The modern customer spends an average of 7 hours on the Internet. In other words, you need to grow your digital presence if you are to attract the modern customer. Now, one of the best ways to boost your website’s visibility and gain more traffic to your site is to leverage organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) growth. It means, you need to invest in getting quality backlinks, also known as “inbound links”, “incoming links” or “one-way links”. The Google search spider uses the links you get to your site as a measure of the ‘vote of confidence’ the other trusted sites have on your domain. The more quality backlinks you get the more you are ranked as an authority in your niche! So, how do you build quality backlinks for your site? Well, here is a comprehensive guide to creating the right link-building plan for your new website in 2023.
Source: Oberlo
What Is A Link-Building Plan?
Quality backlinks are essential to ranking higher on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Links are a ranking signal or metric that Google uses to gauge whether your site is credible. Frankly, link-building takes time if you are to get long-term organic growth.
The problem is that if you resort to Black Hat techniques, the algorithm will quickly catch up with you. Black Hat SEO are unethical ways such as cloaking, keyword stuffing or blog comment spam. These tactics are often penalized by Google for using manipulative schemes rather than guidelines set.
So, the best way to build the right backlinks for your new website is to start with a link building plan.
As the name suggests, a link-building plan is a set of carefully curated strategies and steps you could take to help you build top-tier backlinks for your website. You don’t want to dive head-first into building links without a proper plan to stipulate the strategies you should take.
Creating and sticking to a plan also guarantees you will reap the benefits of having authentic links pointing back to your website.
Why Do You Need A Link-Building Plan?
Here is why you should have a link-building plan for your new website this year:
Boost Your Website Authority
Even though other SEO tactics are growing in popularity, quality backlinks remain a top factor in determining your website’s authority. With the right link-building plan, you can build high-quality backlinks that can significantly enhance your SEO efforts and demonstrate to Google that you are an authoritative site trusted by other domains. Google will start ranking your website higher in the SERPs!
Grow Your Brand Awareness
The more backlinks you have pointing to your site, the more you expose your brand for everyone to see. A link-building plan enables you to carefully select the websites and blogs to approach a request for backlinks.
Enhance Your Content Marketing Efforts
If you approach other web admins with valuable information, they will have no problem including it in their blog in exchange for a link to your site. Sharing top-quality content helps the other site attract more visitors, who will be interested in your page because of the information you offer. The result is a win-win situation for both parties.
Attracts New Clients
Last but definitely not least, a link-building plan helps you attract more prospective customers to your new website. In the online world, referrals come in the form of backlinks. If a writer from an authoritative site or a renowned media outlet adds a link to your main page in their content, you will gain exposure to a whole new audience that could be your new customers!
Establishing Link Building Plan
Let’s now delve into crafting a detailed link-building plan for White Hat Backlinks. There are a couple of essential factors you need to remove from the way before you start your organic journey to success:
Who Is Your Target Audience?
One of the first things you should have at your fingertips is extensive knowledge about your target audience. Start by understanding who consumes the content on your website right now and what your ideal target audience looks like.
The beauty is that you could leverage online tools to gain a deeper understanding of your audience. You can use tools like Google Analytics to analyze your website traffic and gain insights on things like demographics. You could also use social media analytic tools for your audience research.
Identify The Websites You Want To Target
Now that you have a good grasp on your target audience, the next step is figuring out where they might be. For instance, if you have launched a business website where you sell luxury wedding dresses, you can go for fashion blogs, entertainment blogs, news websites, and the like.
Here is a trick you could use- do a competitor analysis to find the backlinks other similar businesses are getting. You can use backlink analysis tools to get an idea of the sites you can outreach for backlinks.
Understand The Type Of Links That Suit You
It is vital to keep in mind that there are many types of backlinks you can use. These include the likes of general directories, relationship-based links, forum links, editorial backlinks, press releases, sponsorship links, and more. The kind of link you choose for your website will form the basis of your link-building plan.
You should look into the various types of links you can use, then determine which ones will suit your link-building campaign best. Check out our guide on the common types of backlinks and how they can help your SEO.
Check The Quality Of The Links You Build
You wouldn’t want to waste all your money and effort on building poor-quality links. Utilize the top link building services and build only high-quality backlinks that will increase organic traffic and prevent Google from penalizing your new website.
For starters, avoid spammy and irrelevant links or those from bad paid link schemes like poor-quality guest posts, comments, and forum spam.
Steps For A Successful Link Building Plan
You are now ready to develop a successful link-building plan. Here are the steps:
1. Invest In Your Web Design
It is not enough to have a functional website for the sake of it. If your website looks disheveled, a writer wouldn’t think twice about linking it to their blog.
