Links remain key to search engine rankings. Without other sites linking to your page, it has 0 chance to rank. But there’s more to that. Links generate referral traffic and build your brand. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that links are essential for all digital marketing tactics. Here are four honest ways you can earn high quality inbound links for your site–the types of links that Honest Abe would be proud of.
- Create Content That Is Highly Shareworthy (Here’s How)
One of the best ways to earn inbound links is by creating content that is highly shareworthy. This tactic outranks the others because with one piece of content you can earn hundreds or thousands of backlinks. This is also an audience research tactic, so much so as a link building tactic. You get to understand what goes well in your niche and what your target audience seems to relate to.
- Respond to Press Inquiries
One really simple way to obtain new inbound links is to respond to press inquiries. You can sign up for a free service that will send you a list of inquiries from reporters/bloggers looking for sources. Once you receive your first email scan it for any topics that fit your industry and/or your (brand’s) story. Make sure to provide answers right away. If I wanted to obtain an inbound link for my site I would reply to the email address listed and provide my credentials + a quick quote that can be used in the article.
- Leverage Already Popular Content
Someone has already found something that has gone viral. You can take advantage of that success in two ways: Learn from it and Curate it to create your own sharable content. You can search social media for content (related to your industry) that is getting a lot of likes/comments/shares. Then find a way to make your own content based on what you have found. You can then embed the video/image into your blog post and write up your own story to go around it. Just make sure that you receive the author’s permission to cross-publish this content. When using content to build links, focus on community building for long-term success.
- Create Educational Content
You’d be surprised how high the demand is for truly helpful educational content. There is a huge community of teachers and homeschooling parents who will gladly link to your content if it provides a good instruction that’s helpful to their users. Think about content on teaching students to create their own PDF files or to organize their reading lists. Educators are still hungry for useful tutorials teaching their kids something new. And those links are priceless because educators would never give you links unless it’s well deserved, and Google knows that.
