This link building technique no longer works today.

So much has changed since then. Unlike before, content isn’t the only factor that affects search ranking. Google Search Quality Senior Strategist Andrey Lipattsev revealed three ranking signals in the search engine’s algorithm.

1. Backlinks – High-quality links pointing to your site

1. Content – Unique, original, valuable, and engaging content

1. RankBrain – Google’s core algorithm with machine-learning capabilities

Knowing what link building techniques Google approves of is crucial to your efforts in building a scalable strategy. Here, you will learn how to improve your website’s search ranking without violating Google’s guidelines. There is so much to take in, but we have broken everything up in digestible chapters to make it easier to understand.

The anatomy of a perfect link

Before we delve into the importance of link building, you ought to understand how a link is created. In doing so, you will figure out how search engines see and interpret the links.

• High-authority site – The higher the domain authority, the more valuable the link source. Unfortunately, getting a link from a high-authority source is easier said than done. You might want to target some low-authority sites first and work your way to the top.
• Natural placement – Your link’s position within your content matters. For instance, links that are hidden away in sidebars and footers aren’t as valuable as the ones placed in the body of your content. To make the link placement seem more natural, add a few other links from outside sources.
• Optimised anchor text – This bit of text is what users will see on a webpage. Often, it’s blue and underlined, which makes it easier for users to see that it’s a clickable link. Some over-optimize the anchor text by loading it with one or more keyword phrases. That is a black hat practice. If you want the text optimised, it must be relevant to the content of the page that’s being linked.
• Contextual relevance – Your content must be relevant to the site that’s publishing it. The link itself should also add value to your piece. You can’t just mention your brand name. Your link must appear naturally in your content.

Google uses links to identify new web pages and determine how well they should rank on their results page. Aside from a web page’s content, Google also looks into the number of links pointing to that page from external websites. On top of that, they look into the quality of the external websites that are linking back to your content.

Why is link building important?

Increasing the number of high-quality links that are pointing to your website significantly improves your chances of ranking high on a search engine results page (SERP). Other than that, link building has less immediate yet noteworthy contributions to your business.

These are some of the advantages of a scalable link building strategy:

• Building relationships with key influencers
• Establishing your brand as an authoritative figure in your niche
• Increase in traffic
• Improved lead generation

Of course, not all links are made equal. To reap such benefits, you have to work on building high-quality links. Bad links are detrimental to your success. If you continue to build low-value links, your online efforts will suffer, and you might end up with a penalty.

Build linkable assets

Before you can build links, you need to create something of value that you can build links to. It can be your website’s homepage. However, it doesn’t have to be limited to that. There are several other linkable assets that you can use to create your link building campaign.

Find assets you’re interested in investing in. Here are a few examples:

• Experts

 Interview professionals and industry leaders or encourage them to contribute original content to your website. These experts are a good source of valuable content, which can help you acquire strong links.

• Events

 Awards, conferences, seminars, and the like naturally generate in-content links as well as press mentions, especially when these events are promoted on various social media channels. These assets can help you with your content-based link acquisition efforts.

• Free resources

 Free stuff can help you drive a lot of traffic. If more people see your resources, you gain more opportunity to build quality links. Promoting high-value resources to high-quality websites, including .edu sites, should also improve your chances of being linked to.

• Website features

From downloadable apps and forums to Q&A pages, your website features are valuable assets in your campaigns. You can ask influencers to leave experiential reviews, guest posts, and other forms of content to build links to these pages.

• Visual content

Visual content such as images, infographics, diagrams, and charts are easy to link to. When you publish any of these visual assets on your site, you can build links every time someone shares them on their site.

The foundation of all link building campaigns is valuable content that’s worth linking to. Having low-value webpages won’t make your endeavours any easier. Thus, come up with content that’s worth sharing before working on your campaigns.

Money is an asset as well. Unlike the aforementioned assets, it’s mostly used for black hat methods. Buying links violates Google’s guidelines. If caught, violators will have to face penalties and loss of traffic, among others.

Common link building strategies

There are a bunch of ways that you can encourage others to link to you. Here are a few common methods you can try out:

• Content creation

Creating unique and high-value assets such as free resources or visual content will entice people to share them with others or use them as reference. Publishing and promoting compelling content will also attract relevant web pages that are willing to give you a backlink.

