Is my website ready for link building?

If you are wondering whether your website is ready for link building, you have come to the right place.

This article will explain everything you need to do prior to link building in order to have the best chance at better rankings in the SERPs and what we’re all here for – the potential of attracting higher levels of traffic to your website.

What is link building?

But first of all, what is link building? Put simply, link building is about authoritative websites linking to yours via a hyperlink.

The closer the topical relevance of the third-party website, the more impact the link should have on the results for your domain.

SEO experts say that link building is the third most important factor for search engine optimisation (SEO). But it takes considerable time and effort.

Link building is a strategy that you have to commit to in order to see the best results.

In our experience, founders that commit to a long term strategy and execute a consistent backlink building plan, tend to acquire much better links than their competitors and, as a result, reap the benefits of authority growth and increased organic traffic.

Why is link building important?

• Quality backlinks signal the overall trust of your website, telling Google that your brand is relevant, authoritative, credible, and offers value to users.
• The more links your website receives from credible domains, the higher Google will rank it in the search results for terms relevant to your target keywords (check out our article on link quality vs quantity for more information about this).
• Over time, as you gain more backlinks from highly credible websites, the gain in authority will bring greater volumes of traffic from a wider range of external sources.

Link building takes time, so be consistent and patient. The authority and traffic will come if you lay the foundations correctly from the get-go.

When is my site ready for link building?

Not all websites are ready for link building. Many startups assume that they should start link building as soon as their website is live, but this is not always the case. Instead, there are numerous factors that first need to be addressed.

If you want link building to have the greatest impact on the success of your brand online, it is important to:

• Improve your on page SEO
• Create an optimised user experience
• Optimise your site speed
• Create quality content and linkable assets
• Set your online / website goals
• Develop a creative content strategy.

Let’s look at each of these points in a little more detail as it related to link building.

You have set your website goals

Link building can be a highly successful form of online marketing, but as with any form of business activity, it starts with your long-term goals.

Knowing what your goals are and how your website can support them before commencing a link building campaign is one of the best ways to ensure success.

For example, you might want to increase organic search traffic to drive more sales through your website, or you might want to focus on long-term gains surrounding authority within your industry over quick wins.

Whatever your goals, setting them before commencing with a link building strategy will help to create a competitive targeted link building campaign that will benefit the growth of your startup by providing an uplift to specific pages on your website.

Your website’s first impression

It’s all well and good having a large portfolio of links pointing to your website, but if visitors follow these links to discover a site that isn’t optimised to their device, is hard to navigate, is lacking in quality content, or simply does not meet their needs from a user-experience (UX) perspective, they will leave as quickly as they arrived.

If you don’t have a website that potential customers enjoy spending their time on, the chances are you won’t enjoy much success from a link building campaign.

Your brand’s online visibility will be greatly influenced by the quality of your website. The more effort you put into building a quality website that meets the needs of your users, the higher Google will rank your website in the search engines.

A few ways to improve your website’s first impression are:

Improve site speed: slow loading sites have high bounce rates. Your website should load within three seconds. Any more than this and you risk losing traffic and potential customers.

In fact, 40% of consumers say they will wait no more than three seconds before abandoning a website. That’s not a lot of time. So, make sure your site load times are speedy!

Engage users with design: eye-catching website designs are attractive and engaging. Work with a professional web designer to optimise the look and feel of your site for a great user experience. Include visual features such as animations, graphics, and videos to attract users in and keep them on the site for longer.

Optimise for mobile: Over 56% of all web traffic comes through mobile phones. If your website is not optimised for mobile, you are missing out on a significant portion of web traffic.

Optimising your website so that it works seamlessly from mobile devices is a great way to better user experience, increase engagement, and convert users into customers.

Build a blog

Before you start link building, you need to have content on your website. Building a blog or Knowledge Hub for your business is one of the best things you can do for your business.

Blogs are useful SEO tools and are an extremely valuable way to engage with new audiences, encourage customer loyalty, create connections, increase online visibility, and increase opportunities for link building.

Ensuring your website is full of unique and creative content is a fantastic way to get your website ready for link building strategies.

Below are some of the ways you can build a blog that people want to link to:

Quality content: Quality content is the key to a successful blog. When search engines provide search results to audiences, one of the ranking factors they use is the quality of content. If you write thoughtful blog content that is creative, unique, and actionable, you will win more traffic to your site.

“For a typical query, there are thousands, even millions, of web pages with potentially relevant information. So to help rank the best pages first, we also write algorithms to evaluate how useful these web pages are. These algorithms analyse hundreds of different factors to try to surface the best information the web can offer, from the freshness of the content, to the number of times your search terms appear and whether the page has a good user experience.” – Google.

Keyword targeting: One way you can help your website be found online is through keyword targeting. By targeting the terms users are searching in Google, you can write content that people are looking for, thereby providing value to your audience. The more relevant your content is to Google search terms and the more valuable what you have written is, the higher you will rank in Google search results. Knowing your target keywords is also a great way to win the anchor text you want.

We recommend targeting long tail keywords with high search volume as they are less competitive and have higher conversion rates, making them a great companion to your link building strategy.

Content strategy: We recommend that, to build a great blog with great content, you need to plan your content months in advance and implement a content strategy. Planning your content specifically in this way is one of the best ways to ensure you regularly publish and promote high-quality content on your site and that you have a database full of specific topic ideas and keywords to target.

Create linkable assets

What are you going to use to attract and earn links to your website? Your assets can also be known as the “hook” that will draw people in and make them care about your business and what you have to offer.

Your assets are what will entice people to link to you. Of course, they will vary from startup to startup, but some examples of great website assets include:

• Unique studies and research
• Valuable content
• Unique industry insights/opinions
• Data or statistics
• Services
• People/Interviews
• Infographics/GIFographics/Map-o-graphics
• Videos
• Online tools and calculators
• Downloadable guides/eBooks
• Industry guides and tutorials

Setting up a collection of great, sellable assets is a great way to give your website the competitive edge it needs to stand out online. By making linkable assets available, you increase your chances of building up your backlink profile naturally.

How professional link building can help you

Is your industry competitive? Do you want to improve your SEO rankings? Do you want to increase your online authority? If you want to give your website the best start possible, you need professional link building.

Here at Hive19, we know what it takes to win great links and we have experience increasing the online visibility of our clients.

If you want to find out how Hive19 can help with building authority for startups, contact our team today.

Ready to start building powerful links?

Scaling a startup can raise numerous challenges, particularly when it comes to marketing and link building early on in your journey. Knowing the best time to commence your link building journey can be difficult. However, we hope the advice covered in this and our other resources and articles have helped.

It is possible to carry out link building yourself, if you have a clear strategy in place and the time and resources available. Alternatively, you can leave it to the experts.

Here at Hive19, we provide link building services that are tailored to startups looking to grow sustainably. We develop unique content and original link building campaigns which will earn relevant links back to your site from the leading publications in your industry.

Using our innovative HiveRank™ system and extensive research process, we can identify the best opportunities for your campaign to build topical authority and provide maximum value for your brand online. If this sounds of interest to you and your startup request a quote to find out more.