How to Leverage Link-Building Strategies for Your Small Business

Intro

Spend any time at all in business or marketing, and you’ll eventually hear about link building as a strategy to boost your bottom line. But how does it work?

Links online somehow translate to money in your pocket? Seems a little far-fetched, right?

Maybe. But it’s not.

Link building is one of the best ways to increase your business’ exposure online, drive organic traffic to your website, and convert more visitors into customers.

This article will guide you through the basics of link building, from different types of links to effective link building strategies, and even help you judge whether your business is ready or not.

If your interest is piqued, let’s get to it.

Types of links

Before diving into strategies, let’s first define the types of links you’ll encounter when link building.

1. Do-Follow Links

Do-follow links are the gold standard for links. Other authoritative websites give your website these links and can help build your Domain Authority.

Do-follow link tags are recommended for the search engines crawling your websites. The “crawl” factor is what makes search engines trust the linked pages, which helps boost their ranking on the search engine results page (SERP).

2. No-Follow Links

No-follow links are also links to your website given by other websites. However, unlike do-follow links, no-follow links don't have the crawl factor.

No-follow links are still clickable but don’t impart any authority from the linking domain. As a result, your trust score with the search engines isn’t affected, and your website’s SERP rankings don’t receive a boost.

3. Internal Links

Internal links are hyperlinks between pages on your website. They’re meant to connect relevant pieces of content for an improved user experience for your readers. And they’re ‌underutilized as a link building tactic.

For example, if you’re writing an article about marketing trends and you have another published article on top marketing trends for that year, you'd internally link the two. That way, readers from either article could easily find and navigate to the other if they were interested.

Not only are internal links an excellent tool when it comes to site navigation and improving user experience, but they also help improve your rankings on SERPs.

Now that we’ve discussed the types of links you’ll be dealing with, let’s dig into some link building strategies.

Easy link building strategies you can leverage

1. Guest blogging

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According to uSERP’s State of Backlinks Report, guest blogging (also known as writing guest posts) is the third most popular strategy for building quality backlinks. The top two strategies are digital PR and outsourcing content marketing, both of which require substantial investments of time and money.

In contrast to digital PR and content marketing, guest blogging can be done at little or no cost. All you need to do is search for the keywords “Write For Us” or “Guest Blog For Us,” and you’ll find a list of sites.

Alternatively, some websites also do a roundup of sites that are always looking for guest contributors to blog posts.

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Almost every website that allows guest blogging will provide compensation with the following:

• Do-follow links (ideally between 1–4 links)
• Byline and author bio (to build your portfolio and online reputation)

It takes time and effort to find websites that match your target audience and write relevant pieces of content for them, but earning backlinks from authoritative sources in your industry is worth it.

Pro tip: Never underestimate the need for valuable content. Every site needs it. And it’s expensive to produce in-house. Original content is the key to climbing search rankings. So, find relevant keywords and shoot your shot.

2. Influencer partnerships

Influencer partnerships are again another great yet underutilized way of link-building and boosting your SEO (search engine optimization) score. How can you leverage these partnerships?

Here are some ways to maximize influencer partnerships:

• Ask your influencers to add a do-follow link on their website whenever they mention your name (e.g., if you partner with a business influencer, one agreement can be they link to your site whenever they write a post about services surrounding your company).
• Ask them to co-author blog posts with you on their site, which will allow you to organically add relevant links to your site through the author bio.

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• If they have content-writing partnerships with other media companies (this is often the case with marketing or tech influencers), or they share their insights/recommendations on social media/interviews, they can mention and link to your brand when they publish a new post or do a new interview.

3. Community forums

Community forums, as well as online publishing platforms (like Medium), allow users to add do-follow links to their websites (provided these links are relevant).

While you’re writing on these platforms, here are a few best practices to keep in mind:

• Only write relevant content people‌ want to read. Don’t stuff it with keywords or include spammy links (we recommend links with anchor text that’s contextual and relevant).
• Using SEO best practices when creating content (this means best practices for keywords, structure, headings, alt text, etc.).

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• Being consistent on the platforms instead of just posting once or twice within a large timespan of a year or two.
• Building relationships with influencers and moderators so they don’t remove any links and/or comments.
• Some other best practices to keep in mind are completing your profile, adhering to the rules and guidelines on the platforms, using branded signatures, and starting discussions on your own.

4. Source requests

Source requests refer to sharing expert insights on a topic in your niche.

