Modern Link Building Alternatives
Link building is part of an SEO strategy. Although there are some claims that it’s no longer a valid strategy, link building is still a vital element if you want to earn significant rankings in search engines.
Even Google confirmed it that inbound links were included in its ranking factors. However, what Google confirmed was the modern link building and not the old practices that were once effective.
What are those obsolete practices that you should never apply to your site and what current alternatives you can use?
Link exchanges
They’re an old tactic that requires two sites to set up a link exchange. Sites that agree to a link exchange would have to link to the other to improve authority. But this tactic involved dozens or hundreds of sites that complicate the link networks.
Because of that, Google blacklisted those sites that participated in link exchange. Instead of asking a valueless exchange, try giving your readers value by agreeing to conduct interviews with the other sites in your industry.
Each participant in the interview will have a link and visibility out of the deal made.
Links in forums
It used to be effective. But Google will penalize your site for it if it catches you. Instead of just posting a link to your website to any post in a community, try actively participating in it. When you become a respected person in the community, that’s the time that you’ll include links to your own site whenever it’s appropriate.
Links from forums don’t add much value to your SEO. But they can drive significant traffic. It’s especially true if the links are posted by a trusted member of the community.
Article marketing
Article directories used to be an excellent opportunity to accumulate links. In this tactic, you’d include your link somewhere in the body of the post.
Unfortunately, Google’s algorithm shunned article directories. Thus, they rarely appear in search results. And when you have links from the article directories, they may result in penalties for the sites that they link to.
The worst thing is that article marketing is considered as spam.
Instead of using article directories, try to convince external publishing sites to publish your post. But you need to meet their standards by providing well-written, unique content that’s valuable to their readers.
There are plenty more modern link building strategies that you can try to earn links naturally. But don’t try those black-hat practices again if you wish to gain more online visibility.
It’s important to gain more links from authority sites, but you need to make sure that you’re bringing value to your audience. That must be your top priority.
