After the introduction of several new strategies, it has been observed that the recognition and utilisation of our good old “link building” process have suffered a setback. There was an epoch that was said to be a golden era for this strategy, which was used for boosting search engine rankings.
But now, thanks to Google engineers, it has become one of the best strategies that we have on board at present. On different websites, all over the Internet, you would come across recommendations from them regarding not to waste your valuable time on creating offsite links.
All the same, links are still one of the fundamental factors used by Google’s ranking algorithm. However, because Google’s detection of unnatural links has become so refined, many of the old channels of link building are often more risky than rewarding.
Brand Naming
The very first of them is the ‘Brand Mention’ that functions almost like link building. It is considered apposite for those who don’t want to get rid of the older strategies that they are using, but still covet to go for the latest ones that are prevailing in the market. The reason why ‘Brand Mention’ has successfully replaced the previous versions is that it was speculated that the algorithm of the search engines can now detect the mentions of your brand name. After this detection, it would associate that mention directly to the homepage.
The very first thoughts to have emerged in the minds of the SEO specialists were, that now even without a link you can get your name mentioned on several external platforms. They thought that this way, website owners will be able to pass on more authority to the website. The best way to take benefit from this process is by using blog posts as it is extremely easy to mention the brand name there.
No Follow Links
When the strategy of ‘NoFollow Links’ was introduced to the world of the Internet marketing and SEO, it was considered as one of the most impractical approaches that have evolved in the industry. But it, somehow, survived all these years and has now appeared to rank second on the list of factors that have influenced the popularity of link building.
Now, with no-follow tags, you can easily direct Google and other search engines to stop considering the links as a part of their ranking calculations. You can easily build as many functional links as you want as there are no provisions of penalising the users for this.
Social Shares
Various studies and researches have revealed the direct relation between increased activities on the social media and higher search engine rankings. The reason is that the brands that are more active on the social media send a better brand signal to the search engine algorithms. As a result, the search engine ranks improve and along with that, there develops a stronger authority and trust.
The search engines, especially Google, can award credit to your content and rank it higher, if it is shared, liked, discussed about, retweeted, added to favourites, or even commented upon more. The search engines can, thus, show such high-quality content on higher ranks in the search results. Therefore, experts recommend that businesses need to be qualitatively active on the social media platforms that you are using. They have to create high-quality content for their social media campaigns, if they are really serious about using them to get ranked higher on Google and other search engines.
Third Party Reviews
One of the best ways to get improved search engine ranks is by using ‘third party reviews’. Take the example of sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Urbanspoon and several others, and you would notice that search engines flash them higher on the search lists because they receive more “good reviews” than the “bad reviews”. In pursuit to offer better services to the users, search engines pick them and flash them higher in the search results.
Driving The Website Towards Being “Link Proficient” With Content Marketing
There is no denying the fact that having more links from different resources all over the web can play a dynamic role in increasing the authority of your website and its search engine rankings. However, the problem takes place when you start building those links on your own. This is something that is impossible to do under the white sheet as the traces will surely be there. These traces when detected can bring negative impact on the rankings and even accompany some penalties.
Alternatively, a network can be created where other people link to your website without having any direct or indirect association with you. For this, you will have to create extremely high-quality content like infographics, research papers, rich videos, etc. and share them on the leading social media sites of today. Once this is done, businesses can actually accomplish all their goals for better and increased SERPs straight away.
