Essential Skills of a Great Link Builder

Any expert link builder providing SEO services will agree that for the search engines that plod the web, links are like the streets between the pages in the expansive metropolis of the internet.

On the web, you can see links like the votes cast for the target by the source. But since the major search engines updated their algorithmic techniques, the principles that dictate their importance and demand have changed. For any link builder, these changes mean that all links are not the same, and you must be armed with exceptional skills in creating good links that receive more votes.

You may not realize it, but there are some skills you need to have before you can build a successful link-building program for your website. So, here are some essential skills of a great link builder.

Build a Link Profile

You need to build a link profile to increase your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your site. Your link profile summarizes all your backlinks (i.e., the websites that link to yours). So, a link profile refers to a record of links pointing to a website or page on a website. If no links are pointing to your site, it’s tough to get noticed. However, if you can attract high-quality backlinks, you’ll be seen as a reputable source, and your business will grow.

You can use Google Search Console to analyze the links and build your link profile. You can export these data and use them for further analysis inside Excel or Google Sheets.

Also, there are other tools you can use, like SEMRush, that will give you additional answers about your current link profile, like overall toxicity score, backlinks, referring domains, and authority score.

Or, you can use Ubersuggest to take your link profile and analyze them through authority score, spam score, and anchor text.

Whatever you choose, you will need to use your analytical skills as a link builder to see the current situation with your link profile.

2. Evaluating Your Websites For Overall Relevance & Authority

This is probably the most recurrent issue that link builders experience when finding appropriate placements. When looking for excellent and relevant content and you land on a subpage that gives the impression that everything is correct, it is easy to have a narrow vision. The page might be awesome, well-written, and contain good social signals and comments about your website.

However, when you examine the site carefully, you find nothing good but poor-quality and thin content and poor and random writing. Suppose you want to know more about developing quality content and how to properly implement it in your campaign. In that case, you can check competent SEO services in Sydney and learn more about the strategies used by the experts.

High-quality content can be overshadowed by poor-quality content in the same way bad links in a profile can override that good links. Let’s say, for instance, you happen to land on a good subpage after looking through several pages of search engine result pages using a rare keyword variation, and perhaps the page ranks highly for a decent word. However, if you try to search for contact information and get a 404, you need to be wary. If you go ahead and perform a site search and discover that most of the pages contain spam content, you need to stop and think. Would you like to be associated with the website?

3. Find Link Opportunities

Finding link opportunities is another big SEO challenge. But links aren’t easy to come by, and building them is tricky.

Link opportunities are the bread and butter of link building, so if you want to master it, you must start practicing it now. What does this mean? Link opportunities include finding opportunities or other websites that can link to your website. So, the idea will be to provide content for free (guest blogging) for them to link to your website or comment on relevant sites, writing a review on review sites.

The goal is to gain credibility by making high-quality sites link to your site. But, the best link opportunities often come from content you already have on your website.

If you want to find link opportunities, then start by answering the following questions:

1. What’s already said about your competitor’s company, product, or service?
2. Who is writing about this company, product, or service?
3. Are there some additional themes that run through their topic coverage?
4. Can you write something regarding these additional themes to get a link back to your site from them?
5. Is there something unique about what you’ve done that makes it relevant to them?
6. Can you get a link back to your site from them?
7. Is your written content exceptionally related to these topics with one link to your website?
8. Can you find the publishers’ contact on that site so you can contact them directly?

To find link opportunities, you can use Ubersuggest, a free tool to help you find link opportunities by identifying links to your competitors. Then you can see the highest authority links that link to your competitors but don’t link to you.

This report will show you possible new links that the analyzed site acquired. Now, you can open that site and look at the links and see if you can do something with better content to encourage them to link to your site.

4. Learn How to Create Great Content Worth Linking

So what kind of content can get them to link? 

Your content must be so compelling that people will link to it to tell their readers about it. It must be something that people will talk about. The goal is to make something that will draw attention to itself and will eventually generate links, comments, and shares.

Here are some steps when it comes to writing great content:

First, Identify Target Audience for Your Content

When you think about linkable content, don’t start with the sites that can link to you, but start with your target audience in your mind.

Once you have a clear idea of your target audience, you can begin thinking about what content will resonate with them. You’ll want to consider their age, gender, interests, hobbies, and other factors influencing their behavior and determine what kind of content they’ll respond to best. 

The best way to identify your target audience is to ask yourself the following questions: 

1. What is my end goal with my content?
2. What is my product or service?
3. What problems does my audience have?
4. What are the pain points I can solve with my content?
5. Why should they read my content?

Remember that segmenting your audience allows you to tailor content and offers to the unique needs of different groups within your audience.

Choose a Unique Content Strategy

Choosing a unique content strategy tailored to your target audience is a solid way to jump-start your link-building efforts.

In addition to using content that’s highly relevant to your audience’s needs, you must also ensure that the information provided is unique. If you only share unique information that no other company shares, the reader perceives that your information is of higher quality. There will be a higher probability that other authority websites will link to your information.

Research and develop your target keywords

Before you start writing any content, consider your audience’s interest. Ask yourself these questions:

• Is my audience searching for something specific?
• Do I want to educate my audience, inform, or entertain?
• Are there people out there who will appreciate my message?
• What do I want to get across, and how should I tell that story?

The right target keywords will allow you to begin working on your content. This is a critical stage in the writing process because it will enable you to define your goal for each piece of content you plan to write. Start by defining your target keyword. Then write down what you want to achieve with that content in mind. 

Create Compelling Headlines

One of the best ways to improve your odds of getting links and traffic is to make sure that the headlines on your pages are compelling.

The headline is often the first thing a reader sees. Simply put, the headline should be attention-grabbing and make the reader want to continue to read. 

Ensure that the headline you pick is relevant and will compel people to read your content.

Write an Interesting and Unique Article That Will Be Useful for Your Audience

The article’s content is where you want to spend most of your time and energy. Whether you’re writing a guest post or writing content for your website, a high-quality piece of content with strong keywords will usually drive traffic, leads, sales and links. 

If you’re writing articles that aren’t useful for your audience, they won’t return to read your posts. So, after you finish your first draft, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is this content of high quality? 
• Is there inside my content solution to a specific problem my reader has?
• Can the reader quickly understand my content?
• If this content is somebody else content, will I link to it? 

If you respond with yes, you are ready to go regardless if this is content for your website or part of your guest posting process for link-building purposes.

Be Consistent

Whether you’re building a brand with your content or the purpose is to build links, content consistency is king.  

Remember that content marketing is about being consistent, not just in terms of what we write, and publish but also in the quality of what we produce. To do this, we must consistently set our standards and hold ourselves to them.

5. How To Know When Search Engines Release Updates On The Algorithms

Google and other major search engines change their algorithms hundreds of times yearly. While most of the updates are not major, search engines occasionally roll out major updates like Google Penguin and Google Panda in the past. These have the potential to affect the search results tremendously. For the great link builder, knowing the dates when Google and other search engines update can help explain the fluctuations in rankings and organic web traffic and eventually improve search engine optimization for link building.

In summary, numerous other skills are essential skills of a great link builder. But for starters, it is vital to learn how to evaluate websites for their general relevance or pertinence and authority. Secondly, any link builder must know when search engines release their algorithms’ updates. You can get specific details on Google updates when you search online if you want to stay up-to-date with these changes.

Any reliable SEO company should have link-building professionals with at least these two skills, besides the numerous others required. So, don’t hesitate to seek the help of these professionals.