In today’s search landscape, links account for approximately 70% of a website’s ability to rank within the search engines for any given keyword or phrase. This is extremely important to know and understand, as it will probably directly affect the SEO strategies and efforts you put forth for your company, whether you work internally or are hiring a SEO consultant.

And while it is all good and gravy to know that links will account for much of your ability to rank, link building can also be one of the most difficult tasks for SEO consultants and website owners alike.

For that reason, today I’m going to provide to you five quick link building ideas that you can act upon to jumpstart your efforts. Please note though, that these come without warranty for ease of implementation & effectiveness. They also may be difficult to apply, or may be non-applicable to you and your website based on the focus / industry of your website / business.

Okay, now for the good stuff:

1. Start a Blog
   While this effort will really only be effective if you are a fairly good writer and can regularly maintain it, it is still one of the greatest link building tools available to you. With a blog, you can create a level of engagement that may not be possible through any other part of your website or business, and coupled with social media integration, this could be a very powerful marketing mechanism. Additionally, the consistent generation of new content through blog posts & blog post comments is like candy to Google. Do your keyword research, write beneficial content for your users and the links and subsequent rankings will follow.- Write a “101″, “5 ways to”, “10 best” type of blog post
   • Create an extensive resource list for your visitors
   • Flatter experts, industry leaders, etc. within your blog post (they may read it and link back to you in reference to the flattery)
   • etc., etc., etc.

    

2. Create a Badge
   While graphic-based badges are not necessarily the best option for providing the most link juice to your website (basic HTML anchor text is preferred), it is still a great and potentially engaging tool. Depending on your customers, clients, or site visitors, if developed well, this effort can gradually build your link profile and will typically be a link that will not be removed anytime soon.
3. Social Media Engagement
   Okay, so you have a blog, you’ve been writing for a while and wait, you haven’t integrated into any social media channels? What are you thinking?! Social media is quickly becoming a powerful player, and it should not only be included in your marketing mix, but it should also interact with almost every other marketing tool in your bag.Put your blog posts on your Facebook pages’ wall, encourage your followers to retweet and share, tell your users to find you in Google and +1 the heck out of your listings (hopefully they’ll be able to find the post - tell them to copy and paste your Post title directly into Google search with quotes “This is the page title that I am wanting you to +1 the heck out of”), so on and so forth. While this may seem as a not so quick link building tactic, you can set up your blog & social media channels to all integrate with each other. It will reduce the amount of time you spend trying to get it out to the masses, and increase your ability to gain readership and links.
4. Build Relationships
   The old process of finding websites, collecting contact information, and sending out an unsolicited email asking for a link because you think you’re worthy, just doesn’t really cut it anymore (still questioning whether it ever did to begin with). It’s extremely important in todays world to try to build relationships with those you are hoping to acquire a link from, and it kind of makes sense too.Think for a moment, would a random stranger give you $20 on the street just because you asked? The answer is, most likely not; this is the same for links as well. You need to learn the landscape you are in, learn about people’s personalities, what they like / dislike, and interact with them. As always, don’t come on too strong—just make it enough that you can build a steady, positive communication with them and then, in the end, use the tactic of choice to request the link.Opportunity will most likely try to sneak by you, so stay aware, be proactive, and be friendly.
5. Create Content That Helps People
   Okay, so this may actually be more in line with #1 - “Start a Blog”, but honestly, content that is well written and helpful to people will garner more links, more easily, than any other strategy on this list.Even though knowledge is power and therefore money (because it seems in todays world, money drives power, at least in some circles, and so the logical deduction would be knolwedge = power = money), you can build a better reputation and a stronger link profile through offering your knowledge for free online.Take our blog, for example (Milwaukee Web Design & SEO Blog), we are offering our readers—clients, potential clients, web surfers, etc.— the opportunity to take advantage of our knowledge in our industry by reading our material, learning from it, and using it to further themselves in whichever way they can think of. This free knowledge is something we may typically bill for in a meeting, but we’re giving it away free! And what are you doing? Reading and consuming this knowledge, and hopefully, just maybe, using it to your advantage in the future (or realizing that we really know what we’re talking about, and therefore contact us to assist you in efforts related to our business).

Key Take Aways:

1. Build relationships with people online
2. Create free, helpful content that is related to your SEO goals in some form or fashion
3. Don’t be afraid to get creative (some caution is advised in how creative)

Hope you found some value in this post and enjoyed the read!

Regal Creative is a Milwaukee Web Design & Milwaukee SEO Company that works with clients to achieve an effective web presence through exemplary design, attain their business goals through detailed discovery, planning & execution, and improve their visibility within search engines through strategies and ideas, some of which are listed above.

To work with Regal Creative on your next web design / development project, or if you are looking to seriously improve upon your websites’ rank ability within search engines, then contact Regal Creative today!