Since writers, bloggers, influencers, and journalists often require source requests, you can use the platforms they’re often active on (like HARO) and send your insights as well as share valuable links to your site there.

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In return for your insights, writers will include one link to the site of your choice (there may be stipulations, such as no adult content, etc.) and offer credit for your contribution.

5. Value-add content

While value-add content can be of any kind, the content that often gets the most backlinks are survey results, infographics, case studies, and thought-leadership posts.

This is primarily because these types of content offer fresh perspectives and/or provide a visual representation of these insights. New information is inherently shareable, especially in a graphic, visual form.

Just as a thought experiment, think of the number of “Top [Industry] Stats for 2023” articles you might’ve seen on the internet vs. articles of other formats.

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Now, let’s look at one of the results, the Hubspot article on Email Marketing Stats. If we enter that URL into Ahrefs and look at the results, it’s pretty impressive.

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That article has almost 14,000 backlinks. That’s seriously sharable!

6. Site audits

Last but not least, another effective strategy for link building is conducting a site audit. These audits will allow you to understand:

• Mentions that haven’t been linked to your website (e.g., a company could’ve mentioned you on their website but would’ve forgotten to link you).
• Which assets see the most amount of traction, which don't, and which ones you should link to.
• Which type of content requires repurposing and can include more internal links in it.
• Places/websites where your competitors have gotten backlinks from.
• The number of backlinks your competitors have.
• Where you have broken links on your website.
• How to reduce link redirects.

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You can also use tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Ranktracker to conduct these site audits.

Some experts recommend also using other tools like heat maps and session replays to see how users interact with your content. You can discover what topics they read and which topics they avoid, then create a link-building strategy with topics that align more with their interests.

How to know if your business is ready for link building

Now that we've discussed the high-level strategies, let’s get to the meatier bits. Let’s talk about how to know when your business is ready for link building.

1. Budget and Budget Constraints

First up: budget.

According to the uSERP study mentioned above, most folks (46.5%) spend between $5,000-$10,000 per month on link building.

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The study also indicates the price of one high-quality link is $300, whereas contextual backlinks can cost anywhere between $500-$2,000 each.

Before you dive in with both feet, make sure your budget can handle the commitment.

2. Website Foundation

By this, we mean how ready your site is to accept new users that visit your website. Consider the following questions:

• Will users think you’re a trusted site once they’re there (i.e., do you have a secure connection, trust badges, etc)?
• Does it have a fast loading speed (i.e., is it optimized for mobile)?
• Does it have the right content, visuals, and CTAs?
• Can it handle multiple site visitors?
• Have you optimized for keywords?
• Is every key page functional?
• Is it easy to navigate?

You’d better have good answers to these questions before taking the leap, or you’ll find yourself putting out fires instead of fueling them.

3. Quality Content

You’ll also need to produce high-quality content on the topics users most likely want to read about to effectively be able to drive organic traffic to your website.

In the recommendation above, we mentioned using tools like heat maps and session replays to analyze user interactions with your site and its content. You can also leverage social media monitoring tools to see which topics are trending in your industry.

4. Access to Tools

Last but not least, you’ll also need to identify if you have access to all the link-building tools your in-house team might need.

For example, rank-tracking tools, as well as backlink checker tools, are a must, but you should also consider communication and data management tools.

As far as tool recommendations go, we only have one (Ranktracker) because the remaining tools are specific to where your team members are located.

For example, while Slack is a trusted tool and would be a great recommendation, it could also be that it might not operate in certain regions where your team members are, and hence you might be on the lookout for Slack alternatives.

Use Ranktracker to stay on top of your links

We already shared our recommendations for Ranktracker in the previous section, but let us take this section to show what use cases it can satisfy:

• Checking and monitoring your backlinks (watching out for dead links)
• Using AI to write digital content for your website
• Finding your articles’ SERP rankings
• Identifying keywords in your niche
• Doing a complete web audit
• Analyzing SERP features

And if that sounds like a mighty feature list to you, here’s where you can register with Ranktracker for free so you can watch your link building efforts pay off. There's nothing better than watching high-quality backlinks (those from relevant websites) appear in your backlink profile.

Why? Every inbound link you get is an opportunity to grow your business by improving your chances of appearing at the top of search engine rankings. Your Google Alerts will be ringing.

So, bookmark this comprehensive guide whenever you need more inspiration for link opportunities. Here's to your success with your upcoming link building campaigns.