Boost Your Domain Authority
There are so many aspects of your website that affect your SEO (search engine optimization) that it can be difficult to know where to begin. With your website domain authority (DA) being one of the largest aspects affecting your ranking in search results, it’s important to go after opportunities that provide high-quality links that last.
Unlinked Mentions Link Building
One of the fastest ways to gain links, especially for companies that are involved with their communities or produce events, is to look into unlinked mentions of your company.
The easiest tool to use for these opportunities is Google itself. The advanced search option is the best tool to use, especially when looking for opportunities off of your website.
Simply search your business by exact match in Google, and exclude your domain while searching. If you’re still having issues finding non-spam listings for your organic search, you can use the normal search bar at the top of your search engine.
In Google, you can change the time period you’re searching if you want a particular date range. For example, if your business has recently executed an event, or participated in a local fundraiser, you can search just the past month for any mentions of your company.
Industry and Directory Link Building
As a business decision-maker, there is a good chance that you are familiar with the data. You may attempt to improve your DA in-house, and when you don’t see a change, there is a good chance you will not understand why your attempts are failing. You may even be working with a digital marketing agency and wonder what the agency is doing to improve your ranking – especially if you are not seeing results.
Industry link building, or directory research link building, is an avenue that provides easy and authentic opportunities for your business to gain high-quality follow links.
Industry-related or even local directories are great opportunities for follow links. Several opportunities can be utilized to gain these links, including:
- Annual memberships
- Awards or certifications
- Local business directories
- Industry resources
- Conference events or speakers
Not only are most of these opportunities free, but they are typically websites with high domain authorities and provide follow links quickly.
If you are unsure about how to proceed, or simply don’t have the time to dedicate to this task, a high-quality digital marketing agency can offer insight and expertise into link building as part of your SEO strategy.
Social Bookmarking Sites
If you’re looking for ways to increase your overall digital footprint at a larger scale, creating profiles on different social media platforms could be a useful tool for your business. Similar to directory research, you create your listing or user profile but instead of listing your domain in the profile, you’re just creating a general account.
To achieve this, your agency should create a master profile, and post different links to different URLs that lead to client websites. This is a link-building tactic that can be used if you’re trying to increase traffic to a particular page on the website, even outside of the homepage. Over time, Google may recognize your profiles as influential and index them so your posts can be found in organic search listings. Search Engine Journal released a list of these websites in 2021, which has been proven to be effective for social bookmarking strategies.
Stock Photo Link Building
Free stock photo websites are an understated opportunity for building links across the internet. All you need is to create profiles on stock photo websites and add any high-quality photo.
On websites like Pixabay, you can see topics the website platform is needing photos for and you can try to target those areas. If you don’t have images relating to those topics, uploading high-resolution images within any industry will help.
Your photos can be unrelated to what the client or your business does, or you can reach out to the client to see if there are any photos that they would like to post. The goal of stock photo link building is to get downloads of your images from public or free stock photo websites, and later on, find these photos on the web after they have been uploaded.
Once you have seen that your images have been downloaded, you can drag and drop the image into Google to reverse image search your image. Once you find a website with a high enough DA with your image, the website should be contacted to see if they can have the image link to your site. Yes, it is a long game, but the links can be used on any site, meaning your photos could potentially be linked out on high DA news websites.
Guest Blog Posting
Guest posting blogs is one of the more well-known and most relevant ways to gain links to websites no matter the topic. Your content marketing team can pitch several pieces of content to blogs in related industries. Similar to stock photo link building, the content does not have to relate to the services or products your clients advertised, it just has to be related to the industry.
For example, if you had a client that provides different materials for manufacturers in the paving industry, you could reach out to different home improvement blogs to pitch blog ideas related to repaving your driveway, or how to repair your cracked garage floor. For best results, any blog that links back to your website should be well-written, informational, and interesting to read
The main information to include in the blog post is a link in the author bio, or hyperlink out to your website, while mentioning the product or service. In the above example, the hyperlink could be placed when mentioning what supplies you need to complete the backyard project or sidewalk patching.
Contact Us to Learn More About Increasing Your SEO Health
If you’re interested in learning more about how link building can increase your SEO health, contact EMSC for a free digital marketing consultation. As an experienced, full-service digital marketing firm, we’d be happy to discuss how to improve your search engine ranking as well as an overall marketing strategy designed and developed specifically for your business.
