Two simple ways to start building links that you might be overlooking

123RF

The customer journey is complicated. Some of your customers have already defined their problems so they come to you through your main or what I like to call money keywords. Some of them are still struggling with understanding what their challenges are. This set of people are likely to come to your website through long tail keywords.

While your long tail keywords are important, your money keywords, which actually are the keywords you want to rank for, is usually most important. Rank for the right keywords and the money flows in.

Luckily there are a lot of things you can do to make sure that your website has a possibility of getting ranked for the right keyword. This means optimising your website and paying attention to other factors like speed, device responsiveness etc.

Despite all this, your website might not rank on the first page of Google except you have just the right amount of backlinks needed to outrank your competitors.

Backlinks remains the single most important factor when it comes to ranking on Google. If you have good links pointing to your website, there is a high chance of your website ranking as high as the number 1 position on Google.

Unfortunately, link building has been mired in controversy. It is not necessary that link building is bad, it is just that the way and manner you go after them determines if they are going to be bad or good.

Today, I will show you how to build the right type of links that will drive traffic to your website and still make sure that you are not violating any of the Google’s law

What makes a good link?

First let us see if we can answer this question. Can a backlink be bad? This has always been the issue with Google and the internet community. You see Google wants to display the best content to its users and therefore any method designed to manipulate this is seen as wrong for Google.

We may not know the type of links that is classified as wrong with Google but we can safely judge the right type of links.

Relevant
Relevance to Google is a tight ball game. Your link must be relevant both at the page level and domain level. A link from a technology blog to another technology blog is relevant. A link from a tech blog to a makeover blog might be irrelevant if the content of the page is out of context.

Earned
Google loves links that are freely given. They do not want you to manipulate to get links in anyway. This includes cloaking, not declaring when you're paying for it and scaling link building. To Google, getting a thousand links in a month is seen as manipulative to getting the same number of links over a period of time.

Traffic
The best type of links are those links that sends referral traffic to your website. The purpose of any link building effort should be more traffic and not greater ranking.

A good link usually has those three characteristics. If your links are not following these rules, then such a link might end up hurting you.

Now that we know what makes Google think a links is good, let us know examine how to build those types of links that drive traffic and still remain relevant.

1. Relevant directories

One of the simple yet much overlooked ways of getting more traffic to your website and give earned links is directories.

Directories are the life blood of the internet. Think of sites like Yahoo, DMOZ and you're able to immediately understand why directories are important. To get started with building links with directories, take a look at your industry or location. For example, let's say I want to use directory to start building links to my website, the first thing I will do is see if I can find an industry specific directory like SEO directory? If I can, then I will make sure I get listed on it.

At other times, it might become difficult to get an industry specific directory, so I will go with geographical directories. Since I operate from Nigeria, I will try to get listed in online directories like vconnect, business list, onlinedirectorynigeria etc which has a high editorial standard.

2. Relevant niche blogs

The second best place you can get links from are from other bloggers in your niche. The internet exists to help people find information as they navigate from one place to another.

This is why it is important to build relationships with other bloggers in your community. Your competitors might not link to you except if you have done something so spectacular that they have no other choice to, but there are industry bloggers who are simply interested in what is happening in your niche.

These are the kind of people you should court. It might take time but the results are usually worth the effort. Here is what you need to do:

• Make a list of 10 bloggers who writes about your industry.

• Get to read the articles on their website
• Follow them on social media platform where they are active.

• Share their work on social media and send them email if they write something you find interesting.

Keep doing this continuously.

As you're building this relationship, you will find out that the law of reciprocity will start to play out. Some of these bloggers will also begin to share your articles (which is why it must be good enough in the first place) and gradually begin to notice. Once you get on their radar, the links and ultimately the traffic will follow.

Conclusion

Link building is tough. In fact link building is much more sweat and creativity, but there are easier ways to get it done without crashing your head against a wall. Think in terms of value and you immediately begin to see how not so difficult it is.