When you start to talk about links and content marketing, most marketers get nervous. That is a normal reaction. Over the previous five-plus years, links have done great things for marketers. But for some companies, links have been a real headache.
On the positive side, links are an important part of your domain authority. Links also provide ways for your target audience to find you.
The Google Webmaster blog says in a variety of ways that links are essential. The experts also paint a picture of how to generate links correctly.
But first, let’s address what not to do as it relates to generating links.
This is the negative side of link-generation, and these are the activities that can get you into hot water with the search engines (i.e. Google), and get you shut down in a jiffy.It’s pretty simple:
- Do not buy links for anywhere or from anyone under any circumstances. This also applies to paying for guest blog posts.
- Do not try to force linking. This might be trading links with another company, or trying to find ways to make links happen. Anything unnatural (not organic) is taboo!
The correct way to generate links that are valuable for your business and will provide long term value is also pretty simple, but it does require a long term approach and hard work.
Here are the keys:
1. Relevancy
Generate a lot of relevant content hat your target audience wants to read. This can be in blog posts, articles on your site, white papers, e-books and so forth.
2. Be consistent
Generating links isn’t a 30- or 60-day campaign; it’s a long term strategy. If you only produce content for a short amount of time and then stop, you lose the momentum you built. Your audience will go elsewhere to find the content they want, and your social network will quit engaging with your brand.
3. Have a plan
Have a plan that helps you generate content. In many cases you may need to have others in your organization help produce content or you may have to trust a trusted content creation company that can work with you to fulfill your content needs.
4. Share your content
When you write something, share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. Make sure you share in an appropriate place; for example, if your audience is not consuming this type of content on LinkedIn, then don’t share it there.
5. Make your content easily shareable
Provide the buttons for your audience to post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and email to a friend. If your audience shares your content, they are helping spread your message and generate more links.
Links will always be a part of how you drive traffic and build domain authority. Search engines encourage brands to be publishers and engage with their audience. Links in your content are essential to that plan. Links drive the most value for your website. But you have to do them right.
