Quality Link Building
Attracting quality links remains an important element in a website’s SEO campaign. It is an indicating factor in having your website acknowledged as an authority in your area and seen as a worthy resource for searchers. The definition of a “good link” has changed over the years, and is likely to do so in future, but there are certain principles that can be seen as solid investments for future-proofing your website. Here are a six ideas to ponder.
1. Natural Links
This is the holy grail that many sites aspire to but few achieve. Build great content that attracts people naturally linking to your website because it is such a great resource. Think about who will link to you and give them a great reason to do so. It’s all about adding value to your target audience. There are many types of resources that naturally accumulate links, and some popular ones include: widgets, tutorials, how-to illustrations, statistics, graphs, images, infographics and video.
2. Make Connections
Once you have great website content then proactively make personal connections with website operators in your industry. Be engaging and explain why your site is worth linking to. If feasible, ponder what you can you offer them in return.
3. Guest Posts
By writing a guest post for another blog, you give them unique, quality content for free, and in return you can receive a link from a trusted website. You can find blogs open to guest post submissions by simply searching for “[topic] guest post” or “[topic] blog submission” or by joining a site like My Blog Guest. Offer something unique and interesting, like tips or an opinion. When you add a guest post, check if you can include the rel=”author” tag in the link you include. This will ensure you get your name and picture included in the search results. Google have already confirmed that Google Authorship will help your SEO efforts and as you increase your Author Rank, this benefit will only increase. Plus, it is also a neat way to start building your reputation online.
4. Social Media
Social media links are a good way to start building a link profile and especially for getting a website initially indexed. There are a vast array of different networks depending on your focus and industry, ranging from LinkedIn to Twitter. While a lot of social media links won’t necessarily be clicked on, other times you can get a frenzy of interest if you hit the right note. Post a link to any new blog posts, as well as announcements or promotions. Connect with other companies within your industry that you could share their content providing value to your followers. If you share their content , they are more likely to share yours with their followers.
5. Site Submissions
Once the darling of link builders, directories have had a lot of the SEO clout knocked out of them by Google algorithm updates over the years. Submitting en-masse to low quality directories can actually do more harm than good these days, but directories are not all bad news. Simply choose good quality directories (use a site like PRChecker to find out) that are relevant to your keyword area. DirectoryCritic is a good way to sort directories by category, which will ensure all the links on their page are under the same topic, making them stronger and more relevant. As well as directories, look for other sites, such as YouTube, that you can submit your content to. For example, think of creating some informative videos and adding them to YouTube with a link in the description to a relevant page on your website.
6. Giveaways
This can get great results if done well. Try and think of a really useful resource that you can offer people for free. For example, ‘Download our Gluten Free cook book for free’. Using this technique you could ask for an email subscription in return. You may also find that other websites will begin to link to your free resource or share your link on Social Media profiles.
Quality link building is not a simple mission but if you build your SEO campaign around quality content and genuine usefulness, then the investment will pay off in a variety of areas.
Attracting quality links remains an important element in a 
