What Are Link Building Experts Telling Businesses To Do In 2019?

The quest to attain links never ceases. Businesses need to make sure that they nurture backlinks for their websites to remain competitive for keywords and satisfy search engine algorithms. Whether handled in-house or through professional link building services, securing high-quality backlinks remains a cornerstone of SEO success.

Just like the rest of the SEO world, though, link building strategies continually change. Here are some insights from industry experts that could help companies outperform their peers.

Image Link Building

While most SEO services focus almost exclusively on text link building, image link building is becoming increasingly important. What’s more, it can help you take advantage of all of the time and money you put into your photography. 

Let’s say one day you’re doing an image search and you find that another company is using your image on their sales pages. This situation might trigger you to fire off an angry cease and desist emails, but is that the most strategic option? 

Not according to Brogan Renshaw, an SEO professional at a small digital marketing firm. He says that businesses should view situations like these as an opportunity to gain a link. 

If you find that another site is using your digital images for commercial gain, then a polite email asking them to provide a link to your website is a great strategy. Point out that the image is yours and copyrighted, and that if they want to continue using it, they need to create a link. Otherwise, you’ll tell Google, and it’s bye-bye to their high ranking. 

Find Authority Site Links, Then Offer Better Alternatives

Here’s an idea that comes from digital marketing strategies Josh Gallant.

Let’s say that you’ve found an authority website that happens to link to what you consider a low-quality page. Instead of raging about how unfair the world is, just create a new page that improves on the original. Then, once the page is up and running, send an email to the website, pointing out that you feel that your content provides their audience with much more valuable material.

Also, don’t just stick to one website. Use SEO tools to find all of the pages that link to a particular article and then use that to build a list of sites you’ll target, asking them to link to your pages instead. This way, you cut down on the risk that all your hard work will be for nothing. Surely at least one website will link to you, right? 

Target Unlinked Brand Mentions

Many companies are surprised to find out just how many people are talking about them online. And we’re not just talking about angry review forums. No – it turns out that you probably have quite a few mentions across the web if you go rooting for them. 

Don’t just focus on media sites – although these are good – see what influencers out there have mentioned your name and then asked them to link to you. You could receive a dozen links per day, from merely reaching out to those who’ve talked about you online. Plus, all the links are legit – no need to worry about upsetting the algorithmic gods.