Introduction
Today’s internet is highly creative and interactive as compared to earlier internet which was made up of static pages without much interaction. Users nowadays expect living sites that react to them and give visitors a chance to affect the status of the page.
Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ have become household names as they provide a platform where users can upload their profiles, publish content, share images & videos, chat with friends and connect to people all over the globe.
In this scenario, it is imperative for every site to remain connected with the social sharing media in their link building campaigns. Without providing users a chance to connect to you via social media, you cannot think about existing in the SEO world.
Let us discuss important methods to gain worthwhile links via social media.
I) Attracting links through blogs
Blogs are primarily an online conversation medium. Blog topics are quite varied, there are blogs on entertainment, fashion, lifestyle, digital marketing, technology, products & services, and the list is endless. Every site sets up a blog and updates it regularly with fresh content. The existence of a blog improves user engagement and strengthens customer service.
Blogs provide users a place to put forth their views, pass comments or links. Other users can reply to such comments.
An important point to remember is that blog comments do not usually pass any link equity. Most blog software programs apply a rel=”nofollow” attribute to every link by default, hence anything in the comments section is not counted by the search engines.
Blogs benefit you when someone writes about your website or company and then links back to you. Such links are gained and lost very quickly. You may see an increase in traffic for a day, but as the blogger updates his content, your link is yesterday’s news.
All these facts do not reduce the importance of blogs. You need to publish blogs on topics that are highly relevant to your website’s subject themes. Do not publish blogs for the sake of publishing it and gaining quick links because search engines consider it spammy and may punish your site harshly.
You can not only publish blogs on your website but also write as a guest on other websites that are related to you. If you have a copywriting website, guest posting on a PPC marketing website is quite useful. You get in front of a new audience.
When you provide high-quality content on newer sites as a guest writer, people will enjoy your blog and may follow a link back to your own website.
Blogs have proved to be trendy interactive platforms where a large audience connects with you. Out of such a large audience, there may be many who may remember you, decide to check out your website and wind up giving you links from their websites. Such kind of relationship link building is slower but a surer process and these kinds of links stick longer.
II) Gaining links through social news sites
A social news site such as reddit or digg just does not provide news but they allow readers to vote and decide which pages, articles, stories are the most interesting and entertaining.
You can make your articles and webpages easily post on social news sites by including a social share button on the page.
When readers find an article on your site highly interesting they will click the social share button of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn where they can write a short description of the news or article and then post it to be shared across the web.
With time, effort and good luck your webpage or article may rise to the top. It brings in huge traffic but it is shortlived. This is because news sites are continuously and constantly updated however there are possibilities of gaining a few permanent links.
When you decide to build links through social news sites, consider your target audience. Select the news sites which cater to the mindset of your target audience for e.g. a techno-centric website should post articles on the technology-oriented Hacker News.
III) Generating high traffic through social networking sites
It is not only important to create entertaining and informative videos, podcasts, images but you also need to optimize these Engagement Objects on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+.
If you have a content-rich video, post it on a video-sharing site like YouTube. People may see the video on YouTube, read your description and may follow the link back to your site.
It is essential to create creative and engaging media content. Give something worthwhile to read, view, listen, enjoy and share it across social media channels.
When people find your content enticing, they will consider your site relevant enough to follow and recommend to others. This is how you gain media links naturally over a period of time.
Remember to publish your content under the creative commons license (www.creativecommons.org). This means you allow people to use your videos, images, etc. for free as long as they provide a link back to your site.
People are more than happy to provide such links.
Social networking sites provide great avenues for branding and reputation management. Websites strive hard to build a strong following on Facebook to keep themselves updated about what is being said regarding their brand and respond quickly.
One important thing to remember while optimizing your webpages for social media is that you should surely utilize the opportunity to specify the image and the text you want to show up in a Facebook preview and customize it for viewers to click through to your page. (learn more about at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/best-practices/).
Twitter also has a special code that you can add to your pages to customize the appearance of your content when it is shared on a tweet. (learn more about at https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/tweets/optimize-with-cards/guides/getting-started).
An important term in the context of social media networking is viral. When a certain piece of content suddenly gets a lot of mention and links, it is said to go viral.
The majority of links to viral content generally come from social media networks. Viral content will also generate links from static pages like news websites sharing that content with the readers. These are the links that have a greater positive effect on a page’s search engine rankings.
IV) Incorporating interactivity
These are the tools that can be incorporated into all kinds of websites that let visitors interact with your site. Social share buttons for Facebook, Twitter are widgets that encourage visitors to join and follow your businesses’ Facebook, Twitter page right from your website.
You can also use other kinds of custom widgets such as quizzes, polls, sports updates, stock market tickers etc. Cleverly you can turn any idea into a widget but that idea needs to fit into your overall website theme.
A funny, involving and entertaining widget must have a comment section wherein the participants interact with each other. Even if the quiz or poll does not actually mean pretty much, it helps community building and brings you plenty of links because all the widgets feature a link back to your site.
Conclusion
Building high quality links is very essential to prove the authenticity and expertise of your site.
You should encourage your customers, other writers, your employees to post blogs on your site which serve as sources of fresh content to gain worthwhile links.
You also need to be active on social news sites and social media platforms for building brand awareness and connecting with a wider audience.
So go ahead and use these tips which will surely prove very beneficial in your link building strategy.
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