Local stores and service providers should get links from local news stations, local bloggers, and niche websites in their industry.
Service providers need to focus on trade publications, industry-relevant blogs and publications, events, and social networks.
Stores will do well with niche and audience-relevant bloggers, communities, publications or media websites, and mass media coverage that is not affiliate links or in an affiliate folder.
Think about what is newsworthy that you can do or provide that these groups would want to cover.
PR and SEO agencies that work with content will be able to provide ideas, then you can choose which ones you like and run with them. Not every campaign will work, but hang in there – the right one will happen.
You can also try surveying your audience for original data points and studies, and then publish them. And that goes to the next tip.
The publications must be topically relevant to you in order to help with SEO and avoid penalties.
If your customers and users are not the reader base of the website or publication, the link and coverage will appear unnatural and you’ll eventually get penalized or a devaluation.
Press Releases
Press release backlinks and syndication backlinks work against you, not for you. But that doesn’t mean they cannot help with link acquisition. For this strategy to work, provide enough data to gauge interest.
Share some of the data points from the study as a teaser and give a way for editors, journalists, and industry professionals to reach out to you.
Don’t charge for the study. But ask them to source and cite the data on your website, or reference your company as the source of the information.
But keep in mind that if your talking points are the same as your competitors, and you have the same type of data, there’s no reason to add another citation or to cover you.
What can you discover and share that hasn’t been covered and will enhance the publication’s articles in a new way? Put yourself in the reader’s shoes and think about what is missing or what questions were not answered.
If comments are enabled on the publications, look for questions and build a resource backed by data that answers them.
You can then reach out to the editors and make a strong case to either add you or create a new post about the new topic since the previous one did well.
Bonus tip: Even if you don’t get a backlink, being cited can go a long way, as you may be able to use the company’s logo in your PR bar as a trust builder. You can also reach out to the PR or brand team and ask for the link using the citation strategy mentioned above.
Blog And Forum Commenting
This does not work. Search engines know that anyone can go and spam these, use a bot, or pay someone to do this.
They will work against you, not for you. Just don’t. Let the communities and site owners link to you naturally.
If your customers are on the blog or in the community, join the community and participate. Use it to acquire an audience and build trust for your brand.
Not for backlinks. The backlinks and community mentions will eventually happen. And this is how they can become natural.
Social Media Profile Links
This does not work because anyone can create an account and get the link.
Links for SEO must be earned. Social media is about building an audience and bringing them to your website.
The backlinks are useless for SEO, with one exception. Some search engines crawl and index accounts.
If you struggle to get crawled, an active social media account that gets crawled and indexed fast may be able to encourage spiders to find your website and pages more easily.
Focus On Being Worth Linking To
There’s no shortage of ways to get backlinks, but not all links are good. If the link can be purchased or acquired by anyone, like a directory, it won’t help you with SEO.
If your customers are not on that website, and the majority of the website isn’t topically relevant to you, chances are the backlink will work against you.
Healthy link profiles have a mix of good and bad, natural and unnatural. If your company hasn’t done or shared anything link-worthy, there are no backlinks that can bring you long-term success.
Focus on being worth linking to, and the backlinks will come naturally.
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Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal