One major element of any SEO strategy is link building. Building high-quality and relevant links back to your website is extremely time consuming and one piece of the SEO puzzle that is hard for even the experts to master. Building high-quality relevant links can also be one of the most rewarding parts of an SEO strategy. As of today, links are still the most important factor in most all search-ranking algorithms including Google and Bing. Even though Google will tell you that guest blogging is on it’s way out, it is still one of the most effective ways to build great inbound links.
Guest Blogging Is Still Relevant
We are being lead to believe by Matt Cutts (head of Google’s webspam team) that we should stop using guest blogging as a way to build great backlinks, but in reality guest blogging has numerous benefits besides positive white-hat SEO. Some benefits that you might see are generating leads and traffic to your website, making sure your brand is aligned with industry leaders, improving your author rank, and building brand authority while building brand credibility at the same time. The idea that all of these things are bad for your site seems a bit silly.
Best Practices For An Inbound Link Building Strategy
There are many ways to build links back to your website, of course there are right ways and wrong ways to do this. Remember when building links it’s always a good idea to focus on quality over quantity. It’s up to you to publish amazing content so others will want to link to you. It’s good to think that you are earning links rather than link building. Try to focus on backlinks that actually benefit your business from a reader’s point of view and not an algorithms standpoint. You want readers to be interested in your content, so make it interesting. Always use the tools available to you; such as Google Webmaster tools to make sure your link profile is in good standing. Remember that Google is getting smarter so don’t try to game the system with manipulative anchor text.
In the end, link building and your overall SEO strategy should consist of you producing excellent content and then promoting it to the best of your ability. Use social media to your advantage and allow it to be a great asset to your overall SEO strategy. Social media can amplify any of your content to reach a broad new audience. Google is blurring the lines and more white hat techniques are starting to turn black, so make sure to stay on top of the latest information and changes in the SEO world. This will keep your SEO strategy ahead of the game and on the up and up.
