Creating the best content in the world can draw in natural links; however, you have to realize that you have to jump-start that content with manual links to get noticed by search engines.
Since you don’t want to venture out into the Internet world and get any link you come across, you’re going to have to pay close attention to the links your build, especially in today’s SEO world. If you fail to build the right links, you can more than likely count on that dreaded penalty message showing up in your inbox.
To build the best contextual links just like the professionals do, here are some things to consider:
1. Find Outdated and Expired Resources
With trillions of web pages out there, you’re bound to find thousands of links in your industry that either have been expired or outdated. Since most of these websites are still updating, they will want to make sure all of their links are in working order because if their website is riddled with broken links, it’s going to hurt their user experience and even search engine ranking.
For example, Blockbuster, the massive video rental company from the past, recently went bankrupt, closing all of its stores. If you were to research the Blockbuster.com backlinks, you would find more than 200,000 websites linking to the official website. Since this website no longer offers value, this would be a prime example for those in the Blockbuster niche to reach out to those websites and offer an alternative, which would be your relevant website.
Since this is a strategy that can’t be explained in a few words, Moz.com created the link-building bible that shows you how to build links by finding expired and outdated resources.
2. Contributing to Other Websites
No matter what industry you’re in, there’s a good chance that you’re surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of relevant websites that have a large readership. The great thing about these websites is most of them are more than happy to accept guest authors.
Whether you’re a good writer or you know of someone who can write something for you, contributing an informative guest piece to another website is a great way to build your brand, backlink your profile, and even get referral traffic.
While the SEO world has been up in arms lately because of what Matt Cutts said about guest posting, it doesn’t mean it’s something that you should ignore. If done properly, guest posting can do a lot more than just help you build links.
3. Creating the Perfect Press Release
Some of the best links that you can get often come from powerful media websites such as newspapers, television stations, and local town publications. Most of these links often come from press releases that were distributed by premium press release services.
As long as you have something worthy to share, a well-written press release can lead to a lot of publicity, leading to hundreds of fantastic links in the media space. While a press release isn’t for anyone, it’s important that if you do decide to go this route, you heavily consider investing a few hundred dollars into a reputable service and writer.
4. Engage Online
Whether it’s on a forum or answering questions, getting out there and engaging with the Internet is a great way to build your brand and help drive referral traffic. If you’re able to show people that you know what you’re talking about, it could potentially lead to a lot of outside backlinks pointing to those posts or answers.
Now, what you’re going to find out is that a lot of these larger forums and answer-based websites are going to place the “nofollow” tag on their links. Keep in mind that this is okay when building links, and the main reason is diversity. If your backlink profile has nothing but followed links, it isn’t going to look natural to the search engines.
Remember, a natural backlink profile is going to vary its anchor text, have about 10 to 15 percent “nofollow” links, and will have many types of links.
Building great contextual links will take a lot of time. If you want to focus more on your content and less on your backlink building, remember that great content is the way to go. The more in-depth and helpful your articles are, the more natural links you can draw in once you get your website off the ground.