• Reviews

Influencer marketing is a trend that’s on the rise. If you want a high-value link, you can reach out to bloggers and other influencers with a relatively large social media following and ask them to review your products or services.

• Links from partners and colleagues

Take note that the relevance of the web page that’s linking back to you matters. Knowing that you must target colleagues, influencers, and partners in the same niche. Their links will be more valuable than those from completely unrelated platforms.

It’s always best to focus on strategies that drive more business to your site. Using these three simple link building techniques, you can stay on brand, drive a highly targeted audience, and improve your SEO campaign.

Takeaway

Developing a link building strategy won’t be easy. There are no shortcuts. It might be tempting to take the easy way out, but the risks aren’t worth it. Instead of buying links and resorting to other black hat methods that Google doesn’t approve of, invest your energy in ethical link building strategies.

Reach out to high-authority sites that are relevant to your brand. Create valuable content that people want to share. More importantly, don’t be afraid to build a diverse backlink profile. SEO and link building are constantly changing, after all. You never know what updates Google has in store. One day, your approach could be devalued with a single update. To maximize your potential and mitigate risks, embrace multiple approaches.

Author Bio: Danielle Canstello is a part of the content marketing team at Pyramid Analytics. They provide enterprise-level analytics and business intelligence solutions. In her spare time, she writes around the web to spread her knowledge of marketing, business intelligence and analytics industries.

In the following on-page SEO tutorial, we will show you how to do On-Page SEO for your website step by step with examples to help with your Google ranking.

On-page SEO used to be very easy, you could just put the keywords on a page as many times as possible and it would rank higher.  People would argue over the exact amount of times you should place your keyword on the page.  That is not the case anymore since the algorithm updates – Google Humming Bird and Google Rankbrain.  There are now many factors that Google takes into account before indexing search results. We do not know them all exactly but we can take well-educated guesses about how to optimise content.

Because we believe our step-by-step, on-page SEO tutorial is the best, we have created a free downloadable checklist. Head to the bottom of the page to download it for free now!

What is On-Page SEO?

On-Page SEO is making sure that your website is in the best possible shape for when Google’s bots crawl it.  It is your chance to show Google how relevant you are, so they can make a fair judgement and provide the user with the best search results.

How can I do On-Page Optimisation?

You can do it yourself.  We always strongly recommend using the free plugin Yoast if your site is on WordPress.  If not then you can still access the backend of your site and make changes.  If you are unsure then Fly High Media can help you, or contact your developer!

What is the difference between On-Page and Off-Page Optimisation?

On-Page Optimisation is purely what you put on your website pages. This includes text, images, videos, titles, descriptions and more.  Off-Page SEO is what you do behind the scenes, see it as building up a profile and a reputation away from the website. Your Off-Page SEO is like being a town crier for your website, the more noise about your website through building backlinks and a social profile, the more your website will benefit.  Your On-Page SEO should shout your message to the world and your Off-Page SEO should shout about how good it is!

How to Improve Your On-Page SEO:

Step 1 – Relevant Keywords in Content (LSI Keywords)

When Google is looking at your website they want to see that you are talking about something of interest.  They want to see similar keywords as well as synonyms for the words that are in the search query.  For example, if you were talking about the film “Toy Story” then Google would expect to see words such as “Buzz Lightyear”, “Woody” or “Disney”. To find your LSI keywords simply type in the keyword you wish to target into Google and then scroll down to the bottom of the page to find similar keywords.

We want to rank for the phrase “weight loss”. We type that into Google and see what it brings back.

Use these suggestions in your content so that Google can recognise the general gist of what you are talking about and can reward your ranking accordingly.

Step 2 – Content-Length

According to a study of 1,000,000 search results, they found that the average piece of content on the first page of Google was 1,890 words. Longer content gives you more opportunities to include more LSI keywords.  It also lowers the bounce rate of your website, because visitors spend longer reading the content rather than just visiting your website and then bouncing straight off.

Include your keyword within the first 100 words of copy on the page.

Step 3 – URL Structure

Make sure that your URL contains your target keyword and is as short as possible. To make your URL as short as possible, change the permalink structure.  Do not have a URL that contains the date or the page ID number, make sure everything is controlled by you and contains your keyword.

