To maximize visibility in organic search results for industry terms, brands must increase ‘domain authority’ with Google. This is often achieved by securing a meaningful quantity of inbound links from high quality websites trusted by Google. While SEO companies often rely on begging for or buying links for clients, a strategic approach can be far more effective: leveraging public relations best practices. The following article outlines best practices for securing both quantity and quality inbound links from local business directories, publications, and industry websites.

Here are 20 effective ways to build links to a website recommended to achieve higher rankings and organic traffic to your website.
1. Conduct Competitive Analysis: Research competitors’ link profiles and reach out to sites linking to them that may also be relevant for your site. Tools like Semrush and BuzzStream can help identify link opportunities with or without competitive information.
2. Promote Existing Quality Content: Promote your new content across social media, email, and other channels to increase natural shares and links. Make content highly shareable.
3. Leverage Unlinked Brand Mentions: Audit the web for mentions of your brand that don’t include a link and reach out to ask for a link to be added to the mention. This article provides a helpful overview. Brand24 is a helpful brand monitoring tool.
4. Submit to Directories: Submit your website to reputable, niche-specific directories. Be cautious with this approach, as overusing directories, especially low-quality ones, can have a negative impact on your SEO. Here is a list of the top 50 free business directories as a starting point.
5. Explore Sponsorships: Sponsor industry events, publications, or other high-authority sites relevant to your audience in exchange for a link.
6. Monitor Your Backlinks: Regularly monitor your backlink profile to ensure that links are of high quality and that there is no toxic or spammy links. Tools like Google Search Console and Ahrefs can help with this.
7. Reclaim Old/Dead Links: Reach out to sites that used to link to your site but no longer do, and politely ask them to reinstate the link or add a new one. Secondarily, identify broken links on industry websites pointing to 404 pages and offer to replace them with one of your relevant pages. Use tools like Ahrefs to identify broken links.
8. Participate in Online Communities: Engage in relevant online communities, forums, and discussion platforms. Provide helpful answers and insights, and when appropriate, link to your website as a source of additional information.
9. Build out a Resource Page: Identify websites that have resource pages related to your niche. Reach out to the website owners and suggest adding your content or website as a valuable resource.
10. Utilize Giveaways & Contests: Running competitions and giveaways that encourage links as part of the entries.
11. Collaborate with Influencers: Partner with influencers or bloggers in your industry for collaborations or features. Influencers often have a wide reach and can help you gain exposure and backlinks.
12. Create High-Quality Content: The foundation of any successful link-building strategy is creating valuable, informative, and engaging content. When you publish high-quality content, other websites are more likely to link to it naturally.
13. Create Linkable Assets: Develop valuable resources, such as research studies, calculators, ebooks, or tools that are relevant to your niche. Create helpful, resource-style posts with lists of links to other useful sites and resources. Make sure to include a brief description for each link. Promote these assets to gain natural backlinks.
14. Create Infographics and Visual Content: Visual content like infographics can be highly shareable. Create visually appealing and informative infographics and share them on your website. Encourage others to use it and link back to them.
15. Secure Guest Blogging Opportunities: Reach out to other blogs and websites in your industry to contribute guest posts that include links back to your site. Focus on high-quality sites with good domain authority.
16. Secure Links via Email Outreach: Identify websites or influencers in your niche and send them personalized outreach emails. Explain why your content or website would be valuable to their audience and request a link.
17. Leverage Your Network: Build relationships with others in your industry, through social media, events, etc. and swap links where relevant.
18. Create Ego Bait: Mention influential people, websites, or products in your content and then let them know about it. They may share or link to your content to showcase their inclusion.
19. Utilize Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI): Create accounts with ChatGPT and Bard for researching links, building databases, outreach scripts and compelling, linkable content.
20. Tap PR: leverage public relations activities, including press release distribution, speaking at industry events, syndicating articles on industry websites and pitching the media as a subject matter expert via free platforms including HARO and Qwoted, although there are additional options available.

Once the above strategies are consistently implemented over time, your company will see an increase in domain authority, resulting in higher rankings, increased traffic and ultimately, sales. The key is to focus on building genuine, editorial-style links from quality sites, not just spamming low-quality directories. Vary your link building strategies over time and monitor success with link tracking tools. Regardless of your level of marketing savvy, development resources or budget, these time-proven strategies will give you an edge over your competitors over time.

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Building A Foundation
The first step in developing an effective SEO+PR strategy is to create a dedicated News Room – a dedicated resource for the media and analyst community. Typically consisting of FAQs, backgrounders, press releases, event calendars, awards & recognition and links to coverage, the online News Room is a one-stop shop for the press, yet it also provides value to prospects, customers, partners and peers. The 3.0 News Room may include “socialized” elements including a dedicated PR-focused blog, social profiles and even rich media content like webinars, images, audio, video and a Google News Sitemap. Don’t forget to enable your News Room with social “share” buttons for all relevant content, since social signals are a key factor in rankings (and certainly improve viral shareability). Over time, it’s also advantageous to develop a library of blog posts, articles, presentations and even books that validate your commitment and industry credentials. Those truly interested in building “pundit” or “guru” status should understand and maximize Google’s AuthorRank.

Developing A Story
Without complete synergy between the SEO and PR teams, creating and promoting compelling content can be challenging. Google news & trends are the natural places to initiate story research and development, as both offer insights into keywords and concepts essential to any successful search and PR campaign. Once an idea is formulated, the next step is to conduct detailed research to identify industry influencers across publications, blogs and the social graph. While keyword and directory research may create an initial list of candidates, thorough vetting of individual and organizational credibility (PageRank, Klout, etc.) is recommended to help refine and tier your list. Once you’ve finalized your list, leverage knowledge of their personalities, areas of interests (or beats) and previous writings (which may include competitor mentions) to formulate a compelling “pitch.” If direct outreach may not be ideal or effective, consider leveraging your network or the community by seeding forums or blogs with key messages and supporting content to foster a groundswell of support. Continue to facilitate conversation even after the initial goal is achieved (i.e. coverage, link or citation), as long-term relationships are the backbone of effective PR programs.

