Search engine optimization (SEO). A term you hear over and over again in the B2B Inbound Marketing industry, yet it's one that you still don’t fully understand. It’s one thing to create highly valuable content for your audience, it’s another thing to get that content seen by the personas you are targeting.
Creating content that your buyer personas are searching for, that answers their questions and that search engines can find is the foundation of your SEO strategy - but that alone won’t rank you highly on Google.
To be up there with the best, you need to create an SEO strategy that establishes your brand as an authority on your subject matter. There are a number of ways to do this, but in this blog The Brit Agency is going to focus on the power of backlinks.
What are backlinks?
Backlinks, which are also known as inbound links or external links, are links from one website that lead back to a page on your website. They are a form of off-page SEO, in which websites direct readers to your brand’s website.
Backlinks are part of a link building strategy, which should also include outbound links (links from your website to other websites) and internal links (links from one page on your website to another page on your website).
Here’s HubSpots definition of inbound link building:
“Link building is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of inbound links to your website to gain referral traffic, boost domain authority, and increase search engine rankings.”
Why are backlinks important?
Backlinks are important for your SEO strategy as they help drive traffic to your website, but, most importantly, they help to tell search engines that your website is an authority on a certain subject.
Each backlink you have pointing to your website, in the eyes of search engines, is a vote of confidence in the quality of your content. That’s because if other websites are citing you as a source and directing their users away from their own website, your brand must be offering something of value.
Website pages with a high number of backlinks generally have high organic search engine rankings.
How to build backlinks for your website
Now, just having backlinks doesn’t make your website an authority. Backlinks must be high-quality and relevant.
Simply paying a bunch of websites to put a backlink in their content that leads back to your page doesn’t cut it. In fact, backlinks from low-quality domain authorities, link farms, spam websites or inactive websites will actually damage your website ranking in the long run, with search engines penalizing you. Of course we advise against paying for backlinks.
That’s why it’s important that your business creates a strategy that focuses on building high-quality backlinks from authoritative and trusted websites, using natural and organic methods to receive them.
To help get you started, we have listed a few link building tactics that you can use to encourage high-quality backlinks:
#1 - Write a consistent blog with valuable content
At the heart of generating high-quality backlinks is creating great content. Consistently writing brilliant blog content that other websites want to link to is the most tried and tested method to organically generate inbound links.
If you aren’t generating content that is worth linking to, then no websites are going to link back to yours. That means you need to work on creating content that is better than the other content in your industry. You want to position your website as the go-to authority on your subject matter of expertise.
#2 - Write guest blog posts
It’s not just your own blog where you can build high-quality backlinks. Start thinking about writing great blog posts for credible sites in your company’s area of expertise, most websites who accept this offer will be willing to give you an inbound link in the post.
By writing highly-valuable guest articles for quality websites in your industry, you will be able to increase the amount of backlinks that point to your website. In turn, this will boost organic traffic to your pages.
#3 - Build pillar pages that are the ‘ultimate’ resource
Pillar pages are now an essential component for any brands’ B2B marketing strategy, and we wrote about them in a recent blog titled ‘How to Create a Pillar Page on Your Company’s Website’.
Outbound and internal links are an important aspect of the pillar page creation process and can improve on-page SEO, but did you know that pillar pages also help you to build backlinks to your website?
Pillar pages are resource pages that give readers all the information they need about a certain topic on one page, with links to more detailed information. By using pillar pages to create ‘complete guides’ for your customers, other websites are likely to link back to your pillar page to give their readers more information.
#4 - Keep your eyes peeled for breaking news in your industry
Ever heard of newsjacking? It’s the practice of capitalizing on the popularity of a news story to amplify your B2B Inbound Marketing success. By being the first blogger to write content on a news event, your website will rise to the top of the search engine results pages (SERP) due to the freshness component of Google’s algorithm.
By being the first to comment on a topic and rising to the top of SERP, other websites will link to your content when writing their own. It’s a fantastically easy way to build backlinks if you can pull it off, but you’ll have to keep your eyes peeled for breaking news and then react quickly.
These are just some of the many other methods you can use to build backlinks and improve your SEO strategy. Want to learn more? Contact one of the Brit Agency’s B2B Inbound Marketing experts today. We would love to answer any questions that you may have.
