Link building should be a regular and important component of your inbound marketing strategy.
To start, let's distinguish between white-hat links and black-hat links. White-hat links are legitimate and relevant links to content. Black-hat links are typically built by link farms and will hurt your search rankings.
The most effective way to amass good white-hat links is through excellent content. Content like blog posts, whitepapers, and videos that links back to your website and that you share through vehicles like Twitter or YouTube will drive traffic and increase search rankings. Internal links within your website also help. Just as an external link to your website is seen as a 'vote' for your website, it's useful to vote for yourself by linking to useful content on your own site.
The Building Blocks of Good Links
Links are simply paths to content. Sure, you will link to articles or posts by others that you find valuable, but a key goal of sharing links is to drive traffic to your own website.
As you build various types of content, consider the following techniques to help propagate it:
- Press Release - a well crafted, optimized press release with links back your content can be targeted regionally, nationally, or globally. Regular press releases are a great way to generate white-hat links.
- Guest Blogging - guest blogging on industry leading sites is a way to gain exposure to a larger audience in exchange for links back to your own site. For instance, if you are in the mobile recruiting space, seek out leading blogs in that space and offer to write custom content for their blog.
- Widgets - useful widgets that you build and share are a way to generate link traffic back to your site. LinkWithin offers a good example of this with their related stories widget. They have created a useful tool that can be installed on other sites yet still drives traffic to their own website.
Remember, great content will serve as the foundation of your link building efforts. Good luck and happy linking!
To learn more about Inbound Marketing, go through the free education training with Inbound Marketing University.
