Link Building In 2019: What’s New?

If you have spent more than a day working in SEO, you already know the importance of link-building. It is more than just throwing popular links into your writing and seeing what sticks. While it can be said that every SEO situation is unique and that you must tailor solutions to the individual needs of the marketing effort, there are still a few new realities that are facing us all in the coming year.

Think Outside The Box With Natural Links

While blogging remains an important part of any SEO strategy, backlinks to content distribution on social media is growing in importance. Instagram, Youtube, and other platforms that integrate video continue to draw a bigger share of the audience that you need to draw to your brand. Natural linking to sources of content distribution and even utilizing the sharing features that they provide can be a strong source of traffic and engagement. A backlink building service with a proven record of acquiring high-quality links can be invaluable to a business.

Less Viral, More Cure

Viral link strategies have been a mainstay of SEO for more than a decade, and they can be quite powerful when done correctly. However, the typical internet user today is more sophisticated and more resistant to the trivial, emotional, and clickbait tactics of this reaction-based marketing strategy. As the audience is deprogrammed from the cult of distraction, the key is to provide backlinks that are as useful as they are attractive. This shift has caused a lot of pain as search engine algorithms have become more sophisticated and integrating AI that privileges originality and engagement over other factors such as backlink quantity or so-called relevance. Instead of using well-worn viral marketing strategies, position yourself as a cure to the common marketing virus by creating useful content that is likely to be shared naturally.

Think In Terms Of People

Should you link to your competitors? This has been a tough question posed by SEO strategists since the beginning of the discipline. While it makes rational sense that associating closely with the industry you want to be associated with is beneficial for SEO purposes, there is a school of thought that says that it gives the competition entity an advantage and may not result in reciprocal benefits. In may make more sense to engage in a direct fashion with the people you are in competition with rather than the organizations they represent. Linking to the social presence of luminaires in the industry through informational resources such as Linkedin or their personal blogs can be a powerful backlinking strategy that can cultivate a respectful and mutually beneficial virtual relationship.

Be The Change You Are Looking For

It may seem too easy to just say “be a trailblazer,” but there is a lot to be said for becoming the kind of site that you would want to link to. Presenting yourself with authority, relevance, and a dynamic sense of purpose will be the best way to ensure that others are linking to you and that you will not need to go begging when it comes time to build links. Think deeply about what kinds of sites you have linked to in the past. What are were qualities of the website that brought you to that decision? Were there others that were interesting but didn’t make the cut? Why was that? Sometimes the best way to dominate the discourse in the public forum is to become a forum onto yourself. Don’t be afraid to push the envelope when the envelope needs to move in your direction.

Keep User Experience (UX) At The Forefront

You would be surprised how much user experience can push ranking in a search engine. Advanced AI in search engines is closely analyzing factors such as bounce rate, which is a measure of how long users remain at a site. In many ways, this has more of an impact on search ranking than the volume of visitors. In addition to this dwell time, click through rate on keywords that you associate your site can benefit you in search results and give you credit even for searchers who visit other sites using the same search term. Search engines are obsessed with UX, and you should be too. SEO can be tough and everybody needs a hand sometimes.