Who do you trust more: someone who never returned the money they borrowed or a friend raising money for charity? Trust is earned, not given. It is a winning coin, not only in human relationships but also digitally. Engines tend to trust and rank the trusted pages. Trusted are the websites that have high authority, typically gained through link-building activities.
Link building is the number one thriving branch in SEO. To ensure your link-building is thriving, you should follow the golden rules of link-building. These are
- Links should be relevant
- Domain should be trustworthy
- Anchor text should be natural
- Links should come from juicy pages
- There should be no spamming
- You must not earn links for PageRank only
As a believer would follow the golden rules of their faith, you also must stay within the guidelines. The rules should be kept on top of mind, yet, it is equally important to follow and exercise advanced link-building strategies in SEՕ․
We don’t build and earn links just to build links. Link-building will only benefit a website when done mindfully. The sources of the links matter as much as the strategy itself.
Google stays Google and prioritizes authority. Thus, when building links as part of your SEO strategy, you must consider the credibility and authority of the website on the other end. The hardest and most permanent practice to take is making people want to link back to you.It’s core to effective link building strategies. The route passes through creating valuable and worthwhile content. This way, you get natural and quality links. Hence, the focus is tiptop content with authentic links.
Link building creates a bridge between sites through hyperlinks. The A and B sides are the domains in linking that must have high Domain Authority (DA)․ The higher the DA, the more abundant the link juice will be.
Sit back for the ten Advanced Link Building Strategies in SEO
Like the key to a door, there are key strategies to SEO link-building success. The most sophisticated ones are separated for discussion below.
Evergreen Skyscraper Technique
The first one for discussion is the evergreen skyscraper technique. The meaning is to keep your website evergreen with your content. In other words, you earn links that are decent through engaging content creation. The three ground points for this technique are:
- Dig for content that is popular around other link-building sites
- Create your own content around that topic and publish it yourself
- Endorse your content for the people who would be interested in the topic
The skyscraper part of the content evolves since, with this technique, you must aim to create a better-advanced piece than there is available. Research, read new materials, nudge the audience’s interests, and draft your content accordingly.
After creating the content, it must stand as high and soaring in the sky as a skyscraper. Towering all the previously existing pieces. Do you remember the valuable property of the content? The evergreen skyscraper technique multiplies and amplifies that value. The content type has already proved favorable to ranking for your competitors; you strengthen it with the evergreen skyscraper technique.
There is a lot more to this technique than merely content creation. The core things to remember are
- The emphasis must be on the quality rather than the content length
- Your existing content can be modified and improved
- You must promote your content so that people are willing to link
Thus, everything starts with analyzing and finding the sites that rank in the industry. Next, fining the topics around which they have created a piece of ranking content. The essence is to determine which content has more backlinks that contribute to the backlink profile. This will give you an idea of content topics for you. Quality I is incited, thanks to quality content. Thus, the evergreen skyscraper technique is all you need to earn the trust of high DA sites feasibly.
“Hacking” Competitors
“Hacking” is not always done for malicious purposes as one of the advanced link building strategies in SEO, “Hacking” competitors encompasses analyzing your competitors’ backlink profiles to clarify your link-building opportunities in the market. This strategy can prove highly effective, as it allows you to find websites already linking to your competitors and establish relationships with them to earn links and strengthen your backlink profile. Tools like Ahrefs and Majestic will help you analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles and harness your link-building opportunities.
Competitive link-building is done with these two approaches.
- Analyzing your competitors’ data, make a more robust webpage than theirs. Connect with the referring pages for backlinks.
- Suggest a link as an alternative for all the detected dead or redirected pages.
Before taking up any other steps, link-building experts conduct competitor link analysis. Tracing the steps of the competitors gives link-building experts an advantage to fill the gaps of missing content and link to the sites they are linking to.
10X Content Formula
The practice shows that SEO requires being better than anyone else on the SERP. How many times better to be ranked by the engines? Double or triple makes you competitive on average but not above average. The 10X formula gives you 10 times more advantage than your competitors. The combination of all the one-by-one advantages over the whole SERP will exercise SEO for growth of your web page.
