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In SEO, white hat link building is the best way to build quality links to your website or blog. Given that so many black hat techniques offer great results but leave your website with a bad ranking, it’s better to stick to this less risky approach. Here are four steps to do white hat link building:
4 White Hat SEO Link Building Techniques
1. Create High-Quality Content
To be successful with white hat SEO link building, you need to create high-quality content. The content should be written for people and not just for search engines. Essential elements are relevance, interestingness, and informativeness. For example, consider the following snippet of text:
“The best place to go shopping in London is at John Lewis on Oxford Street. This shop is situated at 300 Oxford Street, near Marble Arch tube station.”
This example is good quality because it’s informative and easy to read. In contrast, look at the following text: “If you’re looking for a shopping destination in London, then John Lewis on Oxford Street is the place to go.” This example fails because it doesn’t provide any helpful information.
2. Create Links on Your Website
Self-Referencing Links
When you visit a website and see that some of the words or phrases are in a different color than the rest, those words or phrases are links. These links are called self-referencing links because they link to other pages within the same site. Self-referencing links serve two significant purposes:
- They provide a way for visitors to navigate your website and find relevant information.
- They let search engines crawl through your site more easily and quickly understand what each page is about.
There aren’t any rules for how many times you should add self-referencing links on any given page, but remember these guidelines:
- Your text will be easier to read if your sentences don’t contain too many links to other pages on your site. The average is two internal links per 500 words. If you have longer sentences, one internal link would be a fine per sentence; if you have shorter sentences, two or more might not look too crowded (especially if they direct users to different pages).
- The text of your link should make sense contextually about the content around it. For example, suppose you write a blog post about using social media marketing techniques (i.e., search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising). In that case, the phrase “search engine optimization” makes sense as an anchor text that points back to another relevant page on your blog or business website (like a landing page designed specifically for learning more about search engine optimization).
3. Become a Contributor to Other Blogs
One of the best ways to attract reputable links is by writing authoritative content for other sites in your niche. Use the search terms “[topic] + write for us” or “[topic] + contribute” to find publications that accept contribution queries. Once you have found a site that accepts guest submissions, you need to craft an irresistible pitch:
- Read through several posts on their blog and familiarize yourself with their voice and tone.
- Make sure your proposed article fits the style and quality of articles already on their blog.
- Don’t be afraid to suggest an article idea even if it’s not listed as an example or topic area on the submission page (as long as it fits within their general sphere of coverage).
- When pitching, be brief but specific about what you plan to cover in your post.
4. Guest posting
Guest posting is a win-win strategy. You write a blog post for another website and get a backlink to your website. You can use your content (i.e., a blog post you have written) or create new content for the guest post.
Conclusion
Link building is a daunting task for most small businesses, but don’t let that deter you. It’s not challenging to implement essential link-building campaigns, and it can be just as effective as more complicated methods. It takes a little know-how, time, and patience. Many entrepreneurs and small business owners have proven these four steps many times. It would be better to try out Vazoola’s white hat link building service for your link building project.