There is a lot of misinformation online about the best practices of link-building largely due to the peddling of outdated link-building practices. Some of these tactics can even have the opposite effect. They may be true or False. But here we will make you learn link-building techniques that worked for us only.
You should take into account that a lot of link-building practices can either be useless or outright harmful to your efforts to improve your SEO performance. While most SEO experts are aware of the detriment of employing black hat SEO tactics, many marketers don’t really understand how different backlinks can differ in value. Unless these SEO malpractices are nipped in the bud early, they can cause the opposite effect.
While one backlink can perform miracles for your SERPs performance, many other backlinks may barely make any difference.
That’s the reason why we came up with this guide to learning SEO link-building while staying cognizant of Google’s Guidelines for 2021.
We came up with a list that will help you learn the top link-building best practices for 2021 that is guaranteed to make a significant difference in your search engine ranking performance and will not get your site penalized.
Start local
As a rule of thumb, local SEO is always and should always be the first step of any successful link-building strategy. If you manage to get traffic from local sites (or “citations”) you are guaranteed to perform superbly with Google’s PageRank algorithm. These local links also tend to go a long way towards improving your search engine rankings. Factor this, according to Google, 18% of local searches on mobile devices will convert to a sale within 24 hours.
A local backlink can be any reference to your site’s details on the open web. This may be a name, a phone number, a site’s URL, or a zipcode. For example, if your site is associated with a physical address such as a storefront, having many local citations will let Google better understand who your site or business serves. To put it simply, citations help search engine algorithms to create trust in your storefront’s physical presence.
Building local SEO backlinks is a trivial process largely due to the fact that there are many directories and registries where you can input your business information. Some of the best places to start raking up local citations include:
- Google My Business
- Foursquare
- Apple Maps
- Bing
- Yellow Pages
- Yelp
Invest in value-driven content
Getting links to your landing page will boost your site’s domain authority, but it’s not as valuable compared to blog posts. Prior to creating backlinks or guest posts, you should invest in high-quality content. You should have at least 50 search engine optimized blog posts on your site that offer legitimate value to readers.
If you have high-quality blog posts on your site affords you the opportunity to create backlinks to blog posts that direct readers towards a monetization page. For example, suppose that you have an e-commerce site selling smartphones, creating backlinks to a review of the latest smartphones hosted on your site can boost your sales. One thing to take into account is that the blogs you link to must always match your users’ intent — for example, you should not link to a sales-oriented page if the intent of the post is to help the user learn more about a specific product.
Start Guest Posting
Reach out to the owners or admins of high-authority domains that are related to your site’s niche and let them know that you’d like to write a guest post for their website. If they accept, you should ensure that you include a link to your website in the bio section. You can also include a link to a relevant blog on your site. These links will have a positive effect on your SEO efforts.
You should always include guest posts in your SEO strategy since they are mutually beneficial. This is because the website host gets free content and you benefit from a free backlink or two from their domain. This improves your SEO performance by transferring domain authority.
Fix broken links
If you’ve deleted a page on your website, any of the inbound links that are directed to it will now generate a 404 error. You can find these broken links easily by running a link audit with third-party SEO software such as Ahrefs or SEMrush.
Once you have identified any broken links to your site, you can redirect (“301”) the destination of each broken link to a new, relevant location on your site. Never leave an error-404 link on your website — instead, pass the PageRank to a different property on your site.
Keep it Real
The secret to success in your backlinking strategy is to come up with original content that provides value to your readers such that it prompts them to share it with their networks. If you don’t have high-quality content, then it’s highly unlikely that sites that have significant PageRank will want to be linked with your website.
You also remember to keep your backlinking strategy genuine. If you buy backlinks or even attempt to create a private blog network (PBN), you can expect that Google will penalize you for violating its Guidelines.
The reality is that you cannot expect to use black hat tactics to win in SEO. The truth of the matter is that you should be willing to high-quality content that compels users to share it. You should pitch your content to high-authority domains within your niche. With time, their PageRank will rub off on your domain. In the end, you’ll also become a thought leader.
Summary
There you have it. I hope you were able to learn all there is to know about Link-building. Link-building can be a powerful SEO tactic if applied correctly.