Strategic Guide To Link Building For Small Businesses
The modern digital world is about being present in the mind of the customer and visible in search engines. This is irrespective of the size of the business you are running. Whether your business is old or new, attaining the top spots of search engine result pages (SERP) is indeed a great way to get your brand known by potential valuable customers.
SEO and Link Building have evolved considerably in the last decade. They have achieved tremendous growth and acceptance in recent times. Google’s only been around since 1998. Google’s link manipulation algorithm has only been around since 2012. Although these tools are quite new, the impact has been massive and resounding.
There have been constant amendments of Google’s algorithm, it has been estimated that it changes around 500+ times in a year, according to Google. Of course, there are numerous minor changes that are difficult to notice, but the number clearly illustrates the dynamic and constantly changing nature of the sector.
Link building is one of the most fundamental tools for any SEO link builder. These effective tools help you figure out the links your website already has. The concept and method are growing at a rapid rate and are proving to be powerful tools in boosting web traffic and revenues of businesses across the world.
Effective link building is chiefly about choosing the appropriate strategy. In a normal scenario, business owners have a lot on their plates and can’t afford to waste time pursuing useless link-building strategies. As Matt Cutts once said, there are absolutely no shortcuts, and the only chance you have is to invest in proven business marketing strategies to build an effective link that can stand the test of time and help your firm grow stronger.
In the case of SEO marketing for small businesses, link building has proven to be a fruitful tool, helping countless small and medium businesses grow significantly. The margin of growth in small businesses is massive, and it continues to expand. Link building is a great marketing tactic for small business because there are numerous business marketing strategies a company can work on and then cap adopt and stick with the one that suits them the most.
Table of Contents
1 Guide to Link Building for Small Businesses
1.1 Collaboration With Niche-Specific Influencers
1.2 Content should be the Focus.
1.3 Value Creation for Your Target Audience
1.7 Keep an Eye On The Competition
Guide to Link Building for Small Businesses
Building quality links to your site is quite necessary to create your brand, increase the brand’s awareness, appeal to prospects, and convert them to loyal customers. Following are some of the most effective link building strategies you should adopt in your small business
Collaboration With Niche-Specific Influencers
Niche-specific influencers have deep routed connections with readers that bypass the industry atmosphere and craft an extremely meaningful relationship. You are not the only one in the market who is trying to cater to a particular segment; there are other firms who are trying to perform a similar task. This is where the partnership with influencers can certainly help you out as they serve relevant content to your target audience.
For example, you can be a professional regular contributor to their blogs and infrequently link out to your landing pages. It has been observed that customers do trust these links over one or maybe two sponsored posts for the following two reasons.
- A regular contribution from a small business is normally perceived as an honest contribution.
- They trust the influencer to only allow contributors who provide benefits.
A famous example is Paul Downs, a regular contributor to The New York Times’ blog section. In 1986, he started a furniture business and grew it impressively with the passage of time. The extract below contains some of his thoughts on the growth of the sector as well as his business.
He has a link back to his website from The New York Times. It has been really successful. He achieved this link and massive exposure through his regular contribution to the world of blogs, which has proved instrumental in advising small business owners.
Content should be the Focus.
In the modern online world, content is the key. Your marketing simply won’t survive without it, and without any doubt, link building is no different. It has been observed that people link to things that are worth sharing, so if you want to get loads of shares, you fundamentally need to come up with quality content that can be of great value to your audience.
The content must be informative as well as interesting for your reader. There should be an ideal balance in your content to be educational yet interesting. It is important that you should be free to be creative with content, freedom should be given to content writers as it has been observed that suffocated environment in the office can become a hindrance in the way of great content. It doesn’t restrict it to your standard blog posts or e-books. Other ideas include
- Podcasts
- Videos
- Infographics
It is highly imperative that you consider adding a local focus to some of the content you formulate to enhance your chances of backlinks from other local businesses. The factor of local demographics should be kept in mind when creating engaging content. People don’t relate to content that is written for a foreign land, on contrary content focusing local happenings are a lot more relatable.
There is a growing concern in the digital online setup of understanding the market values, norms, and demographics of the local population. The background study of these factors can contribute immensely to tapping the target audience, building up customer relationships, and leading the fierce battle of e-commerce. This is where countries like China and Singapore have gained great ground; these countries have adapted to the dynamic nature of this business and the efforts it demands to be successful.
