Your website's reputation is important not only to your audience or customers, but also to search engines. Google wants to provide its search users with useful, trustworthy websites, so its crawlers and algorithms give more weight to websites that appear credible and authoritative. They do this in part by looking at your website's backlinks to determine who trusts your content.
A backlink is simply a link to your website on another website. Links pointing to your website are also called inbound links. The more backlinks pointing to your website from other high-quality websites, the higher Google ranks your website in its search results. The best backlinks come from trusted editorial sources such as news sites and popular blogs that choose to reference you in an article or blog post. These links are free advertising and help your search ranking. On the other end of the backlink quality spectrum, spammy links can hurt your site's reputation and ranking. For example, putting your website URL in dozens of unmoderated comments or forums can cause Google to downgrade your ranking because the quality of the backlink sources is low.
So how do you get good backlinks? You have to work for it, especially if you're just setting up your website. There are entire books, websites, and industries devoted to the art and science of link building, but for starters, you can use these five basic link building strategies.
1. CREATE LINKABLE CONTENT.
This is the most difficult of the strategies in this list, and it's the most valuable. Give the Internet what it wants: useful, reliable information. Our vintage BMW parts seller can blog about how to do certain repairs or what to look for in older BMWs. This is content that other fans and writers of early BMW models are likely to seek out and share, which in turn leads to the coveted editorial links.
2. GUEST BLOGGING
Posts on other people's blogs may not have the same SEO effect as editorial links, but they can give you a boost and give your business a larger audience. Only post on quality sites and write something that your audience or industry peers will enjoy using and sharing. Day spa etiquette might be a good topic for our hypothetical Madison business.
3. DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS
Is there a reliable business directory for your niche or location? Are links reviewed before they're added to screen out spam? If so, submit your site for inclusion.
4. PRESS RELEASES
If your business has something new coming up, like opening a new location or launching new products, a press release can raise your profile and give you a little SEO boost if you do it right. This step-by-step guide will help you write a press release that gets results.
5. LOCAL CITATIONS
If your business is local, you should maintain your Google My Business listing and other local profiles (Yelp, Eater, etc.) to perform better in local search results. This post will walk you through how to optimize your Google My Business profile.
The most important thing to remember about link building is that it's a process. Creating good content, building relationships with potential guest bloggers, and writing press releases when there is news are habits that will benefit your search engine optimization and your business.
