What is Link Building in SEO? And Do You Need It?

Search engine optimization (SEO) has many moving parts to it. From on-page and off-page SEO to technical SEO – to do it right, you need to make sure you’re working with each aspect. One crucial factor you need to include in your strategy is link building for SEO purposes.

Link building in SEO is a practice necessary for both your on-page and technical SEO strategies. Internal linking benefits your on-page SEO because it helps search engines crawl your website with ease. Backlinking is the practice of link building outside of your own website – placing a link to your website on another blog’s page.

Link building both on-page and off-page gets your website found by the right audience. It also helps you develop the authoritative voice you need to start building trusting relationships between you and your customers as well as you and others in your industry.

When it comes to link building for SEO purposes, the goal is to help you become a trusted, authoritative voice in your particular niche. The good news is that there are many ways to approach link building for SEO. Here are four of the most common link building strategies used by top marketing professionals across all industries:

1. Outreach

You can do this strategy through email outreach, social media outreach, etc. The key to this strategy is reaching out to influential individuals within your niche and taking the time to introduce yourself. Networking is vital to this process because you need to prove to those whom you’re reaching out to that you are worthy of a link on their site.

The key to this tactic is making your pitch about them – not necessarily about you. You want to explain how you can help them benefit, whether from a product suggestion or a simple quote relevant to their readers.

2. Guest Blogging

Once you’ve started networking with the right individuals, you can start reaching out to them with content pitches that would be relevant, again, to their audience.

Guest blogging is not only an excellent way to prove that you are an authoritative figure in your niche but also an excellent backlinking strategy because all it takes is a simple author profile at the end of your piece. You don’t have to be promoting anything – you could simply link back to your website or social media pages in your contributor blurb, leaving the rest of the content to benefit the brand you’re blogging for and their readers.

When it comes to link building for SEO, broken link building is a tactic that most don’t consider. This tactic involves searching authoritative sites in search of broken links. Once you’ve found these links, you would return to the outreach phase and pitch a possible “fix” to the site owner.

When looking for broken links, you’ll want to search for those that lead to a 404 page. Once you’ve found them, you’ll want to suggest a “fix” by providing a link to your own content that is just as good, if not (and preferably) better than the previously linked piece of content. If you don’t have something on hand, then be ready to pitch a whole new content piece to the website owner.

How does this tactic work? Again, you are making the solution about the website owner – not you. You’re helping them fix potential crawl errors that can negatively affect their website. In return, you’re simply asking for a backlink to the content you’ve created that will ultimately benefit their readers as well. 

Content-based link building for SEO purposes requires you to create a piece of evergreen content on a topic that others are consistently looking for information on. This piece of content becomes a valuable asset that others will want to link to because it will help them build authority by sharing it.

Once you have the content created, you’ll, again, want to pitch it to relevant websites to help you start building those valuable backlinks. By making this content evergreen in nature, it’s showing off your authoritative voice. By pitching it, you’re showing that you aren’t looking for a sale or to mooch off the success of others. Instead, you are simply trying to help them boost their voice.

While link building for SEO purposes is a vital part of your brand’s success, you need to make sure you have all your ducks lined up in a row. This is why it’s crucial to get your technical SEO in order before setting out to build links.

Not quite sure where to begin with your technical SEO? Then let CadenceSEO Consulting help! We’ve got the expertise to run an SEO audit to help identify where you can improve your SEO practices, both on-page and off-page.

Get started today with your FREE website analysis!

Kevin McLauchlin

Kevin McLauchlin

Kevin is one of the Co-Founders of CadenceSEO. He has spent the last 5 years living and breathing SEO as well as other Digital Marketing channels. Outside of work he is an Ultra-Runner and father of 6 amazing kids.

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