100% Natural, Organic and "Cruelty-Free" ways of Link Building That Will Get You Results Fast
We've come upon a magical time in SEO and link building where the ideals of community and common sense meet the tactics of receiving views and clicks. With updates to Google algorithms like RankPage and Panda, the engine has gotten much more intuitive. It isn't falling for any of the tricks that worked in the past and is enforcing perhaps a bit of thought policing on the wild west of the internet. So far, its intentions are pure, so it seems to be ok.
As I lay out some of the most current strategies to organic link building, you'll no doubt feel the constant themes of white hat, value and connection. Employ these timely tactics and concepts in your link building to get real, measurable results in your traffic.
Start with Quality Content
Unique content that advances ideas, illustrates authority, and provides as much actual data as possible are the backbone of your link building and SEO practices. You're working above the board and organically now, and to be attractive to other writers and bloggers, you have to create something link-able. This will help your backlinking as well, because you'll be able to refer back to previous posts on your own site that provide the detailed information to backup your current content. Create or identify assets within your site or content that could be informative to others. This sets you up to invite links without doing a single other thing.
The Service Design and UX fields talk often about user experiences, and we can take a page from their book for the best current linking practices. Your readers began a journey when they clicked onto your post or site. Your job is to provide them with a working map that includes things that will be helpful and interesting to them. That could be more information, a link to an article that illustrates an old idea as you contrast a new one to it, or a genuine shout-out to another thought leader in the field that shares your take on an issue. Creating your content this way is going to give you something to work with as leverage when you engage some of the other tips and tricks in this guide.
Old School Networking
You don't have to be a hipster to realize everything old is great again. This is completely true with networking as a way to gain and give links. The internet could be seen by marketers as a mall that branches out into 'stores' that in this case are actually communities. Your audience is a community, and made up of small communities. These communities share common interests and values and have a set of popular kids that we usually refer to as Thought Leaders. To find and engage with the Thought Leaders, you have to at least monitor, and preferably engage in, the community. You'll start to see familiar faces and brainstorm mutually beneficial ways to piggyback on their level of authority.
Attending conferences, online or in person workshops, and going to events outside your direct field can yield linking results as well. Find meet-ups or networking events in your area that draw professionals and attend them with your business card. Don't be smarmy and make friends! Others who are there will want to talk about their work with you, too. Be sure to exchange email addresses and be sure you have a clear idea of how your product or content relates to theirs.
Warm up a potential networking target the same way you would ingratiate yourself to a potential friend or business associate. Do something for them: comment on their posts, share their content, offer a helpful idea, and get into their line of vision. Once you've done this, follow up by direct message or email and keep the conversation going. You'll soon develop a colleague energy to the interaction and you can then approach them about sharing some links.
The Actual Approach
If you have a product that you sell, offer to give your fellow Thought Leader the product in exchange for a potential review. Be gracious and tell them there are no strings attached and you don't need a guarantee. Perhaps even suggest that you'd love their feedback, even if they can't or won't review.
If you are a fellow blogger, compliment them, draw some logical comparisons to your work or ideas, and tell them you'd love to talk with them about collaborating. Offer them a guest post or offer to create a guest post for them. Chances are good they will be interested in the potential to cooperate as well, for the same reasons you are.
Testimonials and Backlinking
Many of the tactics I'm rolling out here have multiple benefits, and testimonials are a great example of this. Giving a testimonial is a way to engage in the community and start getting your name out into the web in a position of someone who knows their stuff. Be genuine, as positive as you can, and find ways to say something unique and insightful. There is a large chance you'll get a link out of this practice.
You can reach out to a website or company and offer your review, or simply send it along right off the bat, including links to your product, blog, or website. Your contact is probably going to want to add those links to the published testimonial to prove you're a real person of some authority. It's really that easy.
Sourcing Authority Targets Through "Best Of" Lists
I had the great opportunity of working with an amazing team of professionals creating content that related to content creators online. It was way meta. It was also very enlightening. I had to identify online content creators that had a history of creating popular content online and interviewing them about their process. I quickly learned to stand on the backs of other people's research by devouring Best Of lists from authority sites like Buzzfeed. For instance, a list of the 100 Best Instagram Accounts by Rolling Stone Magazine yields a huge field of potential collaborators. I would begin emailing the ones that related best to my topic; perhaps artists uploading their content or comedy personas making hilarious memes. We'd set up an interview, my bosses would publish it, and we'd politely ask the subject to share our link on their social media and websites. They were usually happy to engage in this cross promotion, and the site I worked for was building killer, authentic backlinks.
