So many business owners are hiring an SEO company to do SEO services for them, but never want to get involved with the process, which can result in miscommunication between the agency and the client. I’m not saying that business owners should do SEO work, but when they get involved with the process, it means that they will understand SEO better and when something goes wrong and the SEO specialist is away, they can handle it for the time being. Are you a business owner hiring an SEO specialist? Get ready to get inspired! Maybe you are not an SEO expert, but you can learn things about SEO that you can help your SEO specialist in the future in case something goes wrong. Now this week’s article will provide you with the knowledge of link building in SEO. Keep reading to find out!

Link building is the process of getting other websites to link back to your website or simply trying to increase links to your website. Basically, you will need as many links as possible and sometimes the process should be done by a number of people instead of one to do this more effectively. That doesn’t mean you have to do all the works of link building for your SEO specialist. There are many ways you can do to help your SEO specialist with this link building campaign – the easy parts. In short, the process requires you to “contact” relevant websites or blogs and put a link somewhere in between to get a link back to your website.

Understand your business

This first step is very important. You must understand your business first before executing your plan on link building. Why? That’s because in order for you to get relevant websites to link back to your website, you have to understand what kind of websites that are relevant to your business website. If you own a restaurant, then you know that your business is categorised in culinary; therefore, note the websites that you should avoid building link on. This will also be your benchmark for your search query when looking for websites or blogs to get links back from.

Set your goals

Link building is a form of online marketing, and of course, when it comes to marketing, you should come up with ideas and goals. Ask your SEO specialist about your website’s current situation, how many keywords that need a boost and how many backlinks you need for your SEO to progress smoothly, because every week should have different results; therefore, keep constant communication with your SEO specialist to set goals depending on the website’s current situation. For example, you might want to set a goal like this “build 80 links.”

Determine the types of links you will need

After setting up your goals, now you should determine the types of links you will need, of course you should ask your SEO specialist first because as mentioned before, it depends on the current situation of your website. Here are some suggestions:

• Links to your homepage
• Links to “deep” pages (such as product or category pages)
• Links that contain your brand / company name
• Links that contain the keywords you are targeting

Find your link targets

Now that you understand your business and know the types of links you will need, the next step is to think about what types of people you should contact, because you need to ensure that you are contacting people who are most likely to be interested in your content and of course, on the relevant websites. If you send comments to random places, your response rate will be a lot lower and you will get bad reputation and come off as being a spammer. For example, if you own a local restaurant that focuses on seafood, and you will produce content about seafood variety,  who do you think will most likely be interested  in your content? Here are some suggestions:

• Food bloggers: of course!
• Parent bloggers: they may want to take their kids to eat seafood and see the variety of live fish, crabs, lobsters, and shrimps in the aquarium.
• Recipe websites: they may be interested in your unique seafood recipes to be used as their inspirations.
• Party websites: they may want some restaurant recommendations to book a party.

The techniques for finding link targets from advanced search queries

Normally, people would search on Google using a simple set of keywords and yes, 99% of Google users do this. However, not many people know that there is an advanced way for us to search on Google that can make the search results more specific and focused on what we need. Let’s find our link targets now!

Let’s make an example. If you own a local seafood restaurant and want to find a food blog to put our links on, normally, you would use “Local seafood restaurant review” on Google. Let’s change it a little bit into:

Food blogger inurl:seafood

Why should you put inurl:seafood? Well, see the results! Did you get it? Yes, using inurl:seafood immediately lets Google know that you only need the results that have the word “seafood” within the URL. Therefore, you will find the results you need without wasting so much time.

There is also another way to search on Google using this method:

Food blogger intitle:seafood

With this method, you will get the search results that have the word “seafood” within the page title, enabling you to find what you exactly need.

Send comments on blogs

Now that you know how to find the right link targets, it is time for execution! Link building is pretty much putting a link while “talking” to your target at the same time. Sadly, many businesses use the wrong method in delivering the message, causing the bloggers to think that they were just spammers. However, there is a healthy way to “promote” your business that is still respectable and acceptable to the blog owners. Here are the things you should do:

• Make different personalised comments that are relevant to the topic of the article you are going to comment on.
• Use a personally made account that has nothing to do with your business (like personal account but with a different name).
• Don’t make it sound too obvious.
• Try to understand the blog owners.
• When you comment to another blog, use different but freshly made comments, instead of the automatically personalised ones.
• Read their articles first to understand what they are talking about, so you can avoid making out-of-topic comments.
• Be sincere in relaying your message.

For example, you are commenting on an article that reviews a seafood restaurant nearby your area. Here’s what you might use for commenting:

“Hi, thank you for sharing your review! That seems so delicious! I have always wanted to try out their seafood menu as well. Maybe you can try -YourBusinessName Restaurant- (coded link) too and give it a review?”

You can get the coded link from your SEO specialist before customising your comment. This will become your backlink if anyone clicks on it.

…and that’s the right way of starting a link building campaign! You may not have to work on the entire link building campaign works, but at least you can help your SEO consultant get more and more backlinks each week. Wait, what? You haven’t hired an SEO consultant yet? Don’t worry; contact us now and let our awesome SEO team help you.