Why Building Links Is Still Critical To Website SEO

link building success marketingIf you’re responsible for the success of your website’s SEO, a more precise and focused link building effort may be needed, and that may also be your most toughest and tedious task. Link building has proven to be one of the most effective methods for gaining natural search engine love for your site.

But, social media and it’s significant influences are also proving to be important, it can also at times make your head spin, especially if you’re from the traditional SEO school. You will also need to pay attention to the online consumers’ ever increasing use of mobile devices and applications, which was once considered a niche alternate method of attracting visitors.

It is definitely time however to rethink how you approach link building, while making a focused effort towards better consumer engagement. There will always be a place for conventional SEO, but your success depends on how the other competing sites out there uses and adapts to the ever changing online landscape.

Link Building and Content Optimization
Your competitors, the other sites that are competing for the same visitors, are constantly clamoring and clawing for the far too few positions that are available at the top of the search engines. It is becoming increasingly competitive and difficult to influence natural search engine rankings using the traditional means used just a few months ago. Your immediate attention requires constantly refocusing on how your content is consumed by the users, while considering how all the other new means of information distribution is impacting SEO.

Make no mistake, link building is all pure hard work, manual labor that requires due diligent research, precision, patience, testing and creativity of execution. Your top ranking websites should also continue to have links from the various high profile social media platforms, blogs as well as directories. This goes for all your sites: new or old, blogs, as well as conventional static websites.

To be able to nail down and solidify the positions of your most valued, ‘targeted’ competitive keywords, you must jump ahead of the pack and establish better consumer and search engine influence. Improve on the type as well as the style of your unique relevant content, and build on the relationships that you have built with those who can help in the distribution of what’s been searched for.

Refining Micro Niche Sites
It’s been pretty much established for some time now that using ‘exact-match’ keyword phrases as domain names, is the quickest and the most effective way to shoot your site to the top of the SERP’s. This will and should remain true for a while, not only on Google, but on Bing and Yahoo as well.

Try taking the traditional content page a few steps further by expanding, as well as supplementing the existing information on the site to acquire new segments of visitors.

For Example:
If you are selling digital cameras, and have an exact ‘name match’ domain name for the camera that you are selling, along with a review, detailed specifications and pricing on your home page. Go a step further and create a user friendly tutorial based micro-site as well. Research and write say a 10 to 12 page PDF ebook, titled: “How To Take Better Wedding Pictures,” that your visitors can download for free. You can also build a site which contains articles as well as videos on… How to take the best indoor pictures, giving your visitor training and free advice on how to use the camera. This will give your visitors ‘value added’ useful information that they weren’t expecting.

By doing this, right from the very start, you’re establishing a form of expertise, as well as generating a sense of goodwill that your readers will appreciate. You will be able to gain their trust, and make them believe they really can take better pictures from your advice. You’ve helped them enough to the point of creating a feeling of reciprocity. They will now somewhat feel obligated to buy whatever you’re selling, and you’ve given them good reason for it.

Online Relationship Marketing 2.0
Allowing your social graph the ability to feature as well as distribute your content is vitally important to your success. Your visitors and potential buyers will require careful critical attention to the personal relationships which your social graph is built upon.

Returning to the digital camera website example, if you have taken the time and created the “How To” guide as suggested by creating an ebook, then go out and find a few bloggers and social media followers who are willing to showcase that content. You can then provide a link back to their sites, as any linking relationship requires some form of give and take. You should be planning on participating with others as much as you plan on publishing content.

Re-Optimizing Relevant Content
The content that you wrote say a year or two ago, especially if it’s outdated, you can re-write or modify it to include a new angle on the same old problem. By adding new data or statistics to an old trend, you will attract new attention on the content that you may of forgotten about.

So you may want to review old blog posts from say 6 or 15 months ago, and create a brand new updated post, while cross linking the two, and relate it to a specific trend that’s happening today. Or, you might want to turn your articles into videos, or vice-versa. Content re-optimization will bring new life to old forgotten content.

Doing this process will allow you to rank better in the search engines, as well as helping your visitors rediscover value in what’s being presented.

We are quickly entering into an era of ‘Consumer Engagement SEO,’ where relationship marketing is becoming immensely important. Building the same relationship with other website owners and bloggers, or even traditional media is just as important as accommodating your site visitors.

Conversely, consumers building links back to your site, in forms of testimonials or social media comments, are just as important as building links from website owners. Savvy SEO experts who are able to quickly identify these changes in the online playing field, and are also able to immediately respond to compensate for these shifts, are the best positioned to dominate the search engine results.

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