Building Links

Link building is a questionable SEO technique at this day and age. In 2013, we saw the linking landscape change forever. Gone our the days of link farms, hidden text and building tens of thousands of links in a single day. Google has forever changed the mindset of link building. Link building is a valuable part of every website’s SEO plan. If it isn’t, then it should be. So, how are we building links in 2015?

There’s a variety of different ways that links can be built, manually or automated. If you’re not for sure, links are important to SEO rankings. Not as much in past years, but links are still very important. Who links to your website matters. Authority websites that link to your content can give you significant improvement in SEO rankings. One link building technique that is gaining popularity is broken link building.

Let’s start with a common question. Is link building good or bad? Or, is link building white hat SEO, black hat SEO, shades of gray even? I know most of you have heard the terminology. Scratch it. Everyone builds links. Yes, Matt has explained link building or the thought of in dozens of videos. No one said that link building can’t be done. You do have to be careful how you build links. I’m not telling you one way or other. I will say this, if you are adding value to the page or user, how can it be wrong?

The first thing you need to know is how to evaluate your links. For some of you, this is going to be quite the job. The more links you have, the harder it will be to track, record and analyze. Everyone should strive for a diverse link profile. If your link profile doesn’t look normal or looks automated, it can bring up red flags to Google. Everyone needs a great link building tool, such as Moz or Ahrefs.

Now that we have that clear, lets talk about a great link building technique known as broken link building. Broken link building is one of the most effective link building techniques I’ve ever known. Broken link building doesn’t have to be “spammy,” it is actually an effective way to get high quality links. So, what is broken link building?

Broken link building is a link building technique that involves researching broken links and offering a solution to these broken links with links of your own. It involves using a tool to check for broken links, finding those broken links and reporting them to the webmaster. Easier said then done. If you know link building, you know that it can be time consuming and it involves a lot of research, if you’re doing it right. You’re not just going around pasting links, you’re offering a service.

If you’re using broken link building in your link building campaign, be sure that you stay within your niche. Unrelated links brings up red flags. You don’t want to risk your business or another’s business. That is bad business and you don’t want to have to go through the trouble of cleaning up bad links. It’s a complete headache, trust me. Stay within your niche or the field of your content, media, audio or videos.

Don’t contact a webmaster if you don’t have high quality options for the broken links. When you’re link building off broken links, you better come with your best content. This increases your chances of the links being added, saving you time, effort and money. You also want to make sure you have the content ready to rock-n-roll before sending the contact email.

In your email, be respectful, professional and be sure you have the exact link URL that is broken. Be polite and let them know that you found a broken link. Tell them you have a great article on the same subject manner and send them the link back. As a webmaster, you’re appreciative of this gesture, you don’t want broken links on your website. Having a go-to article in the making saves time for the webmaster also. Although you benefit the most, the webmaster does also.

Link building and content are two of the biggest factors for ranking on search engines. If you have a new domain, you’re at a big disadvantage. Aged domains have authority, thousands of links and piles of content. In order to gain time and rankings, you have to build links. There’s no question about it. However, there’s a right way to do it and there’s a wrong way. Keep your links related, minimal and don’t go building thousands of back links to your website on day one. This would be a white hat SEO approach. If you’re going “black hat,” then you can build links like there’s no tomorrow. It just depends on what needs accomplished.

Quality Content Is Still Link Bait

Here’s another tip, take the time to write great content. If you’re scared to build links, I respect that fact. Do I believe you’ll be penalized for following the directions I’ve laid out? Absolutely not. With that said, if you can’t build links, you have to have superior content. Great content attracts a lot of natural links. Don’t worry about content length, just make sure your content is useful as it can be. Make it informative, use descriptive titles, subtitles and optimize it for SEO. If it is useful, the links will come.

Broken link building will help you get high quality links. It also helps you build relationships with other webmaster, a very beneficial element. I’ve built some great relationships with other webmasters and web professionals through broken link building. Remember, we’re all in the same boat. If not, your boat is chained to back of mine. Point is, we all want to rank well and have authority links, trust me, your not alone. Call it as you will but link building is a technique that you have to have in your arsenal.