Many link-building strategies are available. Image credit: India7Network

Despite Google’s repeated and ongoing tweaks to its search engine algorithm, linking-building remains a crucial strategy for improving search engine ranking.  

There are no easy short cuts to building backlinks. It’s a time-consuming, labor-intensive process. However, if you consistently create quality content, your search page ranking and website traffic should rise over time.

Despite the time involved, natural-link building is a safer SEO strategy than other less scrupulous techniques that can prompt Google to penalize you. Search engine results of many older sites that purchased inbound links in bulk still suffer. If they had earned the links the old fashioned way without black hat tactics, they would be still ranking today.

These are some good link-building techniques that are especially valuable for new websites and start-ups, recommended by SEO expert Tom Armenante.

Press releases. Major press release services now only use no-follow links. That means Google and other search engines don’t count the links and the services provide no direct SEO value. Still, they are a good way to publicize your brand. Plus, if you release a newsworthy press release, news websites may pick up the release and link to your site.

Comments. Links in blog post comments are generally no-follow, and spammers have tarnished their image. However, readers may follow the link and visit your site if your comment is helpful.

Google Consumer survey. Gather data on a topic that’s relevant to your site through a Google Consumer survey, publish the results on your site and write a blog post that analyzes the data and reaches a conclusion. Then ask other sites to write about your survey results and link to your site. With the help of a graphic designer, you can also use the survey results to create an infographic.

Blog content. Blog posts are an effective technique for drawing long-tail traffic. Your content can create links naturally as other sites link to your posts, especially if you establish yourself as an authority in your niche. Plus, website visits can convert even if the blog post isn’t directly related to your products.

How-to guides. How-to guides can increase your status as an influential authority and encourage others to link to the guides and your other web content. Guides  don’t have to be related to your products directly but should be relevant to your niche.

Getting placement on the first page of organic search results requires diversified link-building strategies, says Pratik Dholakiya, the co-founder and vice president of marketing of E2M, OnlyDesign and Moveo, in Search Engine Watch. In addition to publishing and promoting high-quality content, the strategies include: guest posting, and syndicating content, and seeking relevant links.

Guest posts. Despite earlier indications that guest blogging was over as an SEO tool, Google frowns only on low-quality guest posts that is, rehashed or inauthentic content posted simultaneously to multiple sites. High-quality posts remain a valuable tool for creating links.

Syndication. Syndicating your content to established, well-read blogs and publishers is an excellent way to create backlinks. If you post the content on your site, publish it before it is published elsewhere and make sure that Google has indexed the content before you syndicate it to assure that Google does not mistakenly penalize your site for copying content.

In addition, use clear authorship markups to establish that it is your content and not copied content. You can also use the rel=canonical attributes correctly in your HTML to prove that the content on your own website is original.

Relevance. For SEO value, seek links from sites in the same industry as yours or that at least have a section related to your industry or product. Incoming links from unrelated sites only help if the content on the page is directly related to the content on your webpage.

Finally, it’s still important to follow the standard SEO techniques including headlines and meta-tag descriptions containing key words,

Bottom Line: A high ranking in search engine results is still the most effective and cost-efficient way to build traffic to a website. Although gaining page one rank is difficult, following the recommended link-building strategies conscientiously over time will almost assuredly improve your search engine rankings. 

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William Comcowich

William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.