If content is king, link building is queen. High-value links make your web pages appear more authoritative, trustworthy, and reliable.

Search engines are also more likely to index your website and rank it higher if several high-profile, popular, or authoritative websites link back to you.

But Will Websites Link Back to You?

Developing an online presence is all about communication and networking—although the way you go about it is different from how we do it in real life. You’re relying on other websites to link back to you—and in doing so, urging their audience to give your products or services a go.

Why would any website do that? Or to phrase it another way: what’s in it for them?

Well, nothing comes free. So you have to give them an incentive to link back to you by:

• Creating unique, informational, useful content that establishes your authority and lends value to their audience.
• Commissioning research, studies, and surveys is also a good idea, since it might compel others in the field to link back to you—perhaps even industry rivals.Let’s say you own a pizza store in Chicago and carried out a study on how many people prefer what kind of pizza. Unique surveys like this have a good chance of being mentioned by others.

  You don’t have to go all academic—just use user data (which you already collect using cookies), or ask customers to fill in survey forms for you.

• Try to reach out to other industry experts who might be interested in sharing your articles as well. Building a relationship with them will give you a lot of credibility by association.
• You’ve probably seen how people sometimes grab the attention of celebrities on Twitter simply by mentioning them? If your content is unique, relevant, and has something new to say, someone authoritative might notice it—and if that someone shares your article, you’re sure to see an upsurge in traffic.

Getting Links From Other Sites

No matter how value-driven or locally optimized your content is, you will need links from other sites to be considered an authoritative web page. Start by fixing broken links and guest posting, but always be on the lookout for backlinks—and know what to stay away from.

The Dos

Getting links from high authority domains matters most. Sites that Google and other search engines recognize as “authoritative” linking back to yours brings a ton of value to your backlink portfolio.

Getting into Yahoo and Bing directories should also help—it might be not as easy as you think, but the effort will be worth it. You can try both free and paid directories.

The Don’ts

Don’t just go for any website that will link back to you. You must be selective. And the one thing that you must never do is buy links. Avoid sites that aren’t relevant to either your brand or your audience. If you think you can just leave a comment on random websites with links to your web pages, re-think immediately. It’s worth adding that spamming discussion forums with links to your web pages isn’t just childish—it can also lead to you getting banned.

Social Media Campaigns

Social media engages hordes of people, many of them being your target audience. How you go about your social media presence can thus make or break your long-term prospects. While having such a large audience at your disposal sure has its perks, it could just as well be your downfall—unless you know what to do and what not to.

The Dos

Engage with your audience. Social media channels aren’t much different from SERPs—all you need to do is ensure you’re getting “tagged” or “mentioned” by high-authority pages and people who have sway among your target audience.

Social media is all about creating connections, solidifying your brand image, and building your following. Keep an eye on what users are saying about you in the comments sections, notice the positive (or negative) “reacts” you get on your posts, and so on. Be responsive if you’re selling products or services. Often, queries that begin as DMs turn into bulk orders—which is great for business.

This is why 97% of businesses say that online reputation management and reviews are a major part of their strategies.

The Don’ts

Don’t be a ghost on social media. Your job doesn’t end with merely having a social media page. You should be actively looking for mentions from popular and/or authoritative pages and people on social media channels.

Be super careful about insensitive or politically incorrect messages on social media—those can lead to negative mentions.

Other than that, steer clear of spam and self-promotion. Do not post the same links over and over again, since that’s a great way of turning your audience away from you. Stay away from self-promotion as well—a little humility goes a long way in helping your social media game stay strong.

Article Marketing

Link building isn’t just about getting linked back to from other websites. It’s also about internal linking—and doing it well. You can also consider hiring a professional link building service to create high quality backlinks for your website.

The Dos

Make sure your content is high-quality, informative, relevant, interesting, and authoritative. Use links—both internal and external—in your articles. The goal is to catch the attention of the individuals or pages you have linked to in your article.

Moreover, promote other pages from your website that don’t get a lot of traffic by incorporating internal links wherever possible.

Similarly, when you’re working with press releases, go with themes and topics that are newsworthy and relevant. Place your links very carefully and tactfully in these PRs. Publish these PRs on trusted industry websites.

The Don’ts

As always, steering clear of spam is important. Don’t go overboard with internal and/or external links in your articles (or PRs). For PRs, abandon any mundane, uninteresting, and irrelevant topics.