Building up your link profile is an integral component of any B2B marketing strategy, regardless of what others may say. However, most companies find it extremely challenging to develop a backlink strategy and then actively pursue backlinks.
Strengthening your link profile might pay huge dividends. Our backlink approach is responsible for a large portion of our organic traffic growth. There was really a position created here for the sole purpose of authoring guest pieces. (8 a week if you can believe it). That’s how strongly we feel about it.
Without further ado, then, let’s get down to the strategies. If you want to increase your number of backlinks, use these 10 B2B link development strategies.
Scholarships Can Be Obtained Through Outreach-Based Backlinks
This is a fantastic approach to helping kids while also gaining valuable inbound connections to your site. Google has long recognised that sites with a.edu or.gov domain are credible sources of information. Many businesses routinely engage in this practise.
Building a scholarship application form is as simple as making a page for them on your site. (we did this through Google Forms). We then contracted an Upwork data miner to scour the websites of over 180 schools for names and email addresses associated with their financial aid offices and marketing/computer science departments. Apply for scholarships in the same field(s) that your company does business in.
Links to Wikipedia
Getting links to your blog entries from Wikipedia’s high-authority articles is an excellent strategy. Do a fast search on Google for the appropriate keywords. Check the top-ranking Wikipedia article for your term to see if there are any gaps in coverage that you’ve filled in your blog post.
Here’s a terrific primer for editing your first Wikipedia article. Not all links will be accepted, but if yours is relevant and helpful, it has a strong chance of staying up!
Packed Icons
It’s a good idea to commission some bespoke icon sets from your company’s designer (whether in-house or outsourced). Icon packs can be uploaded and distributed through a variety of online platforms. If you want others to use your icons elsewhere online, you should ask them to provide a link back to your site. Even if just half of the individuals who download the icons connect back to your site, the low barrier to entry (especially if you already have custom icons for your site) makes this strategy worthwhile.
Recovery of Links
Another method that doesn’t involve much physical exertion is this one. (although it does require some outreach and data mining). Reclamation is the process of locating unattributed mentions of your brand online and contacting the owner to request a connection back to your site.
Constructing Affiliate Links
The last strategy in “Outreach” is very close to what Brian Dean calls the “skyscraper technique.” While Dean does things in a particular way, we prefer a slightly different sequence.
Before publishing any new material, we conduct a quick search on BuzzStream using the article’s principal keyword to locate at least 25 relevant articles. Once identified, the authors can be quickly added to a “project” in BuzzStream. Let’s pretend we’re employing this strategy in an article about link building. We’d start a BuzzStream project dedicated to link building and invite writers who have recently published articles on the topic.
Infographics
Infographics tend to become viral when shared. (or at least good ones). HubSpot has even dedicated THREE blog entries to the topic of making great infographics that people will want to share.
To increase the number of “guest blogging” chances with minimal additional effort, infographics are a terrific tool to use.
The procedure is outlined below. Make an impressive infographic as a starting point. Then, just like you would with a guest post, inquire via email whether any related sites would be interested in hosting your infographic. (as you have similar audiences, and their readers may find it insightful). You may also volunteer to compose an introductory essay that serves to contextualise the infographic.
HARO
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a fantastic resource for distributing your connections to a wide variety of websites. Writers and contributors alike make use of HARO. The best part is that participation is completely free of charge. When you sign up to be a contributor, you’ll receive three emails every day with a wide variety of content ideas.
Just write a little paragraph answering their question. If the author decides to use your input, they will link back to you.
Blog Commenting
When it comes to increasing your organic search rankings, I find that guest blogging is the most effective link development strategy. As I indicated before, we have an entire member of our expansion team whose sole responsibility is to write guest blogs.
However, much as on a forum, the point of a guest post shouldn’t be to spam links. If you do, the editor will likely get frustrated because you forced him or her to go through and delete every single one of them without disrupting the natural flow of the piece.
If you’re going to guest post, make it your mission to reveal cutting-edge strategies.
Conclusion
Building links is a time-consuming process that is rarely viewed as glamorous but may have a significant impact on your site’s organic search engine rankings if done correctly. However, keep in mind that you may have to wait awhile before you start seeing results. Organic expansion, however, is possible provided you apply the aforementioned eight strategies with diligence and consistency.
