Whether your business is new or not, being visible in search engines result pages (SERP) is a great way to get your brand known by potential customers. And no, paying search engines for ads isn't the only way for your business to show up in SERP. One strategy which small to medium-sized business have found useful is link building.
Building quality links to your website is absolutely necessary to establish your brand, gain new customers, and convert them to repeat customers. If you're interested but don't know where to start, here are six SEO link building strategies you should definitely implement in your small business ASAP.
1. Look to local partnerships.
This strategy is a great fit for small businesses which have local partnerships with organizations in a particular town, city, or state. Reach out to these partners and see if they can place a link back to your website. If they have events or conferences coming up, you can sponsor them so you can get a link from the event's sponsorship website. Your brand didn't only get recognized; you also received a backlink.
2. Contribute to local business blogs.
Scour the internet to find local business blogs that welcomes contributions from small business owners. If you can find local news blogs and community blogs where you can share your expertise, that will be even better. Once you're accepted, you can periodically link back to your website or any of its landing pages when it's relevant.
3. Use the Skyscraper technique.
Brian Dean from Backlinko has invented this technique to make the link building process easier for everyone. All you have to do is search for top-performing content within your niche, create a version that's way better than what you've found, and reach out to influencers and websites to help promote your content. It may take time to complete the in-depth and quality version of the content but when your blogger outreach efforts become successful, you'll see the results of your effort and hard work. You'll get quality backlinks to your site, traffic, and customers. You can get the help of a reputable SEO expert to complete this tedious task for you and reap the rewards all the same.
4. Build links through your images.
This worthwhile strategy can be done simply by finding the websites which have used the images you own and have published on your business website by doing a reverse image search. You may have employee headshots, product photos, logos, branded graphics, and other images floating around the web without being attributed to your small business. Once you identify these sites, reach out to them for an attribution link.
5. Search for business mentions.
Search the web for mentions of your small business or references to your brand, products, and services through a free tool like Google Alerts, or a paid tool like BrandMentions. You can narrow down the search further by using relevant keywords. After you've uncovered the backlink opportunities, reach out to the site owners through email. Request that they include a link to your site as attribution.
6. Create a number of premium content.
Premium content stand a higher chance of being linked to by influencers than a regular blog post. There are different types of premium content but those which doesn't require much time to be created include infographics and co-created guest posts. Others that will require much thought and time to finish include white papers, e-books, in-depth blog posts, podcasts, and case studies. Find which kind of premium content is it that will suit your small business, your time, and your budget then work on it. Don't forget to include relevant tags for search engine optimization purposes.
So what are you waiting for? Jump on the link building bandwagon now using the strategies discussed above and combine it with SEO strategies you have in place. You'll be surprised by how quality backlinks can get your business ahead of your competitors.