Other Ways to Gain Links

Many of our clients ask about how relevant having content is to getting good quality links. Well there are ways of getting links without it, but having great content is one of the best long term ways to gain quality links which add value. Strategies not involving content tend to be less effective but some of them can still can help increase your link building. In effect, content is incredibly important, but should ideally be one component of an overall strategy.


Advertising

Big brands focus on advertising because it can make a massive impact on where they are on Google rankings. You will notice businesses advertising anywhere and everywhere online. Effectively, this advertising is content elsewhere online which tells users of their business and links back to their website. Content around the web can consist of videos, images, text and banners which relates back to the site. The primary reason to do this is because advertising both off and on site allows a larger audience to be exposed to your business. As you will see when you go on any kind of site that has video integrated advertising, you will notice that during the video, there will be advertising of services and products. A great example of this is Compare the Market having there videos, banners, text and images all over YouTube and Sky News, linking back to their website. The costs of advertising on site such as YouTube would be extensive, so this is pretty much ruled out for small to medium businesses, however, there are some good alternatives to provide this service on a smaller scale.

Ingrained Product or Service

This is a service or product that you share with others which you are able to keep coming back to. A great example of this is Pinterest, a service which allows users to share pictures with other people and then send them a link to the relevant corresponding website. The use of Pinterest for small businesses has allowed more visitors to be introduced to the website through the links given out and shared. Pinterest has an extremely high PR (Page Rank) score, which means that links coming from this are strong. This is due to people constantly coming back to the site and introducing others to it, as well as the content being refreshed constantly by its users. This makes it a prime site for small to medium business use.

Recommendations

What we mean by this, is that people talking about and recommending your business can provide excellent quality links to your site. If you have another business which you have worked with, they might be happy to advertise your site via a link on their site. You may also want to return the favour by linking back to their website in return, providing a great link opportunity for both sites. Although this is a good idea, recommendation links take a relationship with another business which can take time to build up. An example of high quality linking between sites is Microsoft and 343 Industries, both have reciprocal links that promote each other on their websites.

Community

Having a community relating to your business can cause people to generate content on your behalf. For example Stumble Upon allows people to post and interact with others, with most of its content coming from the community creating their own content for the site. Community is a powerful way to create content without the need to invest time in generating it yourself.

Blogs/Authority

Having a blog on your website is a great way to generate content and keep content fresh and updated. Blogs allow your target audience to read about things going on in your business in realtime and are also a good way of engaging with them in a less formal way than the text on the actual website. It also allows you to become an authority in your area of expertise so people will come back to your page at a later date for anything relating to your business area, eventually generating sales. You can invite guest bloggers to write for your blog, who may also promote their articles elsewhere, again providing linking opportunities as well as good content.

For more information on anything online marketing related, visit our website by clicking here.