We’ve been covering various factors that will positively influence your Google rankings. So far, we’ve talked about:
- Tweaking for higher click-throughs from Google itself
- Increasing scroll depth
- Increasing time on page and reducing bounce rate
- Increasing social shares
Today, we’re onto the age-old strategy. One which has been a primary factor even before Google matured in how they do rankings. And that’s…
Link Building.
Yes, as has always been the case, when you have more incoming links to your content, it will help influence it’s rankings in the search engines.
Now, thing is, some marketers out there would try to game the system using various schemes to build these backlinks. Things like blog networks, buying links, etc. Even to this day, we routinely get emails here to Blog Marketing Academy HQ asking us to include links to their stuff in various blog articles across the site. I don’t even answer them anymore.
See, Google is smarter than that. All these other things we are talking about are part of the equation, so a huge quantity of backlinks is as important as it used to be. If Google sees an unnatural pattern of backlinks to your article along with high bounce rate, low time on page and essentially no social shares… they know they’re being fooled. And they don’t like that much. They might even give you the Google slap.
So, how can you go about building up backlinks to your stuff in a legit way?
Honestly, I personally never engage in purposeful link building. I concentrate, instead, on doing my job when it comes to creating great content to the best of my ability. I optimize for all the other ranking factors we’ve been talking about. Then, I let incoming links take care of themselves.
If you want to go the extra mile, however, there are some strategies you could employ to help the link building process along in a natural way:
- 12 Secrets To Building Natural Backlinks
- Natural Link Building 101
- The Single Lazy Method For Building Natural Backlinks: It Works!
It’s up to you how you want to pursue it…and IF you do. Like I said, I don’t.
Whatever you do, don’t be one of these weirdos who repeatedly email site owners asking for backlinks. It’s annoying.
One time, I had this yahoo who emailed me at least 3 different times trying to get me to include a link to an article on home security. Yeah, alarm systems. Because, that’s REALLY what I talk about here at BMA! What a dolt!
Alright, Risley out. See ya mañana.
– David