Building Authoritative Content
Beyond building a well-designed News Room and conducting regular outreach to your targeted media list – a truly successful SEO+PR campaign includes regular development of foundational content including press releases, articles and speaking engagements. To ensure proper momentum with PR activities, create, optimize and syndicate press releases on a monthly (or otherwise appropriate) basis. Press releases can still be effective at generating visibility in news search engines and social media, which in turn helps fuel inbound links, even if they do not directly result in coverage. For maximum visibility, consider utilizing a paid service like PRWeb to distribute the press release, and include rich media elements like photos, audio or video. Paid services offer more advanced reporting beyond basic distribution, including views and clicks. To maximize visibility on industry publications and blogs, become a regular guest contributor. If you’re internal team lacks the bandwidth or skills to regularly produce timely articles, consider hiring a freelancer or even an industry pundit (budget and regulatory issues aside). Lastly, submit for relevant speaking opportunities, as they not only build industry visibility and credibility, but also generate high-quality inbound links from bios and session abstracts on event sites. The same is true for industry awards and certification opportunities.

Securing Authoritative Links
Regardless of the level of diligence surrounding initial research and message crafting, at the end of the day, a SEO/PR campaign’s success ultimately relies on the quality of the “offer” which may vary based on the topic, business, objective and messenger. More than a decade ago, I worked for a consumer electronics e-retailer and quickly realized I could not compete with Best Buy’s marketing muscle. In order to compete for awareness, links and traffic, I sent sample product to key influencers for review and promotional purposes. In one case, I sent two digital cameras to Chris Pirillo – one to give away to as a partner promotion and another to “review” (which we did not ask him to return). The result was exposure to hundreds of thousands of potential buyers through the review and giveaway, and ultimately tens of thousands of dollars in sales (tracked through affiliate links). Alternative offers that have a similar ability to gain attention include limited trials, product demos, special contests or promotions. Companies lacking the ability to discount or give away product are relegated to creating compelling, unique content the target influencer would be happy to share (think Red Bull Stratos). When the “earned media” approach fails to produce a desirable link, consider securing strategic sponsorships that offer inbound link opportunities (often with a greater level of control over anchor text and link destination).

Measuring Success
The traditional PR measurement model, which I learned about early in my career, focused on the equivalent advertising value of coverage (usually in column inches of ink). Conversely, traditional SEO measurement models focused on rankings for targeted terms and resulting traffic to a website. Both fall short of more compelling goals like an ability to effectively generate qualified leads or sales. Somewhere in between, consider measuring the quality of links (PageRank) and direct traffic from those links (via analytics and marketing automation). To maximize the impact of all your hard work, do not forget the critical last mile: syndicate all optimized PR content (press releases, articles, rich media, etc.) via social and other marketing channels, including any resulting coverage. Remember to “vote” for your SEO/PR content on third party websites via social share buttons. For bonus points, also track citations/mentions and analyze sentiment to truly understand the overall impact of your SEO+PR efforts.

By following the five steps outlined above, you will see a meaningful increase in quality inbound links, resulting in greater industry visibility, authority and ultimately revenue. As an SEO+PR professional who’s built an entire digital marketing career including 4 businesses and 2 organizations with this approach, I can tell you it works quite well.

Related Articles
How to Become a Social Media Guru in 3 Easy Steps
SEM PR – When Search Engine Marketing Meets Public Relations Part 1 and Part 2
Online Reputation Management: Seven Strategies to Build Your Brand

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Link Building for the SEO PRofessional

Speakers:

John Andrews – JohnOn.com
Adam Audette – AudetteMedia

Moderator:

Todd Mintz

Liveblogger:

Nick Herinckx of Anvil Media Inc, a Portland Oregon SEM agency

Session Details

General Link Building

• The old saying, “build great content and links will come naturally” just isn’t true, there is so much great content on the web that nobody knows about.
• In order to get inbound links, you have to not just build great content, but advertise and promote that content to the people that control the links. If you do just one or the other, you will be disappointed.
• Social media is an excellent way to reach the people in your niche that control the links and is also a sufficient way to promote your great content.

Link Bait vs. Link Magnet

• Link bait is something that’s created to simply attract links regardless of the niche or relevance to your site.
• Link magnet is something that is on-topic to your site, and while it doesn’t attract as many links, it will attract the “right” links, or links from people in your niche.
• You should seek to create link magnets for sustained long term results

Types of Content

• In order for your content to be link worthy, it must be remarkable, not just great.
• Remarkable content is something that isn’t just useful, but is both unique and fun/engaging to use. Infographics use to be remarkable, but now everyone is doing them. Seek to create something that stands out from the crowd.

Link Buying

• If you want your site around and ranking for a long time to come, then don’t purchase links
• If you just care about ranking as fast as you can and won’t be too upset if your site gets banned or slapped, then it’s okay to buy links, just don’t be upset or surprised when you get caught
• The truth is, rules on link buying aren’t enforced equally. Big brand, well known sites can get away with a lot that a new site or small brand could never get away with simply because of their brand. This isn’t fair but is the way it is.
• There is a lot of gray areas with link purchasing, such as sponsorships or banner ads, and there are no definitive answers as to what is considered acceptable link purchases. Best to play it safe.

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