In WordPress, go to Settings -> Permalinks

Then when you are writing a post, change the URL in the post under the main big title.

Step 4 – Title Tags and Meta Description Optimisation

Title Tags

Include the keyword that you wish to target and are writing content around in the title tag.  According to a study, websites had better Click Through Rates that had something in brackets straight after the initial title. Be sure to include your keyword in a <H1> tag somewhere in your content. Also, set out your subheadings in either <H2> or <H3> tags so that Google sees you have a well-structured webpage.

Meta Description

Make sure that your meta description is as descriptive as possible and explains exactly what your website is about whilst also placing your keywords and phrases in there naturally. You also want to say something that is likely to get engagement, if you have an offer or a free download then try to put that in there.  As mentioned before  Click Through Rate is a ranking factor, so be as persuasive as possible in the short space you have got.

Step 5 – Internal Linking

Within your content try to link to 2 or 3 other pages within your website. There are a number of benefits to using internal linking including; giving readers further reading options, improve your ranking for certain keywords and it helps Google to crawl the website.

However, be aware that when you have linked to a page, you need to keep the URL the same so you can browse between pages easily.  If there are any broken links then Google will see your website as incomplete and penalise your rankings.

Step 6 – External Linking

In blog articles again try to include around 2 or 3 links but this time to websites other than your own. This shows to Google that you have written a well-backed-up article using multiple sources. To the reader as well, it makes everything seem a lot more valuable as you have taken many different sources to produce your content.

Step 7 – Page Speed

A fast page load speed is possibly one of the best ways to improve the User Experience of the website, if users spend too long waiting for the page to load then they will be put off.  The website also needs to be mobile responsive, this is one of the very few factors that Google has released as part of their algorithm secrets. You can test your site responsiveness here and your site speed here. 

How to speed up your website:

• Minify CSS/JavaScript and Enable Browser Caching

The easiest way to Minify CSS and JavaScript for a WordPress website is by using the plugin WP Fastest Cache.

Go to Plugins -> Add New -> Search for WP Fastest Cache

Select this plugin and click “Install Now”

Then find the WP Fastest Cache Tab

Duplicate the following settings for the best results:

There are some more advanced settings in the premium section however, these settings can still make a positive difference to your website with this free plugin.

Disable images on Mobile Devices

If you can, disable some images for mobile devices so that they further increase the load speed.

Disable redundant plugins

If you have a large WordPress website that has been around for a while and you have plugins that you do not use anymore then disable them so that the page speed increases.

Upgrade your hosting

If you have done everything and your website has still not speeded up then it may down to your web host.  If you are paying £5 a month then you are unlikely to be getting the fastest hosting possible. At Fly High Media our hosting is not £5 a month but we do provide fast, secure and reliable web hosting that works really well with all different types of websites, especially WordPress built websites.

Step 8 – Use Multimedia

Use all different types of content to engage with your audience, it is a great way to keep users on your page and decrease bounce rate. Try video, pictures, diagrams or infographics to get people to stay on the page. The longer and more original your content the higher your page will be ranked in Google. So create your own content.

Step 9 – Optimise Images

ALT Tags

When uploading images add ALT Tags containing your keywords so that when Google scans your webpage it knows what you are talking about. If you mention “weight loss exercises” and “weight loss foods”, it knows that you are talking about weight loss.

Compress images

Use the WordPress Plugin SMUSH.it which will keep your images the same resolution and quality, but will decrease the file size which will help the web page load quicker.

Step 10 – Social Sharing and Conversation

Encourage users to share your content on social media to their friends and followers, this is a chance for the content to go viral and get more traffic to your website.  Encourage people to take part in discussions and comment on your content, so they become part of your community.

Step 11 – (BONUS!) Make sure that you have Thumbnails that look good on social media

When you share an article on Facebook, sometimes links show up and they are not very attractive to look at when you first copy and paste the URL.

To change this, set a featured image from down the right-hand side of the website. Make the image 470px by 246px.

Then go down to the bottom of the post and add that same image to social sharing options on the Yoast panel.

Then update your post page, clear the cache and then head to Facebook developers page and debug your link. Copy and paste the URL and click “Debug”.

Need help with on-page SEO? Contact Fly High Media