Link building involves the collection of quality links for a site from external web pages. Currently, creating a high-quality link profile for your website is more crucial now than ever before.
Recent Moz research indicates that link building accounted for about 14.83 percent of ranking factors in 2015 and this percent has grown to 17.31%.
These numbers prove that high-quality links are important to ranking better on SERPs.
According to a study carried out by Backlinko, the number of external links your site directly impacts its position on search engine results pages.
More backlinks mean better position. Note that the average number of links you need for your site to achieve a top position for a specific search term is 35,000.
Well, that sounds like a lot, and it will take hard work and a considerable amount of time to get many links.
The good news is that ranking better on search engine results pages offers you an opportunity to get better exposure for your brand.
Here are the link building trends that will dominate 2019.
1. Quality content
Before you begin trying to get backlinks for your website, it is important to offer people a reason to spend their time on your site and share the content published there.
This is the reason every effective link building strategy must begin with perfect content.
Here are tips to help you create top-quality content.
- Create blog posts or articles on relevant topics that will interest your audience.
- Make your piece long, elaborate, and more detailed.
- Avoid filler content.
- Avoid placing keywords where they don’t make sense.
- Create original content.
2. Content repurposing
Generally, brainstorming for fresh, original content can be challenging and probably time-consuming. Besides, it might take some time to figure out whether or not your audience is interested in a specific topic that you want to write about.
Fortunately, you can recycle a large chunk of your site’s content that you have perfected by taking your popular articles or blog posts and transforming them into a different medium. For instance, you can take a few related articles and turn them into an e-book or PDF that you can submit to platforms like Scribd.
3. Broken link building
This is a popular link building technique. Note that the links that are broken are no longer available. Broken links are indicated by something like ‘Error 404’or ‘this page does not exist.’
Note that webmasters are always in search of effective ways to spot and repair a site’s broken links as they don’t usually work perfectly for enhancing UX.
After all, no one wants to click a link for more details and ends up on a dead web page. This is why it is helpful to find sites in your industry or niche, spot broken links on their site, and reach out to the site administrator to notify them about the dead pages.
Then, request them to allow you to link to your site in return for your help.
Note that you should suggest placement of links that are similar to original content that your prospect’s page was linked to. Recommending a direct link to your site’s sales page isn’t a good idea.
4. Guest posting
Good old-fashioned guest posts aren’t getting out of fashion anytime soon. Indeed, they are one of the most effective ways to generate excellent traffic and get exceptional backlinks.
Focus on guest posting on sites that are related to your niche or industry. Request the site owner of the website you are guest posting for to create one for your website as well.
As more people come across your links, bio, and name, there will be an increase in traffic for both sites. That means it is a win-win case. Besides, the sites you write guest posts for are likely to promote these sites on their own social networks. That means more and more engagements.
5. Outreach
It goes without a saying that influencers already have a great audience and can successfully drive traffic to your site, offering you a better chance of earning backlinks.
One of the most effective ways of getting started is by collecting stories and opinions for a good article.
For instance, if you plan to post about book recommendations from expert content marketers, reach out to influential and professional content marketers and request for their opinions.
When creating the post, link to their social media pages and sites in exchange for their opinion or quote.
6. Use of high-quality images and original infographics
If you think infographics are overused, you should also know that they add value to a website, posts or guest posts.
Besides, if you embed an infographic in a guest post even when no one has asked you to do so, the person you are writing for will see it as an additional bonus.
Remember, infographics are easy to understand and get shared on social media often. Besides, they aren’t ignored easily. The illustrations, graphics, and colors make these pieces of content outstanding.
The best part of infographics is that you can add links to them and that means they can direct users to other sections of your website.
7. Forums
Offering your audience a steady community is an excellent link building tactic. Indeed, it is a simple way to get referral traffic because people will flock to community forums and blogs to post queries, answers, and probably communicate with each other.
Therefore, it is great to create a few sections on your website to offer your loyal followers a platform to connect with each other and share information and discuss different issues. It is also recommended to enable comments on your posts to allow users to communicate with you.
8. The power of social media
When it comes to harnessing the power of social media, focus on nearly all social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and more.
According to Statista, Reddit has more than 1.5 billion desktop and mobile visitors, monthly. Reaching high volume audience on platforms like Reddit with an article that links back to your site means that users are likely to amplify your content quickly.
Catherine Park is a connector with Caffeinated Projects who help businesses find their audience online. She loves working in the ever-changing world of digital and is fascinated by the role content plays in today’s marketing.
