Link Building in 2024: Best Practices Taught in SEO Marketing Courses
Every company wants to expand its business online in the current environment. For that, business owners must indulge in effective SEO marketing. SEO marketing ensures that a business website is well-optimised, thereby making it visible to the audience online. Since most businesses are content-driven, it is important that the audience connects with the content through the practice of link-building. As an essential part of SEO, link building improves a content’s authority, quality and ranking. Building quality backlinks to the business website is a skill that would eventually help an individual or group of individuals to grow a business (of any size). Hence, business leaders should pursue an SEO marketing course which will offer them valuable insights into how SEO marketing and link building works.
In India, there are various institutes that provide SEO marketing courses. As a professional, if you want to grow your business, consider doing a Professional Certificate Programme in Digital Marketing for Performance & Growth from IIM Kozhikode. This program enables people to boost their proficiency in digital marketing, which includes concepts like SEO marketing, social media marketing, content marketing and more.
Table Of Content
Link Building Practices
Enhance Your SEO Link-Building Practices Today
Wrapping Up
Link Building Practices
With the evolution of the digital world, one thing that remains crucial to a website’s success is its ability to rank high on search engines. Of course, producing high-quality content is one way to get higher ranks on search engines, but there are various other effective ways to increase the visibility of a business. One such effective way is link building. Below are some link-building practices that would help individuals grow their businesses.
Well Optimised Content
The primary pillar of a link building strategy would be the generation of search engine-friendly content (blogs or articles). To do that, it is important to recognise that Google has no concept of AI or marketing strategy. It’s a robot, or more precisely, a code. It has never attempted any marketing tools. So, if someone creates a blog on how space agencies across the globe use AI, how to tell Google that the article is the best? With the assistance of references. And it’s known as Google’s page one.
Before writing the blog, it is essential to draw an outline that is of a better quality than its competitors. Determining the heading structure and word count can help business owners develop top-notch content for their websites. To create well-optimised content, you can:
- Visit Google, type in a keyword and click on the article that is ranked #1.
- See all the headings and subheadings and note them down. Since that is the best article on the particular topic, that’s the best outline.
- Check how long the post is.
- For references, check second and third-ranking articles.
Because the draft is the compilation of the top three articles on Google, the content is likely to be perfectly optimised.
Prioritise Traffic Before Links
The situation in which many dozens of sites connect to a site with 10 to 20 visitors per day is irrational for algorithms. Professionals can add links following this approach:
- Increase traffic to the site, permanently
- Post two to three links every hundred visitors.
Usually, search engines will naturally see more such link-building strategies For white hat sites, the growth in the number of referring domains should be steady, but not sporadic. Links to include on a new website:
- Contextual links (links surrounded by content) are far more successful than “naked” links on the page.
- Links related to the topic of the site being promoted.
- Do follow hyperlinks. These are links having the rel-tag’s HTML property, which alerts search engine robots that the link may be followed.
Link building Approved by Google
Previously, in generic blog posts, link-building was not that important. But, with time, link building has become a crucial part of SEO marketing. Many companies create a strong backlink that protects a website from ranking drops due to constant Google algorithm updates. But, what does a perfect link-building plan look like? Ideally, it looks like:
- 40% guest posts
- 30% link insertion
- 15% HARO
- 10% digital PR
- 3% business directory citations
- 2% link exchanges
At first glance, dealing with such a large number of link sources may appear intimidating, but there are always free solutions that give backlink builder software and allow users to produce backlinks, traffic, and money.
Broken Links
Broken link is a strategy where professionals locate a dead link, develop a similar webpage and request everyone to link to your website instead of connecting to the dead source. It works because developers who care about their sites don’t want their visitors to end up on broken pages. They frequently replace a dead link with yours. There are numerous methods for locating defunct backlink pages. The easiest option is to use Ahrefs Content Explorer to search for a subject and filter out broken pages. Then, set the referring domain filter to a minimum of 10. It will display pages that have backlinks from at least 10 different domains.
Media Presence
For receiving unique links, media can be a great tool. Generally, search engines perceive links to worthy journalists very well. Furthermore, links from such sources are unique because rivals cannot purchase identical ones, as opposed to those offered on exchanges. It follows that the weight of a single link on such a resource may be greater than in the case of guest blogging.
Interviewing experts is the flip side of the same coin. You contact well-known persons in your profession and conduct interviews with them, which you subsequently post on your website. You also send your interlocutor a link to his interview, which they will post on their website.
Appropriate On-Page SEO
It is important to realise that links are not the solution. If a business’s technical and on-page optimisation is poor, the off-page optimisation will not help but damage the entire business. So, as a professional, you should go on with the external web page optimisation only when your website is worthy of the audience’s attention. Use the following SEO checklist before building links:
Keyword Analysis
Use tools like Semrush, Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefz to find relevant keywords in your niche. To extend the core of queries, use these tools to investigate your competitors’ keywords. This will provide you with a complete image of keyword analysis as well as the greatest and most relevant quantity of keywords.
Technical Audit
The first step of a technical audit is to set up HTTPS. You may obtain the SSL certificate required for the HTTPS protocol by utilising Let’s Encrypt or Cloudflare. It is completely free of charge. The other purpose is to optimise site indexing. It ensures that there are no extra pages available for indexing on the site (search pages, admin panel, sorting and filtering). Last but not least, utilise dependable hosting in the nation from where you expect traffic.
Website Structure
When it comes to optimising the structure of a website, start with an adaptive layout and pay attention to various types of devices (different models of phones, tablets, screens, pixels, and so on). When it comes to page speed, it should be up to 3 seconds. Another critical issue is to employ caching, asynchronous loading, lazy loading, and contemporary image formats (webp, avif). You should also concentrate on easy and straightforward site navigation (nesting level).
Data-driven Infographics
When it comes to link building, infographics have several advantages. For starters, they are far more likely than plain text material to be shared on social media. Second, they are simple to copy and paste into other websites, which means you may gain connections back to your own without having to beg for them. Third, infographics are frequently utilised as visual aids in blog posts and articles, which can naturally create additional links.
Effective infographics need careful preparation and attention to detail. To begin, define the essential message you want to express and then select an effective visual format to deliver this idea. Second, utilise high-quality photos and graphics that are visually attractive and effectively express your idea. Finally, make sure your infographic is easy to read and comprehend, and that it is search engine optimised.
Individuals must market their infographic once it has been prepared in order to get links back to the website. Submitting infographics to directories, sharing them on social media and reaching out to relevant websites and bloggers to see if they would be interested in publishing them on their sites are all methods to market it.
Enhance Your SEO Link-Building Practices Today
Building links is an essential part of SEO marketing. It is thus important for business professionals to master link building. The demand for SEO marketing in India is increasing day by day. Hence, various institutes are now offering programs on digital marketing which includes SEO, pay-per-click, advertising and more. One such institute is the IIM Kozhikode. The SEO marketing course offered here is known as the Professional Certificate Programme in Digital Marketing for Performance & Growth. It is a 9-month programme that encourages professionals to enhance their skills in digital marketing and growth hacking.
Furthermore, the program focuses on providing actionable and practical applications and strategic decision-making that enable professionals to become experts in the field. The pedagogies are uniquely curated for marketing courses involving immersive tools in the growing digital landscape. To participate in this course, students must check the eligibility criteria and enrol accordingly.
Wrapping Up
Link building is very important in the internet world, aiding in the visibility and trustworthiness of a website. These link-building practices serve as a route map for newcomers. It guides them through each step so that they don’t get lost. Linking building also acts as a toolkit with innovative methods and tools for effective marketing.