Ten times better implies being ten times more unique and different. It means investing ten times more time to create ten times more value.
Primarily, you should see what is currently ranking high organically for the target keyword, analyze what is missing in the content, and what the audience is looking for. Content analysis skills are fundamental to detecting what could be better with the currently-ranked content. The concept of 10X content comes from the CEO of MOZ, Rand Fishkin. According to him, the necessary elements of the 10X content formula are
- great UI and UX on all devices
- quality and trustworthiness embedded in the content
- emotionally-inciting piece to create a sense of wonder
- provide content in an unexpected and original way
- content is easy-to-scan, easy-to-read
- the white balance is kept between paragraphs
It is never enough to rectify content and strengthen its structure and visibility. Content marketing is a never-ending battle. Since it is the king, everyone wants to “please the king”. For a piece of content to satisfy the 10X needs, you’d better conduct research and analysis on the topic. Interviews, surveys or just networking events around the topic of your content will give you a broader idea of the topic. As a result, you’ll simultaneously have a well-researched and unique piece of writing.
Convert Content into Graphs
Time is a modern-day problem. We have less time to do things we want, so we need to be more active when reading articles, watching movies, or traveling long miles.
We reduce the time for long tasks. This tendency should be taken into consideration when creating content. Converting content into visuals is an easy way to transmit information. Infographics present complex information in a simpler way. Long has been proven that visual content wins over written content since humans digest information visually better and faster than in another way. The stuffed information pages scare your potential customers and search engines alike. In infographics, you can arrange your message in an appealing and simple way. While not limited to one page, you share the infographics on multiple mediums and spread your page spell through linking.
The statistics show that using infographics increases website traffic by 12%, which is a powerful method for data transformation. Converting content into infographics is an art form. The design, colors, and material distribution must match each other and be compelling enough to convert your leads.
Expand to a Network
With all these SEO things taking place digitally, you are closer to your (potential) audiences than ever. In link building, the world wide web is a potential partner. It is a vast network we are a part of. To reach better and broader audiences, social media platforms help enlarge your network.
What is the process like in link building? You share a link with another website, meaning you are in a networking process. The networking process is only possible with a network. Your sites should be trustworthy, reliable, and convey value, so people want to exchange links. Compare lending money to a stager to lending it to a trusted friend. The same applies to linking with a website you are familiar with rather than a random website. Thus, you will grow your backlink profile more confidentaly.
SEO, link building in particular, does feel technical but is based on relationships and connections with the community. Since link building doesn’t happen in the daytime, you must work continuously towards nourishing your network that is interested in your content as a fundamental part of the advanced link building strategies in SEO.
Wiki Content
Wikipedia isn’t left in the school years. It is a wide information website with great authority across the web. Try to search ten things in a row, and you will be convinced, no search result misses a wiki article.
Since it is tough to get a do-follow link on Wikipedia, linking to Wikipedia content is not increasing website authority directly but gains traffic from one of the most visited sites.
You know the audiences you aim to reach with your content. Now you should identify how to tailor your content with a link to the wiki content. Use an SEO tool like SEMrush to find the most well-ranked article pages. Filter this information and find relevant articles where your niche might be mentioned.
The next step is to create an authoritative resource page that can appear on Wikipedia. Request a link insertion in the target page. Rejections will be few and far between when you provide a worthwhile piece of content.
Troubleshoot Existing Links
A threat to link building you need to avoid is having existing dead or broken links. Broken links negatively affect the site’s reputation, reduce SEO rankings since they affect the bounce rate, create a sense of poor website quality, and decrease conversion rates.
Troubleshooting is needed to identify both internal and external broken links. You could use online tools to detect the broken internal links or apply a custom filter on your Google Analytics to find the 404 error pages.
What refers to broken external links, it’s not practical to spend days and nights checking all the links externally. Use automation or a link-detecting tool to find and signal you about the broken external links. You must either remove or replace them with a valid link when detected.
Ahrefs’s site explorer helps identify dead links; entering the domain name, you should go to the “Best by links’ ‘ report and filter for “404 not found” pages. With the list at hand, eliminate the links and avoid a bad website reputation.
