Let’s Get Educated on Link Outreach
One of the most important SEO challenges involves getting other website owners and publishers to link to our site. The process is similar to public relations, and outreach to journalists, only much broader.
The goal is to get your company, content and message out there and reach people who will link to your website.
Acquiring backlinks from other relevant, trusted and high domain authority websites is an art for sure. It’s a much undervalued, time and energy taxing, and difficult task. It is an aspect of advanced SEO.
The acquisition of backlinks has a lot to do with developing high quality content and being truly newsworthy because no matter what you do, people don’t want to link to a low quality site.
High Rankings Translates to Much Higher Quality Leads
As a business person, I’m sure the whole topic of link building likely makes your eyes go glassy. Nevertheless, getting this right can generate monumental success. In terms of leads, the best leads come from your number one to five rankings. Links play a big role in that.
Google’s search ranking algorithm is highly dependent on backlinks. We must respect the backlink, because Google does, and we need these to build high rankings and receive a lot of traffic and leads. Backlinks build authority, trust and ranking power.
Overall, links are the most important factor in rankings. Google considers them the voice of credibility and trust — the one thing you can’t fake.
Google’s Search Ranking Criteria
Forget the lists of 200 possible ranking factors. Here’s the key criteria Google and Bing evaluate when calculating rankings:
- backlinks from topically relevant websites
- backlinks from high domain authority websites
- anchor text in backlinks from other websites
- title tags
- keywords in content
- related words in content
- heading tags
- semantics via natural language processing
- internal links and anchor text
- time spent on site
As you can see the first 3 tell us that a lot of your website’s ranking power comes from other websites. Their ranking power and keyword reputation get passed onto your website via those links.
The Power of Money
Money does carry a lot of influence. If you don’t have it, you have to be that much better. And with an expert SEO Content Strategist, you’ve got a good shot.
The best way to acquire links is to do plenty of targeted strategic promotion. Being in the thick of it helps generate awareness with the best targeted crowd. Developing partnerships with other businesses who will link to you free is good. Big corporations for instance link to clients and suppliers.
Big companies create a lot of news, such as Tesla, Apple, Google, or Amazon. They sell products, services, appear on the business news channel and attend industry events. They have enormous reach which eventually results in links to their websites and lots of social shares.
Tesla is a good case study. Noisy, flashy brands that create news get a lot of ink. Tesla has a very unique brand, is a market leader riding the edge of technology. It releases various products and news continuously, and the owner is controversial. There are lots of reasons for journalists to link to Tesla and talk about the company.
That big money and news generation creates a lot of B2C or B2B awareness. Out of that broad visibility, many journalists and content writers who work in the same industry find a reason to write about them, and link to them in their stories.
Make Some News or Noise
So without asking for links, these big wealthy companies get them seemingly free. In reality, they got them indirectly from such prominent visibility from business activities, partnerships, paid advertising, and news generation. The way they dominate Google rankings is very unfair to small businesses who can’t possibly create that much PR and visibility.
Other businesses spend $10,000 to $50,000 per month on acquiring backlinks, by paying specialists to create content and connect with other website owners. Typically, they offer up some useful content for their site. Others simply buy a spot in a blog or other page. However, buying links is forbidden by Google.
Underdogs, Expertise and Innovation
At this point, you might think it’s impossible to compete with big companies with multi-million dollar budgets. What you need is a good content writer strategist with the ability to get deep into your industry. You won’t get that if you outsource content generation to cheap services. And your own contribution won’t be competitive up against a seasoned SEO writer — we’re wired to Google’s algorithm.
The way to do it, is to produce more engaging, authoritative, entertaining, informative, and personalized content and then nurture relationships with top industry site managers. If you can add research, insight, insider stories, videos, or visual content that their customers or readers like, it could garner you many good quality links back to your website.
Corporations don’t produce the kind of content that readers view as authentic. That weakness is just one of many that small business marketers can exploit to get bloggers, professionals and journalists to mention their company in their online content.
Share Your Stories and Insight
Small business people often have interesting stories to share.
Although there are SEO software tools that help with identifying sites you might get a link from, it is difficult to get such backlinks. However, it’s not impossible with the right strategy.
Creating links means making a sufficient impact on readers who visit your website. Your content, brand, stories, messages, and style must appeal to them. They must believe your company/service/product/ideas have merit.
This is where high quality content comes into play. Content that makes them look correct, knowledgeable, valuable to their customers is something they like to link to. Yet there are billions of blogs, pdfs, videos and other material on the web and some of it is high quality.
This is where branding and creating content of very unique value comes in. Content that is fresh, timely, interesting, with just the right mix of ideas, images, and purposes catches readers attention.
How Do SEOs Encourage Links to their Websites?
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- produce very high quality useful content — stories, statistics, research, photos, and other relevant features for readers
- contact publication owners, journalists or influential bloggers about contributing material to their websites
- work with PR professionals who have connections with journalists and media people – to create news
- present something new and exciting that stimulates impulsive emotions in bloggers and other readers
- give readers a chance to do something socially good by sharing feel good content on social media or linking to it from their blog
- research people to contact in organizations and pitching to them via email
- find relevant websites and articles on the web and asking the writers to revise the article with your update which includes a link to your website
- find outdated but topically relevant articles on other websites, and then provide the site owner with a new revised version with great new additions to it, plus links to your website
- reach as many people as you can via your high ranking blogs giving something to talk about
Outreach Agencies
A firm that specializes in acquiring backlinks for you, will use all of these tactics and more. Typically, on their own, they might be as effective as you would like. But when working with an experienced SEO copywriter, as part of a concerted effort in your industry, a good number of quality backlinks can be created.
In the end, it’s the power of your brand and the quality of your content that speaks to journalists and writers. It’s a packaged message that says you’re worth it and they’d enjoy working with you on this. As long as they’re getting the value and good feelings they want, it should be successful.
Social Media, High Rankings and Activities
High rankings are another factor too. When you rank high and capture a lot of traffic, that pool of visitors may generate backlinks for you too. Wide social shares too, spread the message about your company and product.
Holding a big event is yet another tactics that makes your company and product relevant and vital to them.
And finally, it’s the power of your blog that generates influence. Most visitors to your website are still in the information gathering phase of their purchase cycle. They’re looking to get informed and grow their confidence before they make a decision. That’s what you’re doing right now.
They’ll head to your blog to view timely, fresh, and informative ideas, personalities, stories, and links. Make some news, noise and always make it authentic and high quality.
There you have a look at outreach and link building in the year 2020. Google rankings aren’t for free. You must invest in the content, person hours, and building a link building outreach strategy. And if hundreds of thousands of visitors, high quality leads, and tripling your revenue is what you want, it’s a wise investment.
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