When you write a blog post you want people to link to it, right?
I bet you do, because you’ve written some great content.
You’re probably already aware that Google ranks websites higher when there are more links pointing to that website.
However, are you aware that the quality of the links matter? Or that effective quality link building can help build you brand?
Recently, I’ve been more selective with my linking strategies and have seen the effect on my branding to be a noticeable bonus.
That’s why I’ve put together some tips for you on increasing your brand by building links from high PR sources:
Why are Links Important?
Google’s reasoning is that the more links a site has, the more popular it is because it offers valuable information.
However, a problem occurred when people started doing whatever they could to get a link, even purchasing links. People were spamming every site they could get a link on.
Fortunately, Google figured this out and is a lot smarter these days. Many websites were penalized and lost their ranking. Overall, these actions by Google have created a much healthier ecosystem on the internet when it comes to linking.
Quality of the link is definitely a factor now, certainly more than ever before.
That’s why you need to take great care when sourcing websites for backlinks, and paying attention to who is linking to you.
Having thousands of backlinks from spammy websites with a PR less than 1 is not helping you, it’s actually going to hurt you.
Which Links are Important?
It’s not only about getting as many links as possible to your site to achieve Internet marketing success.
It’s about establishing a brand online through link building. When people link build in the right way – share knowledge with Internet users – they achieve the ranking and success they are seeking.
It is important to keep in mind while you’re link building that having a few high quality links is much better than having hundreds of low quality ones.
Google places value on websites, which is referred to as PageRank (PR). Sites with a PR of 10 to 5 are considered authoritative sites, and those with a lower PR are not as highly valued.
It means more to have a link to your site from a high PR site than a lower one. Lately, having links from low PR sites can actually hurt you.
Link Building for your Website on High PR Sites
Believe me, I’m not saying it’s easy to build links on sites that have a high PR.
There is competition, and plenty of it. However, it’s not impossible though, especially if you work at it in the right way:
Build Relationships
An online brand is all about building relationships. No one will know who you are if you don’t go out there and show people what you stand for, what you do, or what you’re great at.
As I started to build relationships, I saw the positive effects it had on those I connected with and my own brand as well. In time this effect starts to spread and create a sort of ripple effect.
People will start to share your information (content), which improves your brand. Overall, people will respect the opinion of a friend over the opinion of a stranger and that’s exactly the effect you want to capture.
Building a relationship with a reputable and trusted brand makes you more credible and trusted purely by that relation alone.
Provide Information
One way to build quality links to your site is to provide quality information to people. Valuable content is useful and unique and doesn’t require a big budget.
When people can’t find the information they want anywhere else on the internet or can only find low quality resources then that’s your golden door for entry.
Readers will appreciate the heck out of you if you can really help them out. This appreciation can possibly lead to a link to your site. And hopefully an authoritative site.
You may appear as a comment on someone else’s blog, or even a reference in one of their posts. I’ve been cited many times in other articles from high PR sites and couldn’t be happier for the backlink. Thanks guys!
Go After Links
Providing information is a passive form of link building. It’s what Google prefers the most, but the big wigs online aren’t always able to find content that deserves to be on their site.
That’s why you should try to go after getting links on well-known sites. I have employed this strategy countless times. You can as well by following these steps:
- Make a list of domains in your industry that get a lot of traffic and have a high PR. – You can use Alexa, SEMRush and Compete.com to find those sites.
- Start visiting some of the sites and contribute. – You can read blogs, comment, and share the content on social media. This is the relationship building mentioned above. Do not sell yourself when you’re commenting. You are simply sharing your thoughts and knowledge.
- Continue to do this for a while (could take months) – until you feel that you have a good online presence on those top domains. Patience is essential for this step.
- Contact the owner of the site to see if you can contribute a guest post. The guest post you write could be published on the top domain and in the bio section, you will be able to include a link to your site.
Sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, it is, but it can be well worth it.
Those links from the top domains can boost your credibility for Google AND for your brand.
People trust the information on top domains, so they will trust you when you contribute. When people follow the link to your site, they already trust you and that leads to a greater number of sales.
The link also leads to higher ranking because Google also trusts you because of the trust already developed from the site you were able to get your link on.
How to Determine PR
With all this talk of Google PR you may be asking yourself, how do I find out the PR of a website. Fear not, I have the answer for you.
Personally, when I’m browsing around the internet and want to check on the PR of a certain site I use the Chrome extension Webrank SEO.
It’s a pretty great extension that makes checking the PR of a site a breeze. This information is displayed automatically on the top right of your browser and changes dynamically when you visit a different site. So the site you’re on will automatically display a PR ranking in the browser.
If you click on the PR rank a box will pop out and display additional metrics like Alexa rank and social share statistics. I strongly encourage you to use this plugin or a similar one.
It’ll make your browsing and PR experience much easier. And thankfully, this is available for most browsers.
Conclusion
Overall, you likely know the benefits of link building in terms of SEO. It’s good to have backlinks.
However, an equally important reason for link building is the brand improvement you’ll see. That is, if you make sure you’re developing relationships with high quality sites.
So, keep producing that high quality content, get yourself a PR extension if you don’t already, and contact those high PR sites.
There’s no better time to start than now. Do your research on the top domains and start commenting. You will soon see your brand awareness and ranking improve.
Link building is a hard job for most of website owner because Google update its Search more frequently and spam links aren’t good.
Agree with you Alize. As long as you stay away from buying links, using link farms, etc., you can avoid having to manage for Google, and instead focus on running your business.