At the end of the day, Search Engine Optimization is meant to increase your rankings. To get there though you need a good site, great content, and links. What often happens though is that if you do SEO right, business relationships pop up. What I have found is that conducting search engine optimization has brought about those treasured underlined blue fonts to get directed to your site, but it leads you to people and businesses that are more than willing to start a relationship with you. Today, I’ll take you through how SEO and link building helps get your business not only ranked higher, but it get you more connected.
Linkscraping Finds Links, But Who is Behind Those Links?
Part of an SEO’s job is to help find link opportunities that can direct ranking signals and traffic to your site. What often happens though is that you’ll find organizations, blogs, or community organizations that have linked to your competitors because of a sponsorship or joint program. Take advantage of this opportunity and contact that company to see how your business can contribute and get a link on the site as well.
Real World Example
I’ll give you my favorite example of how link scraping and prospecting helped get one of my clients a wealth of value:
I help a local family restaurant with their SEO. The restaurant is a relative newcomer to the city while most businesses in the area have been there for decades. So it is an uphill battle. While doing some link prospecting, I came across a local event page that continually linked to our competitors year after year. It was a local community event. Of course, I sent over an email and wanted to see if our restaurant could be a part of this local event so that not only could we get more exposure, but also to get that link. Little did I know that the event was held by the Chamber of Commerce. What ended up happening was that they gave us a spot in the event and in exchange they also provided us a free year membership to the Chamber of Commerce.
Within the first week of finding that opportunity, we got a link, a place in the local event that featured hundreds of guests, in addition to a free year membership in the chamber. That seemed like some awesome value for just a link. This is not considering the fact the Chamber of commerce membership has led us to many opportunities in the community, including working with local schools and partnering with businesses.
How Do I Get These Relationships with the Links?
The biggest key is to remember that these links are more than links. There is a webmaster or business behind that site who has an organization that they are running or projects that they need to maintain. Treat each link with an idea about how the business can benefit as a whole. Yes, it does take time.
Asking 10 people for a quick link is much faster than trying to figure out 10 different ways to cater your business to a certain program, but you need to think of the long term. If you can create programs, deals, or a system that benefits another business, you will not only get the link, but you will also potentially build a traffic source for your business. This will eventually create a relationship between the two businesses that will create a long-term relationship where link-building is much easier. You both would be more than happy to update links and send each other referral traffic.
Keep this all in mind. If you’ve hired a digital marketer or SEO to work for you, let them know you’d be happy to cater your business for long-term relationships. If you are that marketer, when you find these link opportunities, assess whether or not you can get more value than just asking for the link. Businesses always need more traffic. Strategic partnerships allow for that.
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