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10 Steps Needed for Putting Link Building into Action

Link buildingLink building is a process of acquiring links pointing to your website. These links are obtained by creating content, participating in social media or commenting on other blogs. is one of the most important aspects to SEO. It is also one of the most difficult to master. Do your link building wrong, and Google…
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Link building is one of the most important aspects to SEO. It is also one of the most difficult to master. Do your link building wrong, and Google could easily penalise and even de-list you from search engines entirely. Done right, however, and your link building strategy could increase your search engine ranking, organic engagement, and brand authority. To create such a great campaign, ten steps are needed:

 

  1. Know What Goes into A Good Backlink Profile

Knowledge is power in every scenario. In link building, it can help you avoid black-hat techniques that will get you penalised and instead invest in quality tactics that will build and benefit your backlink profile for years to come. That is why every link building campaign needs to start with familiarising yourself with Google’s guidelines and the current information about their algorithms. This information about the algorithm won’t be provided by Google itself but instead deduced through data analytics by those in the SEO community. These algorithms update often, so it is important that you stay on top of all relevant information moving forward.

 MajesticSEO Backlink Profile

  1. Find and Audit Your Current Backlinks

Before you start using the information that you have, you need to clean up your digital presence. Even if you have never attempted an SEO campaign before, there is a lot about your website and digital presence that could be holding you back. If poor-quality sites link to yours, for example, Google could penalise you. By auditing your presence, you can find and locate all problem areas on your website and beyond.

  1. Remove or Disavow Bad Links and Improve Your Profile

Google DisavowIt is easy to clean up your own site and optimise it for SEO once you know what to do. It is much harder, however, to clean up your backlink profile. To get rid of unsavoury links, you will need to contact the webmaster and ask to have them removed. If for whatever reason they do not do this, you will then need to go to Google and disavow the link itself.

 

  1. Contact Google If Needed

If you have been penalised by Google for past SEO mistakes, you will first need to clean up your website and your backlink profile. Once you have done this, you can then contact Google and submit a reconsideration request. Only do this once you have fixed the reasons behind your penalty in the first place.

Webmaster Tools Penality Email

  1. Create a Keyword Strategy

Now that your backlink profile is optimised and ready to go, you can start creating a new and white-hat backlink campaign. To start, you need to outline your goals. These goals will determine which keywords you should try to rank for. If you own a local business, for example, focusing primarily on local keywords can help boost your online visibility considerably, as opposed to competing with global companies. Your keyword strategy here is just as important as it would be for any PPC campaign.

 

  1. Find and Partner with Good Webmasters

Manual blogger outreach is one of our specialities. What it means, essentially, is that we carefully vet every publisher and webmaster before we partner with them. We judge a site based on its domain authority, page authority, trust flow, and several other factors. The more trustworthy a site is, the more valuable a backlink will be from them. To do this yourself, you will need to invest in digital tools that will help you find and analyse blogs and websites from around the net. You will then need to reach out to said blogs and partner with them. Relationship building is key here.

Link Building Tools

  1. Create Custom Content for the Publisher

Creating guest posts is the perfect way to build a quality backlink profile and to engage with new audiences. The better the content and the more relevant it is to the publisher, the better. It means that the content has to be well written, that the keyword placement must be natural, and that it needs to be relevant to the publisher. It also has to be bespoke. Duplicating content on the web will only cause Google to penalise you.

 

  1. Spread Your Links On Multiple Sites

Finding and partnering with quality sites takes time, but you should never let the effort result in spamming one site with too many of your links. This will be picked up by Google. Instead, spread your links out on multiple sites. The more quality sites that point to you, the better.

 

  1. Don’t Forget Content Marketing

The goal of link building is to increase traffic to your site, but if you don’t put the effort into keeping that traffic there, your link building efforts will be for naught. That is why you need to commit to a strong content marketing plan. Create custom content for your site as well as for your guest posts so that users from publishers and Google alike will have something they enjoy to engage with. The more shares your content gets after all, the more favourably Google will rank you.

 

  1. Keep Link Building and Auditing

The last step is to, more or less, repeat this process again and again! The publisher might delete old links, sites might become penalised by Google, and backlinks might be bringing down your overall ranking without you knowing it. Search engines also change their algorithms all the time, meaning new tactics will need to be implemented in order to keep you ranking well on your keywords.

Conclusion

Link building is one of the key components of a great SEO campaign, but it should never be implemented on its own. With SEO, you need to round out your efforts so that every aspect of your site offers quality to users and algorithms alike. Go back, audit yourself, and continue to quality check your online presence so that you can benefit from organic reach, engagement, and sharing. Do it the right way, and your search engine ranking will increase, and your site will be free of penalties now and into the future.

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James Owen, Co-Founder & Head Of Search

James has been involved in SEO and digital marketing projects since 2007. James has led many SEO projects for well-known brands in Travel, Gaming and Retail such as Jackpotjoy, Marriott, Intercontinental Hotels, Hotels.com, Expedia, Betway, Gumtree, 888, Ax Paris, Ebyuer, Ebay, Hotels combined, Smyths toys, love honey and Pearson to name a few. James has also been a speaker at SEO and digital marketing conferences and events such as Brighton SEO.

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