Reclaim Links
Link building is not only acquiring and building new links but keeping the quality of the existing links. That’s what link reclamation is all about – identifying, fixing, or eliminating any broken links that point to your website. Link juice’s importance isn’t a secret. This reputation-building juice comes from links. Link reclamation is performed to ensure your website has the link juice from the outbound links. It is far easier to reclaim your internal links than the externals.
Link reclamation is similar to house clearance from dirt and unnecessary stuff, after which your place looks neat and more appealing. If you don’t regularly reclaim your links, your website will look like a dirty house, which visitors will avoid entering.
Ego bait an Influencer
Link building is not merely based on technical aspects but also human psychological factors. Ego baiting is the SEO technique used to play with influencers’ emotional field. The trick is to identify the influencer you want to link to you and create content that will appeal to them and their audience.
The idea is to encourage them to link to your content, which, to stay between us, is created to stroke their ego. The center of the ego bait content is the person, not the link. You need to care about who it will reach and who should provide the reach. The most common types of ego bait content are:
- Listings starting with “The best../The most..”
- Interviews and roundups
- Directories and awards
In listings or listicles, you select the “top/best” experts or service providers in a niche creating a list to place on your site. Next, you reach out to those influencers; they feel honored and appreciated and share their appreciation by placing the listing link on their site.
By interviewing the influencers, you create valuable content for your site and boost the influencer’s ego to link to your site. You feature them, and they wish to feature you back. Link interviews and roundups present expert opinions, with the difference that they represent a couple of influencers/pros in one post. You invite multiple experts to share their thoughts which you compile and share under one post, like a set of quotes or ideas. Who wouldn’t want to place the link in their profile where they appear as an expert?
With directories, you create helpful content for your audience and feature quality providers in the industry. The directories incite ego baits among the industries you feature; they develop the wish to link back to you. With directories, you create a resource of businesses that will later nurture your leads.
What more, if not awards, will stroke the ego of influencers? With awards, you create attention around them while you force the attention in your direction. Using the award-giving technique, you show appreciation instead of explicitly seeking a backlink.
Ego bait strategy is one of the effective link building strategies. It creates a valuable basis for relationship building and partnerships. You feature insightful content, connect with industry leaders/businesses, earn links, and expand your reach all under one of the advanced link building strategies in SEO.
Become a Thought Leader
The most trusted source of expert information – that’s a thought leader. The most frequently and popularly quoted and widely honored. A thought leader is an inspiring leader revered in the industry. As one of the effective link building strategies, becoming a thought leader is not an “I want it, so I am I” thing. You need to put effort and labor towards enjoying respect.
The Internet witnesses around 4.4 million blog posts only daily. As a thought leader, your content will strike the eyes and attention of digital searchers. A thought leader doesn’t merely showcase what they/their company does, but educates and invests in their audiences on a larger level. To become a thought leader, you can
- Take up public speaking (go live/publish videos, etc.)
- Start your podcast (invite other thought leaders, conduct interviews your audience will be interested in)
- Provide value through seminars or webinars
- Set up a survey with the purpose of conducting first-hand research
Successfully earned the title of a “thought leader”? People automatically want to link to you when you earn your industry’s respect and trust. Each company member can be an inspiring and educational thought leader. Consequently, they will attract others to your company. Creating value is not one person’s responsibility only. Each member is part of turning the company into a leader.
Act-On the Top Advanced Link Building Strategies in SEO
SEO generates more results than any other marketing methods. Investing in SEO is comparatively cheaper than the results it creates. Thousands of organic visitors monthly if you successfully arrive on the first SERP of the engines, the place where most product searchers are.
Walking through the most practical, effective advanced link building strategies in SEO, this article provided you with all the aces up your sleeve. You know where to start to gain the most cherished link juice of those earned backlinks.
From keeping the content fresh to updating your backlink profile, you should take the link-building technique to the next level by establishing yourself as a thought leader in the industry and creating valuable networking bonds.
Whatever technique you stick to, keep in mind to stay persistent since the seeds will grow with the ripping season after careful cultivation.
