SEO has becoming an increasingly complex topic and gaining inbound links for SEO can be tough. The days of black hat tricks to gain inbound links have mostly passed, emphasis on mostly. For the sake of this article, we are going to be focusing on what we call “offpage” SEO which means when we are talking about links, we are speaking of links that are outside of your website and pointing to key pages on your website from another website. While interlinking on the website is also crucial, that is an entirely different beast, so we will concentrate only on inbound links for this particular article.
Why do you need inbound links for SEO?
Inbound links for SEO are important, but why? Well to keep it as simple as possible, with SEO we are trying to do one simple thing, which is to tell Google what your website is about and the area you serve, where applicable. This being known, links are just one way to further tell Google what your site is about and in turn also give it more authority. For instance, if you have a website about plumbing in San Diego, you will likely want a link building strategy that involves gaining links from a website that are either about plumbing or about San Diego. Simple, right? Not soo fast! Let’s talk about how to get those links. Hint: nothing is easy in life 🙂
Strategies to Gain Inbound Links
Gaining Inbound Links for SEO via Press Releases
While there is some debate about the value of Press Release links, as an SEO company, we know that this technique still works. We often times write and distribute press releases for clients for one simple reason, to gain links. While the Press Release its self has some ability to get more exposure the effort taken it to gain inbound links from major sites that will then help increase the authority of the website that we are currently working to rank. Bear in mind a press release is not a sales article though, so you must be creating content that is “newsworthy” and have a good company to distribute the PR in order for this technique to work.
Gaining Inbound Links via Outreach
Have you ever gotten emails that are asking to add content to your website? If you have any website experience, probably so. These are people looking to gain inbound links from your website. This can be a great way to get clean links to your website, and often times people are willing to “trade” links. If you put one on my website I get one on yours. While outreach sounds easy, it’s no different than anything else and takes a lot of work to get one yes. If you are reaching out for the right reasons and make sure to include something that will benefit them as well this can be a great option for inbound links, but it takes time and patience.
Gaining Inbound Links via Purchase
There are many companies floating around that will sell you links as well, but buyer beware! This is a good option in some circumstances, but if you are not savvy at navigating the SEO landscape, proceed with caution. Not all links are created equally and on top of that, some companies will want to rent your links. Meaning that if you stop paying that link is then removed. If this is the route that you decide to pursue, be sure to fully vet your chosen provided before forking over any of your hard earned cash.
Gaining Inbound Links via In-House Link Building
As an agency, this is often the route that we choose and this is a VERY complicated topic. Long story short, an agency worth its salt likely has processes in place for building internal links that are controlled by the agency to help their clients. If you want more info on this, feel free to CONTACT US and we will be happy to share how this works. This is A LOT of work, but we love this stuff and our clients trust us to get them results, so it’s 100% worth the effort!
Wrapping It Up
Gaining inbound links for SEO can be a cumbersome task, but the effort will pay off long-term if you are focused on search marketing for your business. It takes know-how to make sure this is done and done right, and maybe one of the most complicated topics in SEO, so if you are looking for real results in this area it is worth engaging with a reputable SEO Company, cough cough: Local Blitz 🙂