How to Use Link Building to Boost Your Content Marketing Efforts

Although the process can be tricky, link building is a highly valuable and important way to build the SEO of your brand and to get more traffic to its online channels. Through analyzing which sites link to which other sites, search engines are able to see which are credible and the relations that sites share. Then, they can have a better idea of how to rank them and group them in the search results pages that they present to their users.

Making use of the power that link building holds can allow your brand’s content marketing efforts to boom. By incorporating links throughout your brand’s own online presence, getting them placed on other sites, and publishing shareable and valuable content, your brand is able to get more exposure for its content marketing and make it further build up its identity with consumers.

Getting started

Set goals and create a campaign strategy

Any type of campaign to market your brand needs to have its own goals, and a link building campaign is no exception. Determine what exactly you want and need your link building efforts to achieve for your brand, then go on to develop a detailed strategy to accomplish those things.

Although the specific goals of your brand’s link building may vary from those of other brands, there are a few things that any link building campaign is going to want to get done. Use the links that your brand creates and earns to boost its SEO, and to generally gain exposure on the web. Then, hopefully these positive contributions will lend themselves to increasing your conversion rate and result in higher revenue for your business.

Survey the links of your competitors

Learn what websites are using the same keywords in their backlinks that you want to use in links for your brand. The sites that are performing well will give you a better idea of how to best go about creating links that incorporate these keywords or phrases. You can use the Open Site Explorer tool to further explore links, which sites are using particular ones, and to where they are linking.

Research keywords and search terms

Take the keyword or phrase you are wanting to utilize for your brand and see which sites are already ranking well for it within search engine results pages. The sites that top the results lists are great examples of sites that you should strive to earn links from.

Look at potential web traffic

You certainly want any links that your brand builds to help your performance with search engines and their ranking systems. However, perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is the need for your link building efforts to generate click-through traffic for your brand. The more people you can get to click on your brand’s link, the more individuals from your target market are being directed to your site, and the greater your brand’s chances of making conversions and creating brand identity in the mind of the consumer.

Forms of link building

Outreach link building

A method of getting links for your brand from sites of your choosing comes in the form of outreach link building. Find blogs and other websites that are relevant to your brand, as well as are credible and have a large online following. Reach out to these sites to ask if they would be interested in allowing you to be a guest contributor or if the site would include a link back to your site within its existing content.

When conducting outreach link building, it is important to communicate the value that your brand would give to the other site. Present the potential relationship as one that would be mutually beneficial. Your brand would serve as an informational resource to the other site’s visitors, and the other site would help your brand to get more traffic to its site. A win-win!

Editorial links

Editorial links are links that your brand is able to get for itself naturally, without itself making the effort to reach out to other sites. When your brand creates and publishes high-quality content online, it can get the attention of sites related to what you have to share, who then choose to include a link to your content in order to provide value to its visitors.

Write a blog

Through the use of a blog, your brand can churn out good content that helps establish its identity and that is of interest to its consumers on a consistent and continual basis. You can include links to your site within blog posts. Plus, blog articles that are useful to your followers are highly shareable pieces of content and can therefore give your brand more exposure and links to it from other online sources.

After putting in the hard work to develop content marketing material for your brand, help its performance by building links. Strategically use links within your brand’s own online channels, as well as seeking them out with other sites across the web. Done properly, your link building efforts will boost your content marketing and overall contribute to the lasting success of your brand and its performance online.