Link Building Today: Demystifying Old Practices and Building an Organic and Effective Strategy
Although for many, talking about link building may sound like an outdated SEO practice and related to the times of black hat, link building or link construction continues to be useful within a 360º SEO strategy.
Especially if this discipline is understood as a way to link your content with that of another website: something that gives clues to the search engine about the subject of your content and helps your site to increase its relevance. In the end, as in real life, if someone “talks” about us or what we do, it helps us to become known. If many people “speak well” of us and our work, and they are also authorities in their field, the image we convey is that we are experts in the subject we address.
Link building is not about buying links on any website that redirects traffic to our page. Rather, it consists of establishing an agreement, collaboration or link between two pages whose themes are complementary or intrinsically related. Inserting a link on another website that redirects to our site should offer the user more value than they would have if this link did not exist. Here’s an example: if I have a yoga and wellness centre, and one day I decide to write an article about the most accessible yoga postures for all audiences, I may include a link within the post to an online store where they sell yoga mats or “mats” for beginners.
In this approach, the aim is to work on link building as organically as possible. Therefore, with the aim of sharing what has worked for us with our clients, we have prepared a series of recommendations to make your link building strategy as “natural” as possible.
Here are the 5 tips to work on link building organically:
1. Think, Feel, and Search Like Your Customer
To locate the websites that could be part of your link-building strategy, recreate the search process that the user of your product or service would undertake. Start by defining a theme within your business and then a less competitive sub-theme or niche. For example, if your business is a wedding planner service, you can explore the territory of “themed weddings” and then focus on sub-themes like “how to organise a themed wedding.” Perform the search either on Google (incognito mode) or using an SEO tool like Semrush.
2. Broaden the Search Horizon to Get a Volume of Possible Link Builders
Don’t focus on the most obvious searches directly related to your product, as this will make it more difficult to find link-building opportunities. For example, if you are a travel agency, broaden your searches with keywords like “best cenotes in Riviera Maya” or “where to snorkel in Riviera Maya” instead of “what to see in Riviera Maya”, as you will find many direct competitors or very costly links. These more specific keywords can help you find sites with relevant content where you can build links at a more optimised cost.
Using conceptual search maps may be helpful in this process.
3.Get a Quick Profile of Possible Link Builders
Assess which are the most interesting, considering a mix of KPIs that allows you a quick view of their relevance. Some fields to consider may include the URL, Domain Rating (a Semrush metric), the keyword and ranking for which the URL positions, the volume of domains and backlinks pointing to that site, the rating of the particular URL, and the estimated traffic.
Tools like Semrush or Ahrefs can be valuable in obtaining information about a domain or URL.
4. Prioritise Those That Will Transfer Greater Link Strength, although Domain Rating Isn’t Everything
If your theme is very specific and you don’t find a large base of possible link builders, focus on those that have a strong connection to your product/service or show potential to become authority sites.
5. Define Key Pages and Strategic Anchor Texts
Identify the key pages for your strategy, also known as money pages, as well as the anchor texts that should be in tune with your overall SEO strategy. A Money Page is the most important page in its category that you want to rank for SEO for a particular search. For example, in an online shoe store, the main summer sneakers category may be your money page. Your link-building strategy should focus on directing links to these key pages.
Note: It is vital that the anchor texts or the words used in the links are related to the keyword you want to work on. However, varying the anchor text with more generic phrases or even a “click here” can make the process appear more natural and organic.