There is an endless amount of free and paid resources out there to learn link building. The problem is that some of these resources are too difficult, time-consuming, or expensive for beginners. Affordable link building services are few and far between, and it can cost upwards of $5,000 from a freelancer to even start your link building campaign. You have probably spent enough time reading blog posts and scouring forums for the secrets of link building. Wouldn’t you like to start off on the right foot? In this guide I will show you how to make the most of your link building efforts and get the best results for your business.
What is Link Building?
One of my previous posts gives a good definition of what link building is: “As a marketing strategy, it’s using quality links to drive traffic to your website.” To put it simply, you want people to link back to your site so that Google will notice you.
How To Learn Link Building Without Losing Your Mind :
1. Learn about the Link Building Process
The first thing you will need to do is learn about the link building process. The most important thing is to learn this process in a way that works for you. There are countless methods of building links and getting them recognized by Google. You will have to find what works best for your site, and then adjust accordingly.
2. Join a Link Building Forum
Once you know what type of link building you plan on doing, join some forums that have similar goals or ask around in the SEO Community to find people who can help guide your learning process. One forum I recommend joining is Search Engine Journal’s Forum community, which covers all types of SEO related topics including link building.
3. Read Link Building Articles
Spend time reading articles on the subject of link building. Use Google to search for “link building articles” and start clicking around. Read through them and decide which ones you feel will give you the best starting information. You can learn so much from other people’s link building experiences, so take some time to see what they have done and why they did it. There are some really great bloggers out there that specialize in link building, such as Michael King of Search Engine Journal who covers a variety of topics including link building here and here .
4. Read Blog Posts
What is your best resource for learning about link building? Well, if you answered “other people’s blogs” then, like me, you may have trouble finding the exact answer. If you go to the comments sections of blogs about link building, there are a lot of valuable tips. You can start by searching Google for “link building blog comments”.
Then read through the tips that show up and see which ones seem to make sense to you. Over time though you will eventually develop an eye for what types of links that inspire action from Google. Once again just like with forums and articles I recommend reading them all by scrolling through the comments sections on blogs and being patient as new posts come in.
5. Build Resources and Graphics
Look, I can’t tell you how to learn this stuff. I’m not a link building expert. That being said though, I do have some advice for you that may help you gain confidence as you continue your journey. When it comes to link building there are a few things that can affect rank, and Google knows this. In order to rank your content, Google will look at many things including backlinks, page rank and the length of your content (I’ll explain what each of those mean in a bit).
So just like other aspects of SEO that help with rankings, such as title tags and Meta descriptions, there is another resource for you to use: images. Yes, the images on the web. Image tags are not as important for rank as they used to be (thank goodness), but they still are a factor. If you can use a few good images to help with your content and place them in a few strategically chosen places, Google will be able to recognize what you’re doing and take notice of your good link building efforts.
6. Develop an Eye for Good Links
As I mentioned before, you need to develop an eye for what links work best with Google. The main way to do this is by going to search engines such as Google and Bing and seeing what types of links do well in popular searches. Are there a lot of images being linked to? Is it a link to a good blog post? What types of images are getting linked to most often in your niche? These questions will help you develop an understanding of what links Google will pick up on and how many positions these links can give you.
