Link Building
The Covid-19 pandemic began as a major health crisis but quickly became a global economic catastrophe. Almost 600,000 US establishments were shut down during the pandemic, urging companies to shift their operations online.
With increasing dependence on eCommerce platforms, digital sales skyrocketed from $571.2 billion to $815.4 billion in 2020. As more and more brands adapted to the digital model, the competition in the market intensified, encouraging brands to leverage search engine optimization strategies to stay relevant online.
One of the most critical aspects of search engine optimization is link-building. This strategy focuses on acquiring links from reputable websites that point to the business’ website. This approach improves the website’s visibility, authority, and reputation in the eyes of search engines.
Companies can use the following initiatives to carry out effective link-building:
Result-Driven Link-Building Strategies
Link-building or back-linking is a digital marketing strategy that influences a website’s search engine ranking. Search engine algorithms determine a page’s value based on how many sources link to it. Therefore, businesses must use these strategies to create organic links:
Sponsor/Host Virtual Events
Sponsoring virtual events like webinars, summits, and online seminars creates multiple opportunities to gain backlinks. Most link-building experts use this technique to acquire high-quality backlinks. When a company sponsors a virtual event, the host automatically links the sponsor on their website and other forums during event promotion.
Apart from sponsoring, companies can even host their own virtual seminars to attract links. Organizing webinars paves the way for audience interaction and opens opportunities to provide valuable industry insights.
For example, businesses can use promotional social media posts to spread awareness about their events. Whenever a reader shares the promotional post, it automatically increases brand exposure and builds new links.
Once the webinar is over, enterprises can share their summary as a blog post highlighting the important facts and findings. As a result, more sites will link to these facts, creating more opportunities for link-building.
Send Outreach Emails
Email outreach is a content marketing technique through which brands can get in touch with an audience to request a backlink or to promote a certain piece of content. It is most commonly used by link-building consultants, as it generates optimal results.
Sending outreach emails can give brands coverage from industry authorities, such as bloggers and journalists. However, companies need to update their outreach email templates to ensure success.
For example, swapping short subject lines with longer ones increases the response rate of outreach emails by 24.6%. To make sure outreach email campaigns don’t fail, online businesses need to focus on certain factors, which are:
- Quality Over Quantity: Instead of sending mass emails, only target relevant and interested audiences to send outreach emails.
- Clear Communication: Clearly state the expected action so the recipient can understand the purpose of the email.
- Avoid Spamming: Do not send unsolicited emails in a short period of time as it irritates the recipient and does not elicit a response.
Post Topical Content to Build Topical Authority
Topical content is time-relevant content that needs to be updated regularly. It focuses on recent discoveries and events about an industry to deliver relevant findings to visitors. Sharing topical content and linking building go hand in hand.
When a brand posts content that talks about facts and recent events, more websites start to use it as a source. Not only this builds more links, but it also shows search engines that the content has topical authority. Topical authority means that the website is a go-to source for any updates related to one or more industries. Becoming a topical authority signals search engines that the website is a reliable information provider, which improves overall SEO ranking.
Wrapping Up
The Covid-19 pandemic has completely altered the world for businesses. Now, they have to shift to digital forums to stay in business. However, this creates a challenging environment to attract customers and rank on search engines. To overcome this situation, companies should use link-building strategies, such as outreach emails, sponsoring virtual events, and posting topical content, to improve their digital authority and reach the desired audience.
