Inbound links to your blog content and your website help to build your site’s authority. Do you have an inbound link buiding strategy? Have you even giving this marketing strategy any thought? If you haven’t you could be missing a great way to build your Google authority and amp up your sites’ searchability.
Ranking above your competitors might not be something you consider when you’re writing a blog post, but maybe it should be in the back of your mind. If you want to build a link strategy here are some elements to put in place before you reach out to guest bloggers.
Do You Have An Inbound Link Building Strategy?
Give guest bloggers a profile. When you invite a guest author make it valuable for him or her by letting them add a bio and by having a link to a specific guest author page. If visitors to your site see that you have XYZ authority as a guest blogger, he may stick around longer and having a guest blog page may be a way to entice new guest bloggers to write for you.
Do you have link-worthy content? If you don’t have content to which anyone would want to link, you’re sabatoging your efforts to get inbound links. Look at your content. Are you proud enough of it to want to ask people to link to you or to be a guest blogger? If it’s not as great as it can be, polish it up.
Are you offering a social media reach? When you’re asking for inbound links or seeking out guest bloggers, they will want to know how many visitors your blog receives and what your numbers are on social media. Be active on social, promote your blogs and build up your numbers and engagement to further entice someone to link to your content.
Have a link strategy. If you simply write, in the midst of a blog post, “check out this content.” You’re not effectively building a link strategy because “check out this content” sounds like link baiting and it is also not a relevant search term. If, however you write, “if you’d like to know more about how to build an effective inbound link strategy, read here.” Make your live link be “how to build an effective inbound link strategy…” those are searchable terms and make more sense than “click here.”
Have a plan. We don’t recommend jumping into anything until you know why, what and how you’re going to do it and what goal you hope to achieve. Why do you want inbound links? What do you have to offer those who link to your content? How will it benefit both you and them?
Have you considered inbound links as a way to build site authority? Have you tried it? What was the outcome?