Building Links for Your Business: 4 Expert Tips

Do you have a documented link-building strategy for your business? If not, you may be missing out on countless sales and engagement opportunities.

A well-rounded internal and external linking strategy comes with unique benefits that can help your business thrive. Both internal and external links can enhance brand awareness, improve search engine optimization (SEO), and help business owners build their reputations in over-crowded industries.

On the other side of the coin, brand owners and marketers who don’t have focus on building links see significantly fewer sales and less traffic than their optimized counterparts. If you need additional context on the negative impacts, consider this; 91% of businesses never receive organic traffic from Google because they don’t have external backlinks. 

Today, I will share several tips that will help brand leaders and new entrepreneurs improve their link-building strategy. I believe the advice offered here can be applied to your brand, regardless of industry, budget, or resources.

Are you ready? Let’s get started! 

First, let’s talk about internal linking. Essentially, an internal link is a clickable link on your site that leads to another page on your website. The goal is to guide users to content and products that match their specific goals and pain points. These links can also help reduce your bounce rate, which can improve engagement and sales. 

One of the best ways to build a solid internal linking strategy is through your blog. This is because a whopping 77% of internet users read blog posts online. You can use your content marketing strategy to connect with your customers, build trust, and convince them to take action. 

Blog posts should resonate with your audiences’ goals and answer any questions they may have about your product or industry. You’ll find opportunities to create new posts and further evolve your internal link strategy as you gain a better understanding of your visitors and their specific needs. 

It’s hard to stress the importance of deciding how, when, and where you’ll link to other articles across your site. Choosing the correct anchor text and article for context can significantly impact whether visitors click through to read the second post. More importantly, it will also determine if they find the second article helpful. If your internal links are not relevant to the text, you may end up confusing visitors, which could result in them leaving. 

You’ll also want to consider how many internal links you include in each post. I suggest sticking to 3-5 internal links per 1000 words as a general rule of thumb. 

Once you begin building links across your blog, visitors will start clicking internal links and spend more time engaging with your brand. As a result, they will discover new content, offers, and promotions and have an overall better experience on your site. 

Community engagement can help you get more external backlinks while building rapport with new prospects and existing customers. There are countless ways to talk to people involved in your industry or interested in your products or services. 

You could get started by visiting websites like Help a Reporter Out (HARO). HARO allows online publications and journalists to reach out to experts across all industries for full-length interviews, as well as one or two quick questions for an expert roundup article. 

Start by looking for industry-specific questions and answering them to the best of your abilities. Next, include a link to your website in your bio, and submit your response to the publication. If your answer is selected, you’ve just added an external link to your site and continued to build your reputation as an expert.

Social media is perhaps the best way to get involved with your people from your industry. Over 4.55 billion people use social media globally, and that number is increasing each year. I suggest getting involved with existing communities on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and, depending on your industry, LinkedIn. 

Engage with people who have questions, ask your own questions, or simply share your thoughts on opinion threads. Also, look for opportunities to share posts from your site to help community members if you have an article that pertains to one of their questions. 

While direct links on social media don’t count as a true backlink, it will help spread brand awareness and will likely lead to people sharing links to your content in other places.  

Many reputable online stores and publications link to other sites to add context to their blog posts and build partnerships. Common examples include statistics, tutorials, or detailed guides. Over time, some of these sites shut down or decide to delete the linked post. Now, the reputable brand has a dead link on its site. 

If the anchor text matches a topic you have on your site, you can step in and take ownership of the broken link. Additionally, if you have a suitable replacement, such as an updated statistic, this could help you convince website owners to change active links to a backlink to your brand. 

There are plenty of benefits that come with broken link building. Here are some of the advantages worth mentioning: 

- Build your reputation by getting backlinks on high-profile websites

-Advance your SEO strategy by replacing competitor links with your own

-Improve brand awareness and visibility in the community

-Form partnerships with other publications, which could lead to future business opportunities

The best part about the broken link strategy is you don’t need to have a piece of content ready to go when you find a dead link. If you spot a broken link, spend a few days creating a new article with relevant content, then reach out to the publication and ask if they would like to use your article as a replacement. 

When you email the person running the site, tell them a little about who you are, what you do, and how you want to help. The editors and business owners running these sites typically receive hundreds, if not thousands, of emails every day. Your email should be concise and clearly describe what you would like to happen next. 

The last link-building strategy I want to talk about today is writing guest posts. Simply put, guest posts are articles written by business owners or marketers for other businesses. Ideally, the two companies have a similar target audience and, therefore, will both benefit from a surge in traffic. 

For example, an email marketing SaaS might reach out to a hosting company to see if they would like to work together on blog content. Most people who need to invest in a website host will also need email marketing software, so this strategic partnership makes sense. 

I suggest looking for publications and brands that have an audience with similar goals and pain points. At the same time, the other company shouldn’t directly resolve the same problem that you’re trying to solve with your product or service. 

Once you find brands that you would like to partner with, send out a few outreach emails to see if they are interested in accepting a guest post. Similarly, some businesses work together and publish content on each others’ sites. This type of reciprocal writing can help both companies improve their traffic, boost engagement, and even skyrocket sales. 

There’s a good reason 60% of business owners write 1-5 guest posts every month! 

There are plenty of ways to build external links while developing your own internal linking strategy. In my experience, the most challenging aspects are developing detailed customer personas and finding the right partner website. 

If you’re able to create fully realized customer personas, you’ll have an easier time coming up with new, relevant blog topics. As a result, it will be easier to create internal links that add actual value for your readers. 

Finding the right partner is all about research and options. Don’t reach out to one or two companies; think bigger than that. Many of the responses you send likely won’t get a response. Of those that do respond, most will not be a good fit for one reason or another. Reaching out to more brands means you’ll have more options to pick and choose link partners that align with your goals and target audience. 

The last thing I want to say is that seeing growth from link building takes time. You won’t notice an immediate difference in traffic after getting one or two backlinks. However, if you’re committed to building backlinks and developing your internal linking structure, you can expect to see long-term benefits that make these strategies worthwhile.