In my opinion, there are 2 core criteria in online marketing to do linkbuiding.
- Create fantastic content that inspires the masses.
- Report on it always and everywhere.
Backlinks can be found everywhere - especially in forums and blogs, recommending users often appear authentic and provide a large part of the organic reach of a website. Companies often underestimate the value of a well-placed backlink, because high-quality backlinks not only secure the interest of blog and forum participants. They are also publicly visible in Google search results and significantly influence the metrics and ranking of a website. If you want to do it yourself and increase your reach with simple steps, I will explain some tips and basics below.
High ranking and strong metrics - which methods?
If you have a good hand with the right mix of channels, you can increase your ranking faster and more efficiently. Channels such as Google+ are often ignored, even though Google's social network has good rankings. I've had an account there for a few years and haven't paid any attention to it at all. 0 friends, but almost 30,000 views. The cross-media visibility of a website could therefore be increased with a Google+ account. We recommend registering your company via Google Business beforehand.
Google Business presents the company compactly
Google Business is also a free option to increase your ranking and visibility. With Google Business, companies list their business online on Google. Thanks to Google Business, Google searches bring up a detailed company presentation. This looks professional and is easy to apply for at https://www.google.de/business. A code is sent to you by post to confirm your identity. However, this takes a few days.
If you enter the company name in a Google search after successful confirmation, Google displays a compact overview of the company on the right-hand side as a search result. A large box appears containing data such as website, opening hours, telephone number, photos, directions and much more.
Forum marketing for beginners
Everyone knows forums. Thousands of users discuss all kinds of topics. Every day, searchers come across the content of forums, because forum content has a visibility in the Google search network that should not be underestimated. The great thing is that most forums are publicly accessible without registration. Forum users with long registration periods and many posts have a trust status and appear authentic. It is no longer a big secret that companies occasionally pretend to be forum users. You can build up your own trust user with just a few steps and distribute content in forums. This is how it works:
- Search for suitable forums using forum search engines. The topic relevance must be right. Also pay attention to the metrics, because link pop, page rank and Alexa values can provide information about SEO relevance and can be analyzed free of charge with the help of simple tools.
- How active is the forum? When was the last time posts were made in threads, and how are new members accepted? In many active forums, new users are usually “monitored” by the moderator and members for the first few days. For this reason, you should participate with informative contributions, especially in active forums.
- Register your user, think of a neutral user name and upload an avatar (user picture). Introduce yourself in the introduction thread. Forums are virtual meeting places where manners are welcome.
- Now participate in other threads (forum topics) over a period of 1-2 weeks, comment and ask questions yourself. This will increase your user's attention, activity and trust. The trust elements of a forum user are a high number of posts, a long registration period and the information content of their posts. Work on these trust elements.
- Once your user has built up a trust status, you can start seeding content. For example, start a question and ask other users to tell you about their experiences with product X. At the same time, you tell them more and more about your experience with product X in an ongoing dialog. Always bear in mind that all conversations from forums can be read publicly by your potential prospects, new and regular customers. So spread the word wisely.
- You can build up a network of users and forums in order to draw attention to yourself as widely and efficiently as possible at peak times, e.g. during a product or website launch.
Link building in forums must go hand in hand with a great deal of sensitivity: If it is revealed by the forum - e.g. by using the same IP address - that your user is an advertiser, there will be nasty reactions to your product and your user. And unfortunately, such a ban is always a public spectacle that can still be found in search engines.
Caution with inorganic growth
The growth of a website is signaled to Google by the increasing visibility of a website, basically it could be said: the more “cross-media-networked” (=present) a website is, the more attention and traffic it currently receives and the more organic growth results from the following user behavior. Google naturally wants your website to be shared and visited by users for informative reasons. As this is sometimes delayed due to a lack of reach, some companies use online marketing (backlinks, guest posts, etc.) to help artificially.
But be careful: Google can quickly recognize unnatural growth. Google knows our website and its content, so Google also knows how quickly we could normally develop, as our website is compared with similar websites and categorized into probabilities and expected events with the help of an algorithm. If too many backlinks are suddenly placed to my site, the “link popularity” metric, among others, will rise unnaturally. Google can react punishingly and catapult the website to the lower ranks. It is therefore better to build up slowly and for longer than not to reach your goal at all.
What happens with backlinks?
The heart of a website is its link juice. The older, more linked and more visited a website is, the more link juice it has. If a page with a lot of link juice links to a website with less link juice in Dofollow, it transfers some of its link juice to the SEO-weaker page. Linking is therefore important to allow websites to benefit from mutual growth. However, it only makes a significant difference to the link juice if the link is placed in DoFollow. Dofollow means, among other things, that the linked page should be followed, which is what makes strong backlinks so lucrative and desirable. Therefore, make sure you have a good mix of Dofollow and Nofollow links (60% / 40%).
The backlink mix is crucial
A good backlink portfolio consists of different types of links, e.g. blog and forum links, links in blog comments, social media, question-and-answer portals and much more. This portfolio can be easily monitored at the beginning using an Excel spreadsheet. Normally, new backlinks are added every month, which can only be updated with difficulty using an Excel spreadsheet. An Excel list also does not show me any dynamic values, i.e. whether the website, forum or blog has removed the link or the metrics of the linking website have changed. Checking this usually takes a lot of time.
SEO tools such as Seobility offer a good alternative. These tools not only keep track of the changes in backlinks, but also show where you are actually linked to without sometimes knowing it. The backlink checker, which searches the internet for backlinks, is also helpful. This increases the control of your online reputation. As a company, you should always have an overview of your backlink portfolio.
Guest article by Giovanni Bruno, Bruno Marketing Creative Agency