While the creation of content is a necessity, you don’t always need to reinvent the cycle. You should always keep an eye on the competitor’s content that is performing well. To improve existing content, consider sharing and populating content with your audience that was initially created by others. This exercise is helpful as you will increase your odds of them sharing your content naturally.
It is worth pointing out that only content creation doesn’t guarantee success, it is not usually enough to generate back links to your website. You should be wise enough in the promotion of your content. You must populate the content in channels where your audience mostly hangs out.
Value Creation for Your Target Audience
The ultimate purpose of any business should be to come up with an idea that can deliver value for your target audience. This is often perceived as the most difficult thing to accomplish. This is significant as it alone can channelize your revenues and can play a crucial role in enhancing your consumer base.
The challenge is to integrate this concept into your overall marketing strategy. In a perfect scenario, all digital marketing should work in synergy rather than working in silos. It is understandable that this is not always possible, but if your marketing assets can be put into multi-use, then you will definitely get a better return.
It is highly recommended that you include optimized and commercialized keywords to boost ranking. The race for ranking is quite brutal in the present setup of SEO.
Create a Page for Jobs
One of the trending techniques used by businesses these days is the creation of a jobs page. This idea is gaining fame and is being accepted by the masses. This strategy can lead to links from . Edu sites will come to create a jobs page on your website.
The idea is to create a page that lists open positions at your online business and then make sure to notify local schools and colleges that the page exists so they can make use of the offers. It is highly likely that these colleges will link back to your page, as schools and colleges like to see their alumni land jobs. They keep these images to persuade others as well.
Expert’s Interviews
The interview of an expert or more helps you popularize the brand. It facilitates increasing brand awareness and brand identity. You can get countless links if you can get an interview with a prominent figure in your niche. Once you can have an expert or an influencer talking for you or on your behalf, you can easily persuade their followers to come and join your brand.
Just imagine the impact if you can get an interview with someone like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet, then you can land yourself a great chance in building links. The entire community of followers can come to your site and see what their role model has to say about their brand or the products the brand is offering.
The technique of conducting an interview with an expert is to ask unique questions that nobody else is asking. These questions can answer a lot of the questions that many have in their minds.
The Use of Resource Page
The use of resource pages is effective in the complex structure of small and medium businesses. You can create a local resource page that can include crucial information for small businesses in your particular area.
For instance, if you are a fashion designer in Tokyo, Japan, you can create a list of the best wholesalers and designers in the city. When you provide helpful information, other businesses, even your competitors, will link to your resource page. This is a perfect situation for the business when even your rivals link to your page. You can partner with local subject matter experts to craft a knowledge-rich resource page. The effect of these practices is huge and can result in capturing the attention of businesses in the industry.
Keep an Eye On The Competition
A good company is one that always keeps a constant eye on the environment and the competition. The constant monitoring of the competition is extremely significant in today’s environment. It helps in figuring out the latest trends and tools in the market. It also helps in strategizing the company’s marketing plan and building a cross-departmental tactic that can help the firm beat the competition and stay ahead of the race.
This is a well-established SEO practice to run after the links that can help your competition rank in search engine results pages. It has been noticed that proper research on keyword phrases has helped the business grow tremendously well.
Once you are well versed in the planning of competition, then you can use different tools to get a list of sites linking back to your competition. This entire process can give a comprehensive knowledge of the firm’s strengths and weaknesses as well as of the competitors.
Summary
One of the biggest off-site ranking factors for the online success of your website is backlink building or links that point back to your website from other sites. Link building has proven to be one of the most important aspects of SEO, and if carried out professionally, it will help improve your website traffic. On the other hand, if it is done incorrectly, it can have a detrimental impact on the visibility of your site. The field of linking building is quite vast, anyone can build links, there are no short-cuts or secret tricks, and it needs a lot of hard work, dedication, and professionalism.
The dynamics of small businesses are slightly different. The market norms also vary from different segments. Therefore, the set of strategies needs to be different as well. Small businesses can particularly use effective link-building tactics to boost the rankings of their websites. As a result, this can help small firms in being more discoverable online. This plays a useful role in increasing your exposure, brand awareness, and brand identity.