Think about how you can apply this basic strategy to the subject you write about or the product you sell. Consider social media accounts, bloggers and review sites in your search. Keep connected to your core values and services and how they may overlap with someone in a related field. A plumbing and heating company may, for instance, want to network with Realtors, other construction based businesses, and the media that writes about them.
Press Releases
Press releases and SEO!? Sounds crazy, right? Not so much, now that publishers have knuckled under to the digital age. Spending some time crafting a newsworthy announcement and distributing it to local, regional and national press could result in an article that, online, will contain a link to your internet presence. Once it is picked up, you can provide a link on your website to that article, completing the obvious circle.
Include all of the relevant links along with your press release, both embedded into the digital document and as a footer or separate information page. It is often a good idea to include a text version of your release so that overworked editors and writers can literally copy and paste. Try to keep your information to a page, and write in the journalistic style of putting the most interesting and vital information in the front of the piece.
Write Great Anchor Text
Now let's talk about the nitty gritty of actually building the link. You want your anchor text to be descriptive and contain keywords whenever natural sounding and possible. Resist the urge to revert to a lazy "Click Here" or "Go Now" or even something wittier that doesn't relate to what you're linking to. Here is an example.
Do:
Get more details on our cloud hosting service options.
Don't:
Read more here.
Don't waste valuable anchor real estate by restating the obvious, such as Click This Link. Instead, use the title of the page you are sending the reader to as your anchor text. Placing your anchor text deeper in the document can also actually help. Put it in the second paragraph unless you know it will be helpful to the reader earlier in your copy.
Themes and Relevancy
Pay special attention to the themes that appear in your efforts to build the personal links that build the digital variety. It's pretty vital under the current algorithms to be sure your site is in line with the sites you link to and who link to you. These are more valuable to you in terms of increasing your visibility. If you are following the other practices in this guide, this should happen quite naturally. It is a good idea to step back to see the picture as a whole, however, and to do this frequently. Don't get lost in the SEO forest while you're focused on the trees.
As I lay out some of the most current strategies to organic link building, you'll no doubt feel the constant themes of white hat, value and connection. Employ these timely tactics and concepts in your link building to get real, measurable results in your traffic.
Start with Quality Content
Unique content that advances ideas, illustrates authority, and provides as much actual data as possible are the backbone of your link building and SEO practices. You're working above the board and organically now, and to be attractive to other writers and bloggers, you have to create something link-able. This will help your backlinking as well, because you'll be able to refer back to previous posts on your own site that provide the detailed information to backup your current content. Create or identify assets within your site or content that could be informative to others. This sets you up to invite links without doing a single other thing.
The Service Design and UX fields talk often about user experiences, and we can take a page from their book for the best current linking practices. Your readers began a journey when they clicked onto your post or site. Your job is to provide them with a working map that includes things that will be helpful and interesting to them. That could be more information, a link to an article that illustrates an old idea as you contrast a new one to it, or a genuine shout-out to another thought leader in the field that shares your take on an issue. Creating your content this way is going to give you something to work with as leverage when you engage some of the other tips and tricks in this guide.
Old School Networking
You don't have to be a hipster to realize everything old is great again. This is completely true with networking as a way to gain and give links. The internet could be seen by marketers as a mall that branches out into 'stores' that in this case are actually communities. Your audience is a community, and made up of small communities. These communities share common interests and values and have a set of popular kids that we usually refer to as Thought Leaders. To find and engage with the Thought Leaders, you have to at least monitor, and preferably engage in, the community. You'll start to see familiar faces and brainstorm mutually beneficial ways to piggyback on their level of authority.
Attending conferences, online or in person workshops, and going to events outside your direct field can yield linking results as well. Find meet-ups or networking events in your area that draw professionals and attend them with your business card. Don't be smarmy and make friends! Others who are there will want to talk about their work with you, too. Be sure to exchange email addresses and be sure you have a clear idea of how your product or content relates to theirs.
