The winter holidays are just around the corner, which means most people—consumers and businesses alike—are beginning to think about the best ways to show they care. For many, presents to loved ones are high on that list, as is participating in volunteerism and charity, but for organizations, there is one way to give that doesn’t require excess time, money or energy: link building.
A critical component of any SEO strategy is building links, which directs a search engine’s spiders to your web assets and thus allows you to rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). Typically, you focus your link-building efforts on getting your links and content into the world, sometimes at the expense of other websites and publishers. However, being a generous link-builder can be beneficial in a number of ways. Here are a few ways you can give good cheer while link-building this season—and reap the rewards for it.
1. Contribute Guest Posts
Guest posting is the practice of writing content that will be published on someone else’s blog or website. Instinctively, you might think of this as a waste of time; wouldn’t your efforts be better spent populating your own website with content? But the truth is, offering content to other publishers around the web is a great way to gain links that point users (and Google’s spiders) back to your business and web assets. You might include information about your business’s products, and at the very least, you should have one or two links pointing to product or information pages on your site.
Google doesn’t always like guest posting, so it is imperative that you do it right to avoid unnecessary penalties. It’s a good idea to use a content marketing service like Digital Current to build links and share content safely and effectively. Otherwise, your efforts to give content and build links could backfire.
2. Create Content About Community Involvement
Your business can be a significant positive force in your community by contributing money and volunteers to important causes. This season, you should take stock of charitable organizations in your area that fit with your brand values and image and coordinate with them in one way or another. You might sponsor a holiday giving event or incentivize your employees to contribute their money or time.
You could let this good deed go unnoticed—or you could leverage it for link-building. Part of your partnership with the cause might be that your business received featured content on the organization’s website as well as attention on social media. At the very least, you should create content to post on your business blog and social pages to show how your business gives back this time of year.
3. Provide Freebies
Sure, you can clear last year’s swag out of storage by offering free branded mugs, flash drives and T-shirts, but that doesn’t really help your business gain prominence on SERPs. Instead, you should consider a seasonal sale on digital content, which could create a frenzy of activity on your website and raise your ranking for the duration. Some examples of free content you might offer include:
- eBooks
- White pages
- Case studies
- Webinars
- Podcasts
There are SEO benefits to removing the paywall entirely and giving visitors free access to your best content. For one, more people will engage with that content, giving your website more traffic which draws Google’s attention. Plus, more users will post and share organic links to your content, helping your link-building strategy tremendously.
4. Rate and Review Others
Your business isn’t an island; it utilizes countless services and products to operate efficiently. Undoubtedly, you have opinions about most of these services and products, and leaving ratings and reviews—even offering testimonials—can be a great way to build a business network that enhances your link-building efforts.
This is especially true if you utilize a new or small company, which might be wanting for encouraging words and thus is likely to feature your review or testimonial on their homepage with a link to your website. However, you should be careful not to include links to your web assets in the body of your review because this can be seen as spam and harm your SEO.
Businesses can benefit from the season of giving, even when it comes to building more links. By maintaining a positive attitude and being creative with your content, you can raise people’s spirits and improve your SEO from now until well past the holidays.
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