Strategies for Link Building
When you first start internet marketing, you might decide to check out some of the big marketing forums like BHW (Black Hat World) and Warrior Forum. These are sites where internet marketers can hang out, share tips and buy and sell services.
The problem, is that the quality of these services on offer varies greatly. And in particular, you need to be very careful when choosing ‘link building services’.
The Problem With ‘Traditional Link Building
That’s because an awful lot of these services will involve a PBN and spun content. So what does this mean? A PBN is a ‘Private Blog Network’. That means that a single owner is in charge of all the different blogs and they have linked them to each other in order to create artificial authority. The content on these blogs meanwhile is not original but is rather reused content that has been ‘spun’ (meaning that the words have been swapped out for synonyms) in order to trick Google into thinking that it’s brand new.
As you may have guessed already, both of these practices are very much frowned upon by Google and if you get caught doing either, then you’ll be penalized. Moreover, if you get caught associating with either, then you’ll get penalized.
Best case scenario, no one gets caught but the links still aren’t anywhere near as effective as ‘real links’.
How to Build Links the Right Way
What Google really wants to see when it comes to link building is that your site has the trust of other existing big brands. If you can show that, then Google will assume that your site must be high quality and trustworthy in its own right.
Certain blogs and websites are already highly trusted by Google. These include blogs with .edu domains and .gov domains. Google also likes blogs and sites that are run by large, well-recognized brands.
Some other blogs and brands have earned Google’s trust over time and you can tell these ones by the fact that they’ll often show up in Google’s ‘News’ section.
Your job is to become as trusted and as authoritative in the eyes of Google as those sites. How do you do that? Simple: by getting links from those sites!
The only problem is that this can be hard work. Getting a link from such a well-established brand is hard work and you’ll often find that your emails just don’t get answered.
So an easier strategy is to look at SEO like a game of ‘degrees of separation’. If you can’t get a link from a top resource, then try and get a link from a site that has a link from a top resource, or a link from a site that has a link from a site that has a link from a top resource you get the idea.
Right now, there are some websites and blogs in your niche no doubt that are considered the biggest and most important authorities. Your aim is to become one of them and so the best and most obvious way to do that is to associate yourself with them by getting links from them. It’s simple really, just don’t try and beat the system!
