Strategic SEO Link Building Decisions You Need to Make

You know how important links are.

As one of the most important factors in Google’s ranking algorithm, they’re the key to getting eyeballs on your site and revenue in your wallet.

Simple, right?

Actually, no. In fact, link building is the most difficult part of SEO; trying to secure valuable links from top-notch sites is the epitome of hard. Especially if you don’t have much in the way of technical expertise.

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Let’s take it back to basics for a moment.

Links are an absolutely fundamental part of the structure of the internet. Without those little blue underlines, the internet wouldn’t function (it’s why it’s called “the web”, because of the web of interconnected links that open doors throughout the virtual world).

But why do you and your business need links?

There are two key answers to this:

1. You need links in order to be connected to other relevant businesses and communities (otherwise you’d be working the void by yourself)
2. You need links to rank in search engines and get traffic to your site

The second point basically refers to the PageRank algorithm that Google was founded on. This essentially means that links to a website from other sites are used to determine how popular it is and how relevant it is.

Basically, high-quality links to your site create the concept of value. If other, high-quality sites are linking to you, the chances are your page is relevant, helpful, and valuable. As a result, Google will bump it up the search engine rankings because it will deem it as useful to searchers.

Why Would Another Website Link to Yours?

Okay, let’s answer this nagging question.

The internet is a seemingly infinite place with countless sites, many of which all tout the same information. So why would a high-quality website want to link to you when there are countless others to choose from?

Linking has many other benefits, including:

• Building relationships and online partnerships
• Creating extra content that’s valuable to your audience
• Sharing resources with your audience
• Participating in online events in your industry

Because there are so many ways to carry out link building, it’s difficult to know where to start. But before you even begin, you have to make some strategic decisions to keep your campaign tight and successful.

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Creating a Strategic Link Building Campaign

Jumping straight into executing link building is a big no-no.

Randomly firing off emails to a few sites here and there with no real method behind your madness will only lead to disappointment.  

Instead, you need to create a realistic campaign that’s specifically designed to achieve your own personal goals (or the goals of your business and website).

The Strategic Decisions You Need to Make to Build a SEO Link Building Campaign

The key decisions you’ll need to make during your link building campaign are:

• Your goals
• What resources you have
• The opportunities you offer

1. Figure Out What Your Goals Are

First things first, you need something to work towards.

If you’re planning to invest a hefty chunk of cash into link building, you’re going to want to see some results and, without a clearly defined goal, you won’t know what results you should be looking for.

Yes, every website needs links, but a link building campaign needs to go beyond that. Think about what the purpose is behind those links.

For most businesses, the answer will be getting more traffic.

But you need to get specific here: how much more traffic do you want to get? Are you looking for quality traffic over quantity?

2. Collate All the Resources You Have

Most marketers take the scattergun approach and try and get links to anywhere and everywhere on their site. While this might lead to more links overall in the long run, it might not get you the desired results you want, like more conversions and high-quality buyers.

Instead, you might want to start by making a note of your most valuable pages.

Bear in mind here that you don’t want to jump straight to your converting pages or your product pages. While these might be the ones you want visitors to land on eventually, it’s unlikely that they’ll be the first pages they come to through Google.

Why?

Because most people use search engines to find information not products. To get eyeballs on your site, you need to answer important questions rather than throw your product or service in people’s faces straight away.

Once you’ve figured out what resources or pages you have that are worth linking to, you can then start researching keywords that are important to your industry about those particular topics.

For example, if you’ve got an in-depth guide to scheduling social media posts that offers incredible value to your audience, you can then research popular keywords relating to that subject that you can use to link back to your resource from another site.

Take a Look at Your Conversion Opportunities

While you’re assessing the resources you have, you also want to take some time to figure out how you’re going to convert customers on your priority pages.

Think about downloadable freebies or a compelling offer that visitors can’t refuse handing over their email addresses for.

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3. The Opportunities in Your Online Niche

I mentioned earlier that a lot of marketers go straight for the scattergun approach when it comes to link building, whereby they try and gets links from anyone and everyone in their industry (and sometimes even those not in their industry).

If you really want to see success with your campaign, though, you need to decide which industry sites are going to give you the most powerful link juice. This means researching the top-ranking sites in your space online and cherry-picking ones that are highly relevant.

Link Building Should Be Strategic

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with link building, chances are you aren’t doing it right. Once you get super strategic with it, you can start to make the most of the resources you have which will provide you with more chances to get link backs from relevant sites.

First, determine what your goals are for the campaign and then start identifying pages that:

• Are packed full of engaging value (and therefore offer a compelling linking opportunity)
• Provide an opportunity to convert customers and clients
• Websites you want to build relationships with would be honored to link to

Link building isn’t easy, but if you make strategic decisions it can be one of the most valuable things you do for your website.

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