Other Internet users and prospective clients want to feel safe using your website. If they receive a notification saying the site is not secure, no one will be willing to add a link pointing to your main page on their content.
An excellent web design is easy to use, has beautiful aesthetics, makes the users feel secure, and earns more high-quality backlinks.
2. Social And Directory Links
Given the numerous benefits you stand to gain, you might be eager to dive deep into link building. However, it wouldn’t be a great idea to do too much too soon. During the initial stages of your link-building campaign, it is better to stick to the basics.
It would be a great idea to check whether all your social media pages have consistent branding and relay the same message about your enterprise. The next step would be to add a link to your main page on each platform so your audience knows where to find you.
3. Conduct Content Audit
Now that you have a robust online presence, you need content to beef it up. However, we wouldn’t urge you to upload content for the sake of it. The material you post on your website and other social media pages should be relevant for you to attract as many top-tier backlinks as possible. Your content can also help you identify link-building opportunities you could explore.
Ask yourself the following questions when auditing the content on your website.
- Is the current content performing as well as I expected?
- Which among my current content can I use to build quality links?
- Which type of content has performed well on social media?
- How can I repurpose existing content to help me build more backlinks?
4. Run a Competitor Backlink Analysis
One crucial step in developing a working link building plan is knowing how your competitors perform. Some of your competitors have been around much longer than you have. Therefore, they may have more experience with link building and where to find good backlinks for their website. You could start by determining whether they target certain websites. Since you are in the same niche, those websites will also accept your backlinks.
It would also be wise to perform a gap analysis, where you compare the performance of your content with that of your competitors. The results from your analysis will help you determine the best websites to approach for high-quality backlinks.
5. Create Quality Content Assets
You know you have made a valiant effort when other sites link to your main page without you approaching them. The best way to achieve this feat is to post high-quality content that qualifies as authoritative and acts as an asset to your link-building campaign.
Always ensure you provide data and statistics when you post content to your site and use strong imagery. It would also be wise to present your work in a manner that is easily digestible to the audience.
6. Build Your Social Media Presence
We mentioned earlier that it would help to include backlinks to your main page on your social media platforms. As you create carefully curated content for your website, we urge you to do the same for your social media pages. Posting top-tier content on your Instagram or Facebook page drives more traffic to your website. Your audience will also trust you and link to you since they consider you a credible source of information.
Unfortunately, social media might not garner lots of links for your campaign. However, it is an excellent avenue to build credibility for your outreach. You want a target blogger skimming through your social media pages to discover your value. This way, they will have no qualms about linking back to your new website.
7. Start Doing HARO
You can now implement strategies like helping reporters and journalists with any information they need for their stories, for backlinks! You could give your professional advice on real estate, business, fashion, or interior design.
If a reporter includes your opinion in their article, you could request them to add a link to your main page for anyone interested in gaining more insight. (You can also use this quick guide on using HARO link building.)
As a rule of thumb, wait three to four months before you venture into techniques like HARO. Ensure you take this time to ensure your website looks polished and is overflowing with top-tier content that other readers will find helpful.
Tip: Ensure you polish up your social media pages because you never know who will be watching.
Cheat Sheet Link Building Plan For New Sites
However, in this fast-paced world, you might not have time to follow each step discussed above. Fortunately, we can make your work a bit easier with a cheat sheet for developing a link-building plan for your new site.
- If you are wondering how to start link building, then what we can tell you is that you are better off directing all your efforts to build links for the homepage of your new website. Once you are satisfied with your work, you can work on building links for other sections of your website.
- Take the time to build a directory for sites in your niche manually. You could obtain the information from a credible source like a high-quality directory, which guarantees the links pointing to your website are legit and authoritative.
- Another common way of building links is through outreach. First and foremost, identify the best blogs in your industry. All you have to do next is to reach out to them and request them to add a link to your website in their content. Remember, there is a possibility that you might need to start paying for the first links.
- Once you have gathered a sizable number of links, say around twenty to thirty links, you can now limit your link-building to blogs. That said, avoid linking to commercial pages. You don’t want to look like you are overselling.
Wrapping Up
In nutshell, link building can help your new website rank higher in 2023. The key is to craft a proper link-building plan. Talking of ranking higher through backlinks, Outreach Monks is a white label link building agency that can help you craft and implement tailored plans that will translate to organic growth through top-quality backlinks. Just talk to us and you can start reaping the benefits of links for SEO!
