In the world of SEO, it goes without saying that links are one of the extremely crucial factors search engines use to determine rankings. In terms of a fitting analogy, search engines have to crawl a vast swathe of the digital landscape. Links act as streets between web pages to guide the search engines to what’s most important. That means the more high-quality links pointing at your website, the greater the chances of it getting a higher ranking. Using sophisticated link analysis, the search engines can effectively figure out how pages are related to each other and in which manner.
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So what does link analysis mean here?
Through link data and using complex algorithms, search engines perform nuanced evaluations of websites and web pages. The engines can not only analyze the popularity of websites and the valuable pages linked to them, but the key factors like trust, spam, and authority as well. Thus, high-quality links add context and tell the “spiders” that crawl the Internet that there are more pages to be found through the backlinks that exist there.
Having mentioned the importance of links, you must also understand that links should not be viewed as the end result; rather there are other factors that go beyond link building to achieve the overall goal of your SEO campaigns.
So, the following facts suggest that link building is a part of a larger, ongoing marketing cycle:
- Due to the fluid nature of the Web, links decay or shrink over time.
- Just developing link profiles but lacking the action means falling behind competitors.
- Pursuing continuous online marketing efforts generates fresh link opportunities.
- Links support and bolster various digital marketing strategies, which maximizes ROI.
Link Campaign Metrics That Are As Important As Links
Keyword Research
Keyword research is one of the most crucial components of SEO because its correct use provides a roadmap for both the design and execution of building websites and developing content. It involves identifying popular and relevant words and phrases people enter into search engines. Link building is most effective when it is done strategically, which is why sound keyword research is of paramount importance. Not just a part of SEO, researching popular keywords is also a major element of content marketing. This is because it helps you find ideas for writing blog posts, learn more about the need of your audience, and keep up with the changing search algorithm.
To perform the proper keyword research, you need to start building a seed list of keywords. Seed keywords are baseline search terms, while a seed list provides the foundation for all of your expanded keyword research. The list is the first step in finding long-tail keywords. The primary sources to identify your seed keywords are:
- Terms directly associated with your products or services.
- Terms used by your audience.
- Related search terms found in Google.
- Current ranking pages and content.
- Competitor keywords.
After building the seed list, the next step is to analyze the key terms that were so identified. This is done to better understand the potential search opportunity associated with each term. After the analysis, you should prioritize keyword targets to maximize SEO results.
Content Development
In many ways, content development is still the most important ranking factor. From improving direct traffic to increasing user interaction with your site, content plays a critical role. The quality and relevance of content determines which keywords the pages on your website will rank for. In terms of link building, content and links complement each other. High-quality content attracts links, while links improve the visibility and popularity of your website, and hence attracts your target audience.
However, not every type of content is linkable. Although different types of content serve different purposes, to create a powerful ranking strategy, your content should secure links. Typically, the link-worthy content is useful, entertaining, unique, insightful, or valuable. A recent study by Moz and BuzzSumo analyzed one million articles to find the relationship between shares and links. The study found that the sweet spot content achieves both shares and links.
Link Building with Great Web Design
Getting links based on web design is another creative way of securing a higher ranking on search engines. You can take advantage of a unique, creatively designed website in your link building efforts by following ways:
CSS Galleries
CSS galleries are designed to show off the best the web has to offer in terms of slick, innovative design, clever code, or just top-of-the-line websites. Submitting your site to CSS galleries allows you to get visibility by being placed among the best web designs. For that, you can find CSS gallery lists, or even pay a small fee for a service. While submitting your website to CSS galleries, you will have two options – either the gallery does a direct link to websites, or it uses a redirect. Either way, you get traffic, but only ones that directly link to you will give you the link juice.
Platform Galleries
Platform galleries basically showcase the best designs using specific technologies, whether your website is built in a particular platform or using a popular CMS (content management system). CMS is a web application to manage the content (text, image, video, and audio) of a website. WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla are some of the most popular CMS platforms available for web design. You can compare these CMS solutions for yourself and decide which one is right for you.
On-page Optimization
On-page optimization is a must for ranking purposes. It involves optimizing internal elements of your website pages to make them more search engine friendly. In other words, it’s everything you can do on your website to tell people and search engines that your content is the one to read. It helps search engines understand your website better, that is, to verify if your content would be relevant to people seeking information.
When your pages are well-designed and optimized, backlinks play a vital role in gaining visibility and traffic. Thus, it’s much more effective and sustainable to focus on links that serve a real human audience – especially an audience relevant to your brand, service, or product. Links that are useful to most people online are preferred by Google as well.
Link Reclamation
After creating links and getting backlinks, it is not certain that they would remain that way forever. The value of these links gets diluted or lost entirely due to a number of reasons, including incorrect/missing redirects, or simply down to human error. To fix or undo this, link reclamation becomes very important.
Link reclamation is a quick and easy way to spruce up your SEO efforts by fixing broken links that once used to give value to your website. Restoring broken links is a valuable link-building exercise in terms of the amount of time invested because the links are already in place, it’s just a matter of fixing them. Therefore by regaining the lost link value, you can quickly increase your rankings and link profile.
Conclusion
Link building is a very important exercise for gaining domain authority, page strength, and visibility – which in turn are crucial factors for top ranking on search engines. However, there are other factors that determine the success of link building. These factors are proper keyword research, content development with linkable content, creative web design, on-page optimization, and restoring broken links.
Related posts:
- How Successful Link Building Goes Beyond Just Acquiring Links - February 23, 2022
I have been doing some big-time link reclamation recently. I spend a good deal of each day editing and updating posts. Checking out links to trash the dead ones – or to edit with an update – helps me keep my link game tight. Super tips here.