If you are like most small business owners, you operate on a shoestring budget, but you need the marketing budget of a large company to ensure that enough people in your target audiences are aware of and buy your products or services.  What are you to do? One way of reaching out to the masses in your target audiences is through link building. Link building is the process of giving your corporate website greater legitimacy by linking it to those websites that are established as authorities in your industry.  Many link-building strategies abound, but some have been successful, and they are the subject of this article.

Using original data and research:

Websites are ranked in organic searches based on the quantity and quality of their external links.  In fact, link building is one of the most important SEO metrics in terms of SEO rankings. One key link-building strategy is to use original data and research on your corporate website because this is crucial in terms of earning backlinks when guest authors use your data and research in their own blogs.  In fact, this link-building method is the most effective link-building strategy, being effective 70 % of the time.

It is not difficult to employ this strategy on your website, and consists of five steps:

1. Researching a topic your target audience wants to read about
2. Conducting independent research and making compilations of your findings
3. Publishing your research
4. Writing free content for others based on your findings
5. Promoting and sharing your findings

Paying for backlinks:

Some methods include paid product reviews, official sponsorships, and guest content creation.  In fact, research shows that this method is fruitful 68% of the time. You build paid links on your corporate website by:

1. Using paid links sparingly.  Your web links should consist of mostly organic links with paid links comprising no more than 25% of your total link profiles.
2. Building links slowly and deliberately.
3. Researching target sites extensively before buying their links.  This will help you ensure that the links you do purchase are useful, relevant, legitimate, and legal!
4. Varying your keyword-anchored text so that it is not obvious that you are buying links
5. Always disclosing sponsored posts.  This is to help you earn your visitors’ trust and to keep you from being penalized by Google.

Sharing content on social media:

This method is very successfully used by SEO companies in Mumbai.  In fact, it is the most popular link-building method for companies all around the world, including those in India.  You can build links by sharing content on social media by:

1. Using social listening tools to find your social media audiences.  You use these tools to help you determine the platforms that will earn your product or service brand mentions, and you focus your attention, time, and resources on these platforms.
2. Using social listening tools to find patterns in your content.  This includes looking for such signs of engagement as likes, shares, and comments, and formulating comments based on these to engage your audience.
3. Creating high-quality content your audience will be interested in.  
4. Sharing and promoting this content.  This will give you global exposure because both you and your audience will be promoting the content.  
5. Remarketing your content – this increases exposure and increases following numbers and conversions.  This is done by retweeting and resharing content and sharing it on numerous social media platforms at once.

Use videos to build links :

This method works 66% of the time because many of your backlinks will end up belonging to Google when you create videos due to YouTube’s shared platform.  Many company owners have been very successful in creating professional videos which they then share on their social media pages and platforms. You can build backlinks with videos by :

1. Sharing and promoting self-made videos on social media to increase their visibility and the visibility of your corporate website.
2. Reclaim some of the links that YouTube earned to use for your content and your website

Link build by publishing industry-specific interviews :

This is the fifth most effective link-building method which is effective 65 % of the time!  If you interview key people and professionals, it will add more professionalism and legitimacy to your corporate site because your viewers will appreciate your efforts and the information and insights they can glean from these interviews.  They will then be more likely to boost your corporate website’s popularity and profile by sharing it.

In order to publish an impactful interview, you need to interview key influencers and customers in your industry, and you need to ask those questions that will uncover the successful business practices and other information your customers will value.  This will keep your customers and visitors coming back for more. You create interviews that will gain backlinks by :

1. Creating interviews around those topics that people in your target audience want to know about.  You include those influencers that are movers and shakers in your industry to add credence and power to your interviews.  
2. Preparing your questions ahead of time to ensure that you obtain those answers that will satisfy your viewers and satisfy the burning questions about your company and industry that they may harbor.
3. Being flexible.  While you need to be prepared to redirect your interviewee should he or she meander, you want to make the interview seem natural and spontaneous.  You do this by sticking to a general outline, and by asking for further clarification and elaboration should your interviewee(s) say something off-script that is interesting and valuable.
4. Publishing your interviews to ensure that the world knows about you and your work
5. Promoting and remarketing your interviews on social media platforms to ensure that they get maximum exposure.

While there is no one magic bullet to link building, some strategies and methods will gain your company’s website those valuable links it needs to market and promote itself well to those in your industry’s target audience.  This can be considered to be valuable and free marketing and promotions because it informs the world about your company and its products and services!