dictate the rank of your website.

Having a good understanding and implementing a sound SEO strategy is clearly a great way to get traffic to your website. It makes good business sense to invest in SEO to gain an advantage against your competitors and also to boost your profits.

What do you think, is SEO really important to your e-commerce survival? What SEO methods do you currently employ? Tell us by leaving your comments below.

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