When you launch your website, you want your target audience to be able to find you easily when they search for whatever products or services you provide. Showing up on the first page of search engine results isn’t as easy as you might think, but it can be done with a strategic search engine optimization (SEO) plan.
A lot of people think that as long as they choose and utilize specific keywords they want to appear for, they’ll have high visibility in search engines, but that’s not entirely true. Optimizing your website for search engines is more than researching and incorporating relevant keywords. A major part of maximizing your SEO efforts is including quality link-building throughout your site.
You don’t have to be an expert when it comes to link-building, but you still need to find a way to incorporate it into your strategy. The good news is there are plenty of link-building services that you can work with.
1: Understand Why Link-Building is Important
You should have at least some basic understanding of what link-building is and why it’s so important for SEO before you choose a service. Link-building is essentially when you acquire hyperlinks from someone else’s website to yours.
When search engines are assessing how to rank pages, they’ll use these links to discover new pages and where they should fall in the rankings. The better your backlinks are from high-authority sites, the more search engines will find your content valuable and trustworthy. This leads to improved visibility.
2: Set Your Link-Building Goals
Jumping into link-building without a plan or knowing what your goals are won’t get you very far. Every website or business owner has different goals, so determining what you’re trying to get out of working with a link-building service is vital.
Some of the most common goals others have for link-building are to:
- Improve their search engine rankings
- Drive referral traffic
- Increase their website authority
- Enhance their brand credibility and visibility
Each goal helps drive traffic, boost authority, and improve your visibility, but they all have different needs when it comes to achieving them. Having a clear understanding of what your goals are can help you narrow down which link-building services are capable of helping you and which ones aren’t.
3: Research and Evaluate Different Link-Building Services
Link-building can be done in a variety of ways. Learning about the different methods so you can see what each company is doing is important when you’re researching quality link building services. Common methods for link-building are:
- Guest posts where you write and publish articles on another website with a link to yours.
- Broken link-building is when you find broken links on other sites and suggest your link as an alternative.
- Resource link-building is gathering links from resources and lists that have what users think is valuable content.
- Niche edits involve adding your link to an existing page on other websites.
- The skyscraper technique is when you create high-quality content and then talk to other site owners who link to similar content to suggest they link to yours instead.
Once you know what services they provide, there are a few other factors you’ll want to evaluate before making your decision.
Link Quality
You need to consider the link quality of each service you’re evaluating. Linking is only beneficial when the links are of high quality since search engines can penalize poor linking practices. A service with quality linking will only pull links from sites with high authority and other relevant websites.
Customization Options
Every approach to SEO needs to be slightly different, especially with link-building. What works best for your competitor might not be what your business or website needs. You’ll want to choose a service that offers customization options that are tailored to you and your industry.
Transparency
A good link-building service should be transparent about its business practices. They should be able to tell you, or you should be able to see on their site what techniques they use, their methods, and more. You don’t want to get into business with a service that uses black-hat techniques because it can actually make your visibility worse.
Client Feedbacks
You should always look at any reviews left by previous or current clients of the service.
Everyone can have their own experience with a company, but generally, if the reviews are largely positive, it’s a good sign. It’s not just about positive reviews but the amount. Be sure to check as many reviews as it takes for you to get a solid overview of the company.
4: Consider Your Budget
Money is an object for most people, so remembering your budget while evaluating different link-building services is important. It’s best to know your budget before researching, but sometimes, it’s worth it to pay a little more for the company you truly want to work with.
Conclusion
When you can increase your visibility, you can be that much closer to reaching your marketing and overall business goals. Link-building is what can help with visibility. Working with a quality link-builidng service can be the best business decision you make as far as increasing your visibility on search engines. With the above advice, you should be able to find the perfect service for your business.