How to build links for success in 2015

Linkbuilding in 2015 requires a truly strategic and quality-orientated approach for content. We’ve included a run-down of our approaches to link building below, which are tried and tested as part of our content marketing strategy.

Improve pillar content

Have you seen lots of useful but homogenous content around your area of expertise? The best approach to build links is to rewrite that content but in a better manner, offering further commentary, more detail and your own slant on things.
This approach is not restricted to textual content: it applied to audio, video and other visual content, such as infographics.

Curate, don’t create

A healthy mix of curation is perfectly valid link bait, particularly if your publication of content gives credit (and, dare we even say, flattery) to the original source.

The benefit here is two-fold: your website or blog houses some quality content whose success you will have already assessed—whilst the reference out to the original source is likely to solicit a return, inbound link.

Use your press contacts

Whilst this approach doesn’t always yield the highest rate of success, helping a journalist with your own data or input to substantiate their claim is an excellent strategy to get some links on very authoritative sites. What’s more, the only thing you require here is your own experience about a certain subject and some outreach or media relation skills.

Offer testimonials for links

Another way to use your existing popularity or authority in your own field is by giving out testimonials in exchange for links to your site. This is the model upon which blogger review agreements have seen individuals turn their online space into businesses.

Scale Broken Link Building

Broken link building is not just about your site, but it’s also about making the world wide web a better place for all users. If you can scale your broken link building efforts, you can see much better results from it, earning links from reputable sites in your niche on aged, powerful pages.

To dial up your link cleansing prowess, use an SEO software tool such as Moz or Ahrefs, or a sitecrawler such as ScreamingFrog, to analyse the link profile of high authority sites. Some of their links will inevitably return a 404 (page not found) error, so the onus is then on you to contact them in a helpful manner, suggesting alternative content (i.e. yours) to which they might link instead.

Use quizzes and competitions to build links

Using engaging quizzes is a great way to collect emails—and also works for link building. Engaging quizzes are still engaging content, and like other forms of engaging content, have the ability to acquire links naturally. If you promote your quiz or competition across social media and via other bloggers, the effect of your link equity will be exponential.

Interested in exploring these approaches further? We’re always up for a chat!

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