Through link building, your company can increase organic traffic via search engines. With high-quality links, your page can rank higher than your competitors.
Link building is one of the most important SEO ranking factors. Pages with more links stand a better chance of reaching the top spots.
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To carry out link building effectively, you need to hire an SEO expert.
Here is how an SEO expert can help you with link building.
1. An SEO expert will make the right decisions
There are many types of link-building techniques available. They vary in difficulty and complexity and are time-consuming.
In fact, a Search Engine Optimization Survey revealed that 41% of SEO experts consider link building to be the most difficult part of search optimization.
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An SEO expert will determine the link building technique that will work for your company or product.
Here are some good decisions that an SEO expert can make.
Refrain from Black hat SEO methods
An SEO expert knows the webmaster guidelines by Google. By following these fair methods, an SEO expert can build the long-term credibility and performance of your website.
These methods fall under white hat SEO. Hire an SEO expert who will use organic link-building tactics to improve your online visibility. They can do this by guest posting, building online relations, creating infographics, and more.
Hiring an untrained person can give you short-term results by using black hat SEO methods like link schemes, keyword stuffing, and doorway pages. Once Google identifies such techniques your site could get hit with a manual penalty.
Choose where to put follow vs Nofollow links
When a link is added to your page, an SEO expert decides which attribute to add to the link. You can “follow” or “do follow”or a “no follow” link.
A follow link acts as a vote of confidence for Google. A no follow link tells Google to not trust the link.
An SEO expert will locate high-quality links
There are many factors to consider before an SEO expert can determine what a high-quality link is.
An SEO expert will look at:
- Authority of the page – If you use links to pages that already rank high on Google, your page will rank high as well. These rankings are not publicly revealed by Google, hence, an SEO expert is needed to determine the top-ranking pages. Most of the time, SEO experts use the help of third-party software like Semrush.
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- Authority of site – Sitewide authority is vital. For example, links from The Guardian or NYtimes will have a much bigger impact. Many people refer to an Authority Hacker Review to understand and enhance their site’s credibility.
- Relevance of the site – Just because the link is from NYtimes, doesn’t mean you use it. An SEO expert will find links that are relevant to your product.
2. An SEO expert determines link placement
Link building means adding links. An SEO expert will determine where and how to embed these links.
- An SEO expert will ensure that the link isn’t in the footers and sidebars. Rather, the links will be in the middle of a page’s body content.
- They also need to place links editorially as google prefers editorial links.
- Google uses anchor text (clickable text section of the link) as a ranking signal. Usually, anchor texts are over-used for keywords which can be considered spam by Google. Hence, an SEO expert needs to locate a link with a keyword in the anchor text.
3. An SEO expert will create content that will help you land links
You want your website to be linked on other pages as well. To make this happen, an SEO expert will determine which kind of content will work for your company.
Here are 4 types of content that tend to generate the most links.
Visual assets
Creating visual pieces of content like images, diagrams, infographics, and charts works very well.
They are effortless to link to. Anytime, a visual chart is reused on another site you get a link. The same does not happen for text.
List Posts
A numbered list is very attractive. They are easy to read and packed with information.
Original research
An SEO expert will put in the effort to create content that reveals new data from industry studies, surveys, or original research.
All pages want data like this, hence, they will link to your page.
In-Depth Guides
Creating a guide is a lot of work because of the amount of research one needs to do. However, a guide can become the go-to resource and highly linkable because of its comprehensiveness.
Hire an SEO expert who is comfortable creating content in these areas.
Link building mistakes and how SEO experts avoid it
We briefly covered black hat link building. An SEO expert avoids it at all costs. Here are a few penalties that the SEO expert should avoid.
1. Google Penguin
The penalizing algorithm by Google specifically targets web pages with unnatural links (like shady guest posting and blog comment spam).
An SEO expert will create only ethical links. They either reduce exact match anchor texts to avoid Penguin or avoid shady links completely.
2. Manual Penalty/Unnatural Links
A manual penalty is issued by a Google employee. In contrast to Penguin, Google will notify you via the Google Search Console:
Nobody besides Google is aware of how exactly websites are chosen for manual punishments.
The common understanding out there is that an algorithm detects a website that might be abusing the system. The algorithm sends a bubble about that website to a Google employee for a human review.
An SEO expert will maintain a spotless link profile as the best defense against a manual penalty.
Additionally, unlike Penguin, a manual penalty can be reversed by disavowing links and submitting a reconsideration request which can be handled by an SEO expert.
Common responsibilities of an SEO expert while link building
To carry out these responsibilities an SEO expert needs a detailed action plan and ongoing evaluation of the project’s progress. The typical duties look like this:
- Creating a plan for external website optimization; creating and maintaining accounts on reference sites, directories, forums with a certain theme, services with third-party reviews, etc.
- Look for partners and advertising-related websites for link exchanges, so that your website is linked as well.
- An SEO expert cannot create all the content. Hence, they need a team of copywriters. Evaluating the quality of articles with backlinks, tracking backlink placement, and reporting on performance is their task.
Now that you know the responsibilities and the role of an SEO expert in link building, start looking for one. The key takeaway is that an SEO expert is essential for link building and is especially recommended for competitive industries.
