Link Building for Startups
Effective Link-Building Strategies
Choosing a marketing strategy should be based on what aligns best with your goals and complements other marketing efforts. You can combine various strategies to form your optimal path for the development and promotion of your startup.
Guest Publications
This classic method involves creating quality content with anchors and links to your site. Publish this content on blogs related to your themes, ensuring a resonance between your products and the hosting company’s themes. Be cautious when selecting partner sites:
- The partner’s blog should be in a related field for maximum organic backlinks.
- Choose partners without spam, easily verified using specialized SEO services.
- It’s better to place one backlink on a high-traffic, high-CTR site than 10 links on resources with a questionable reputation.
- Remember, when creating guest publications, your primary goal is not advertising but providing useful and informative content that benefits your target audience.
Leverage Site Mentions
If someone has mentioned your startup, shared their impressions, or provided a recommendation, ask them to include a link to your site. Dofollow links are preferable, but even nofollow links have value.
HARO (Help a Reporter Out)
Participate in HARO to gain more backlinks. In this case, you can act as an expert to whom journalists and reporters turn for consultation. Register in such projects to organically receive backlinks when journalists prepare materials with your assistance and support.
Podcast Creation
Create a podcast where you can share industry news, talk about your project, and maintain consistent communication with potential clients. This not only gets you backlinks but also serves as excellent brand promotion. If you don’t have your podcast yet, offer to be an expert on other podcasts — it works equally well.
Choosing the Right Link-Building Strategy for Startups
The above are just a few methods of getting backlinks. Additionally, you can work with influencers, offer PR materials to online publications (if you have press contacts), and explore other promotional avenues. To choose the best option, analyze how your competitors are doing it, the methods they employ, and which of the listed strategies work best in your industry. You can also combine different methods to achieve the best result.
Content Development for Link Building
Content is of paramount importance, both the one published on your site and the one used to acquire backlinks. Quality content adheres to the following criteria:
- It helps achieve your goals, introducing the benefits of your product and the positive aspects of your brand.
- It is unique, created independently.
- It provides valuable solutions and addresses the pain points of potential clients.
- Materials offered should be easily digestible and structured and include images or infographics that resonate with readers.
- It contains keywords and phrases relevant to your potential audience’s search queries.
Link building and content promotion are long-term games, so it’s crucial to consistently offer readers relevant information, news, and other valuable materials for your success in promotion.
Building Relationships and Outreach for Link Building
The saying goes, “If you want to go far, go together.” Establishing partnerships in your industry, collaborating with colleagues, and building reliable relationships with those in similar businesses is crucial. Your resources can link to each other, reaching a relevant audience and gaining more benefits each time. Establish such connections at specialized conferences, exhibitions, and other events, both online and offline. You can also create a compilation of companies in related industries that don’t directly compete with you but share a very similar audience. Reach out to the administration of such sites and negotiate the possibility of mutual advertising, providing a solid foundation for your promotion.
Utilizing Social Media and Influencer Marketing for Link Building
Social media is an excellent way to get links to your resources. Links can be placed in stories where they are clickable. Also, leave links to your site in the bio. If you frequently share valuable content on social media, establish relationships with influencers and industry media. It becomes an excellent way to enhance the recognition of your startup, become known, and get many organic links. When collaborating with influencers, remember that a large number of followers doesn’t necessarily indicate quality. Sometimes, advertising in smaller blogs with an audience of up to five thousand people can be more beneficial since the blogger actively interacts with their followers, and they trust the recommendations.
You can also offer sponsored content by launching advertising campaigns. Targeting allows you to not only increase traffic but also reach an interested audience ready to become your customers.
Optimizing Internal Link Structure and Utilizing Resource Pages
While working with external link sources, it’s essential to optimize the internal linking structure of your site. This navigation system prevents users from getting lost on your site and helps them find everything they need within a few clicks. Moreover, it’s crucial for site indexing. Ensure that:
- Visitors can return to the homepage or main section from any page.
- The distance from the homepage to the farthest page is no longer than 2-3 clicks.
- If you offer many products in different categories, consider adding a filter system to prevent users from leaving your site due to navigation difficulties.
- Place a search system on the homepage for quick content or product searches instead of manually browsing catalogs.
Lastly, monitor the quality of all links. If you encounter issues with internal or backlinks, address and fix them. For internal pages, you can perform technical work independently. For broken backlinks, contact the administrators of the site containing the link. Ask them to fix or replace it. Keep an eye on the quality of your link profile using specialized tools like Ahrefs.
Conclusion
Your path to success may differ significantly from the methods used by other startups. The key is for it to enable your development and advancement confidently. Use organic promotion methods for the best results, leaving gray-hat and black-hat methods to competitors who quickly sink into the vast ocean of the search network. Gray methods are easily traceable by search engines, and such sites fall under filters. So, be cautious. In SEO promotion, it’s sometimes better to move slowly but have a confident and stable outcome than to quickly rise to the top only to fall down without a chance of return.