Warm up a potential networking target the same way you would ingratiate yourself to a potential friend or business associate. Do something for them: comment on their posts, share their content, offer a helpful idea, and get into their line of vision. Once you've done this, follow up by direct message or email and keep the conversation going. You'll soon develop a colleague energy to the interaction and you can then approach them about sharing some links.
The Actual Approach
If you have a product that you sell, offer to give your fellow Thought Leader the product in exchange for a potential review. Be gracious and tell them there are no strings attached and you don't need a guarantee. Perhaps even suggest that you'd love their feedback, even if they can't or won't review.
If you are a fellow blogger, compliment them, draw some logical comparisons to your work or ideas, and tell them you'd love to talk with them about collaborating. Offer them a guest post or offer to create a guest post for them. Chances are good they will be interested in the potential to cooperate as well, for the same reasons you are.
Testimonials and Backlinking
Many of the tactics I'm rolling out here have multiple benefits, and testimonials are a great example of this. Giving a testimonial is a way to engage in the community and start getting your name out into the web in a position of someone who knows their stuff. Be genuine, as positive as you can, and find ways to say something unique and insightful. There is a large chance you'll get a link out of this practice.
You can reach out to a website or company and offer your review, or simply send it along right off the bat, including links to your product, blog, or website. Your contact is probably going to want to add those links to the published testimonial to prove you're a real person of some authority. It's really that easy.
Sourcing Authority Targets Through "Best Of" Lists
I had the great opportunity of working with an amazing team of professionals creating content that related to content creators online. It was way meta. It was also very enlightening. I had to identify online content creators that had a history of creating popular content online and interviewing them about their process. I quickly learned to stand on the backs of other people's research by devouring Best Of lists from authority sites like Buzzfeed. For instance, a list of the 100 Best Instagram Accounts by Rolling Stone Magazine yields a huge field of potential collaborators. I would begin emailing the ones that related best to my topic; perhaps artists uploading their content or comedy personas making hilarious memes. We'd set up an interview, my bosses would publish it, and we'd politely ask the subject to share our link on their social media and websites. They were usually happy to engage in this cross promotion, and the site I worked for was building killer, authentic backlinks.
Think about how you can apply this basic strategy to the subject you write about or the product you sell. Consider social media accounts, bloggers and review sites in your search. Keep connected to your core values and services and how they may overlap with someone in a related field. A plumbing and heating company may, for instance, want to network with Realtors, other construction based businesses, and the media that writes about them.
Press Releases
Press releases and SEO!? Sounds crazy, right? Not so much, now that publishers have knuckled under to the digital age. Spending some time crafting a newsworthy announcement and distributing it to local, regional and national press could result in an article that, online, will contain a link to your internet presence. Once it is picked up, you can provide a link on your website to that article, completing the obvious circle.
Include all of the relevant links along with your press release, both embedded into the digital document and as a footer or separate information page. It is often a good idea to include a text version of your release so that overworked editors and writers can literally copy and paste. Try to keep your information to a page, and write in the journalistic style of putting the most interesting and vital information in the front of the piece.
Write Great Anchor Text
Now let's talk about the nitty gritty of actually building the link. You want your anchor text to be descriptive and contain keywords whenever natural sounding and possible. Resist the urge to revert to a lazy "Click Here" or "Go Now" or even something wittier that doesn't relate to what you're linking to. Here is an example.
Do:
Get more details on our cloud hosting service options.
Don't:
Read more here.
Don't waste valuable anchor real estate by restating the obvious, such as Click This Link. Instead, use the title of the page you are sending the reader to as your anchor text. Placing your anchor text deeper in the document can also actually help. Put it in the second paragraph unless you know it will be helpful to the reader earlier in your copy.
Themes and Relevancy
Pay special attention to the themes that appear in your efforts to build the personal links that build the digital variety. It's pretty vital under the current algorithms to be sure your site is in line with the sites you link to and who link to you. These are more valuable to you in terms of increasing your visibility. If you are following the other practices in this guide, this should happen quite naturally. It is a good idea to step back to see the picture as a whole, however, and to do this frequently. Don't get lost in the SEO forest while you're focused on the trees.