How link building works for small businesses

Link-building is an essential part of SEO because it helps Google find and index web pages, and indicates the page’s authoritativeness. This impacts the page’s ranking position on Google SERP.

Google uses backlinks as votes from other websites telling Google that content is trustworthy and valuable. Therefore, acquiring backlinks from high-quality websites increases domain authority. Furthermore, it improves the ranking position and increases organic traffic. 

Even though it’s challenging, link-building is undoubtedly worth your time and resources.

In this article, Aleph Website discusses the best ways of acquiring backlinks to your small business, which leads to more high-quality traffic and a better ranking position. 

1. Get the best out of Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a Google notification service that sends emails to users when it finds new results containing a user’s search term. 

This is a great tool that can tell you what is said about your brand on Google and any topic or keyword, hence, it helps you get insights into your link-building opportunities and get relevant backlinks. 

You can set up to 1000 alerts with each Gmail account.

1.1. How to start with Google Alerts

When you visit the Google Alerts page, you’ll see the option: Create an alert about…

Here, you can type your domain name (alephwebsite.com), or any topic or keyword you want to monitor (content marketing).

Next to the ‘Create Alert’, you can find ‘Show Options’ where you can find a list of settings you can customize:

• How Often (as it happens, as most once a day or at most once a week)
• Sources 
• Language
• Region
• How many (all results or only the best results)
• Deliver to (your email address where you will receive notifications)

This way, you can narrow down your broad searches and find the most relevant results for potential backlinks. 

The most effective ways to optimize your searches are the following:

• Use very specific phrases
• Search domains
• Include negative keywords by adding ‘-’ in front of a term you want to exclude
• Include quotation marks when you use two-word phrases in order to get relevant results.

1.2. How to get links with Google Alerts 

Once you’re done with setting up alerts, it’s time to convert opportunities into links. Let’s dive into different types of alerts

1.2.1. Domain 

This is a great way to see who mentions your domain. You can reach out to those who talk about you but do not link to your domain and ask politely whether they mind giving you a backlink.

1.2.2. Brand Name

It’s the same with a brand name. Once you identify who talks about your brand, you can outreach them. 

1.2.3. Product Names

When it comes to product names, most of the website link to the product web page they mention. If it’s not the case, you can always send them an email to thank them and ask for inserting a link. 

2. Use Broken Link Building

Broken (Dead) link building is the practice of acquiring backlinks by replacing links to 404 error web pages of a domain related to your niche with resources from your website. 

Put simply, they get a broken link fixed in return for giving you a backlink. Thus, this link-building tactic implies the identification of broken links on other sites related to your industry and reaching out to their owners to inform them about a broken link and offering an alternative page.

This way, you offer them to help improve the user experience of their website and overall SEO performance. 

Here’s how to find broken links using SemRush’s Backlink Analytics:

1. Enter the domain and click the ‘Analyze’ button 

2. Click the “Indexed Pages” tab and check the “Broken Pages” 
3. You’ll see all the broken pages and the number of backlinks on each of them

4. When you click the number, you see all the sites that link to the broken pages

3. Business Association Link Building 

Business associations are organizations that bring together all businesses located in one area. The businesses are typically divided into categories related to the niche, such as Art, Entertainment and Culture, Media and Advertising, etc. 

Once you become a member of a business association, you can find an easy way to get backlinks.

In addition, you can find communities across Slack channels, forums, and Facebook Groups in your niche. Be active and make spread the word about your content in order to make others aware of your business.

4. Take an Advantage of Your Ecommerce Store

If you are running an eCommerce store, one of the ways to earn backlinks is by reaching out to bloggers and sending them a free sample of your products.

With testimonials written by bloggers in your niche, you can easily get backlinks that will bring you high-quality traffic. 

5. Create Easily Linkable Content

A great way to earn backlinks is to create content that is easily linkable. Put differently, the quality content that gives others a strong reason to link to it. For instance, that could be a guide for something, an infographic, or other types of content that provide value to your audience. It’s always a plus to experiment with different types of content and see what works best for your site.

One of the most sharable content is an infographic. 

According to Hubspot’s article about Visual Content Marketing Statistics, infographics are linkable and sharable 3x than other types of content. 

To create a high-quality infographic as a valuable linkable asset, you should follow these practices:

• Well-researched statistics: include interesting statistics if possible
• Make it simple: Make sure that infographics are visually-appealing and are professionally designed, but without visual distractions or clutter
• Make it memorable and useful: Always keep in mind the user experience

6. Use the Skyscraper Technique And Reverse Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Technique implies finding content with lots of backlinks and then analyzing all weaknesses of that content in order to create something better and more accurate. 

So, how can you make a better version of content?

• Correct inaccurate information and include those missing 
• Explain deeper (try to figure out what would help users consume content easier)

Unlike the regular skyscraper technique where you have to create new content, with the reverse skyscraper technique you choose a high-quality piece of content already on your website.

summary: how link building works for small businesses

A good link-building strategy is vitally important for all small businesses in order to stand out on Google SERP and increase the relevant organic traffic. Plus, you can find new business opportunities for your business and improve your online reputation.

There are lots of tactics to have a White-Hat SEO strategy and acquire high-quality backlinks. Keep experimenting with different strategies, optimize them and analyze results in order to boost your SEO efforts. 

The most powerful and easy link building strategies for small businesses are the following:

• Using Google Alerts to find unlinked mentions
• Broken Link Building Strategy
• Business Association Link Building
• Collaboration with bloggers
• Creating Valuable and easily clickable content
• Skyscraper Techniques

Suggested Reads

• PageRank algorithm – Why is it still crucial and how to improve
• 6 Most Important Google Algorithm Updates You Need to Know in 2022
• 8 Great Tips on How to Improve Website User Experience
• Google SERP Features You Need to Monitor in 2022
• Effective User Experience Measuring: How Does Google Evaluate UX?
• How to Create a Content Strategy that targets search intent
• How to get backlinks for any small business website?