Link Building And Establishing Authority

All right, so you’ve done it. You took the time to create high-quality content that your users were looking for and supplied the answers to their questions. Best of all, you made sure that your content resonates with users and search engines, but there is one small problem. Your pages are still not ranking. If this sounds like something you know all too well about, it is time to shift your focus to link building. Just a tiny amount of work in this area could be very beneficial in building authority for your site, contributing to your rankings in Search Engine Results Pages. Or SERPS, for short.

External & Internal Links: How They Help your Authority

There are two kinds of links that you should worry about: backlinks and internal links. Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are when another site links back to a page on your website. Backlinks are essential to your website’s authority because they show search engines that the content on your site has enough value to be shared by others. When you have backlinks, they serve as a recommendation for your website by others. A more straightforward way to put it is that if you were going out of town for the weekend and three friends recommended the same restaurant for dinner, you would feel pretty confident going there since it is highly recommended. Well, search engines treat backlinks the same way, which is why they should be a high focus when establishing your website’s authority.

Internal links also help highlight importance but in their way. For example, if you want to signal to search engines, your site’s “Contact” page is essential. By linking it often on your other pages, Google will notice that this is a significant page and help its rankings. In addition, when you include internal links frequently, they make your pages easier to crawl, ensuring that all of your pages are being indexed. Feel free to check out more about what we mean in detail from our previous blog post about on-page SEO.

Always Remember to E-A-T When Creating Content

E-A-T is an acronym that Google has come up with that stands for expert, authoritative, and trustworthy. It can be challenging to get a good ranking on Google if your website does not follow these guidelines. Though it may seem complicated to create content that will fit these guidelines, creating content that will work under them will help you build robust and high-quality content. What makes content great is having something other sites want to share, which means that following E-A-T could earn you backlinks and valuable authority in search engines.

Also, the more popular a website is, the more authority its backlinks carry. For example, Wikipedia’s pages are linked numerous times by a wide range of sites, which lets people know that the content on Wikipedia is valuable. Of course, this does not mean that you need a website of Wikipedia’s magnitude to link your site to gain authority. Still, when looking for opportunities for backlinks, you’ll want to focus on sites that provide you with valuable and trustworthy content since it’s where you’ll get the most value for your efforts.

Keep Your Link Profile Healthy

Your site’s link profile is a quality assessment of all the inbound links to your website. For example, are the backlinks you use from a diverse range of websites, or is one site linking to your website repeatedly? Are the backlinks on your page from trusted sites, or do they seem spam?

You should ask yourself these questions when trying to determine your site’s value and ranking. When you know these factors of your rankings, it’s obvious why you should avoid practices such as buying backlinks or participating in excessive link exchanging (the method of linking to someone else’s site so that they’ll link to yours) because Google will penalize your website if you are caught doing so. They could go as far as de-indexing your website from their search results. Google keeps a complete list of guidelines for determining a website’s search quality ranking.

Start Creating Blog Posts

According to Moz, creating a blog on your website is one of the few link-building strategies recommended by Google’s engineers. When you have blog posts on your site, it is a great way to have fresh, consistent, and quality content going up on your website that people will want to backlink to. That said, pay special attention to the quality of your posts. Posting low-quality content just for the sake of posting it to stay relevant could harm your site.

If link building and a company blog are starting to seem like an impossible task with the time you have available in the workweek, it may be time to seek the help of a professional SEO company. Our team of experts has the skills and knowledge to gain the most online traction for your business. If you feel like your business could use some help building a more substantial online presence, contact us today for assistance with link building and related services!