How To Leverage Quality Backlinks To Build Relationships
Link building is undoubtedly the foundation of SEO. Quality links have the potential to earn you higher rankings, increase your online visibility and fetch traffic for your website. But there’s much more they can do, including something as important as establishing trust and building relationships for your business. High-quality backlinks build authority for your website, which naturally translates into audience trust.
Together, these elements enable you to forge connections that often lead to lasting, mutually-beneficial relationships. And these relationships are not just confined to your customers but extend to peers and niche influencers as well. Since relationships provide real value to any business, you should surely go the extra mile to build them. Here are some ways you can leverage quality backlinks to build and consolidate your business relationships.
Link-worthy content is the starting point
Building quality backlinks is all about creating pieces of link-worthy content. Essentially, any piece that serves as a resource for the users who want to find solutions to their questions is link-worthy.
It sounds simple, but there is much that goes into creating such awesome pieces! Does the topic cover the interests, problems, and questions of your audience? Have you included target keywords in the content? Is the content enriched with valid statistics and information that is actually helpful? Does it have engagement value in terms of user-friendly format and value of information? Are you going to promote it the right way? You need to cover all these areas to create content that is truly link-worthy.
Engage and interact
Publishing high-quality, link-worthy content is just half the work done. If you want it to build relationships for your business, you must absolutely engage and interact with the audience. Rather than posting your blogs without any noise, you need to be present and responsive when the audience connects with you.
vBe conversational and answer the questions and comments on your post. Don’t keep conversations one-sided and post comments to others’ content to engage in authentic discussions. Maintaining active social media profiles across all social platforms is a great idea. As a part of your social strategy, like, share and retweet posts to increase your visibility across these platforms.
Be authentic as a real person
Though link building is seemingly a technical tactic, the human touch becomes invaluable when it comes to building relationships. After all, people trust real people more than they trust brands. Showing that you are real is essential for relationship building.
Once again, engagement is the key but adding a human element is the true differentiator. Add a face to your name with a picture on the About Us page and social media pages so that the audience can see that you really exist. Don’t confine yourself to online relationships but build connections offline as well. Attend relevant events and meetups in the industry so that you connect with influential people. This can boost your chances of earning backlinks naturally.
Focus on building backlinks naturally
Anything fake will not bring value for your branding initiative and this applies to link building strategy as well. Being natural is the key and this is something replicated by a link profile which is a mix of backlinks from high authority and low authority sites. Relevance is significant and so is following the right practices. You can go through https://seojet.net/blog/link-building-myths to understand the link building mistakes that you should avoid. A natural profile wins the trust of the users as well as search engines because it makes you appear genuine. And this is also important for building relationships with your audience.
Have trust markers on your website
Backlinks drive users to your website, so you must obviously have something good for them when they arrive. Having the essential trust markers can make all the difference when it comes to making a great first impression and establishing a trust for your brand. Trust signals can be explicit and implicit.
The explicit ones include testimonials and awards that your brand has garnered during its existence. Similarly, elements like the About Us page and the Terms and Conditions page bring transparency. The implicit trust signals are the ones that make an impact unconsciously. For example, professional design with clean navigation makes your website trustworthy. Comprehensive and current content on the site also acts as an implicit trust signal.
Link to other trusted sources
High-quality links are the ultimate means of earning trust. Linking out to trusted sources in your content is the secret to building a stellar link profile. If you stay isolated, the audience will see you with suspicion. Obviously, they would not want to buy or build relationships with any business that no one is vouching for. Rather, connecting with others encourages them to connect back to you and this interconnectivity acts like online advertising.
And the best part is that you need not spend a fortune on this strategy. High-quality content and niche-relevant links is all that you need to fortify the bonds with your target audience.
Remember that trust is earned
Finally, as you leverage backlinks for relationship building, remember that trust has to be earned. Going slow and steady wins the game because relationships are not built overnight. Instead, they have to be nurtured over time. One-time interaction will not take you anywhere, rather you need to be persistent with your efforts to pursue and connect with the audience. This shows that customers really matter to you and also that you are making genuine efforts to establish lasting relationships with them. Earning trust will benefit you the other way round as well because people who trust you will naturally want to link with your website.
Using backlinks to build relationships with your current and potential customers requires consistent efforts and an out-of-the-box approach. Having genuine intentions and replicating them in the content used for link building is equally vital. So you must be willing to go the extra mile for creating high-quality backlinks with truly immersive content that engages your audience. Despite the efforts involved, this is something that you must absolutely do because relationships foster long-term business growth.
