You may already know that link building is the process of acquiring links back to your website. Perhaps you also know that a backlink profile is what Google looks at when it determines how your backlinks (also known as “inbound links”) should affect your search engine rankings. But did you know that your site needs to have backlinks that vary in terms of relevance to search rankings?
And, did you know that outbound links (your links to other sites) that are strongly related to a keyword combination have a much bigger impact on rankings? This is important link building information, and knowing it can make all the difference between a strong link building profile and a poor one.
Here are some other valuable link building tips, both for outbound links and backlinks:
- For most websites, it is best to start out with links that have a broader theme, rather than links that are an exact match for your keywords. Doing so allows you to rank for all keyword combinations one the site, provided that your competition is slightly weaker.
- Once your analytics show that this broad approach is helping you rank all your keyword combinations higher, then you can narrow your focus to linking exact keyword matches. This will help those targeted pages rank higher.
- Track all the keywords you are linking, not only the ones that are the most highly targeted. It will help you determine how much ranking is affected by your links on those keywords. It can also show you how your links compare to the competition.
- When choosing who to link to, find and make a list of sites that rank in the top 100 for all of your keywords within a given keyword theme (i.e., type of product or service). From that list, choose the sites that might directly link to you first. Then, make a second list of the remaining sites; they will require a little more research before you link to them.
- As a broader linking strategy, you want to acquire backlinks that have a mix of landing pages, anchor texts and product or service pages. That results in a linking profile that accurately communicates to Google how your website is viewed by others, which results in fairer search rankings for your website.
All good SEO firms will tell you: Building a strong back link profile is an integral part of any effective SEO campaign. If you care about your search rankings, you will care about choosing good outbound links and boosting your backlink profile. Fortunately, no business owner has to do this on their own. Crest Media will be happy to answer any questions you may have about improving your link building strategies.
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