How to master link building: trends, tactics, and impact on your business

You have certainly found controversial info on link building on the net. Under the flag of Google penalizing active link building, quality content is all you need. Simultaneously, some would sell you domains so you can build links.

We don’t want to lean towards either of those, so we’ll provide diverse opinions. 

Even though we put quality content first, you can only maximize ROI by building links and carefully checking the ratio between DR and donor site traffic. The question is, which approach to follow?

In this article, you’ll learn some statistics, and decide which approach suits you best. Questions covered:

1. What are the trends in link building?

2. How does link building affect your business?

3. What are the tactics in link building?

4. What is PBN and how can you grow your link profile?

Another quick disclaimer: never be fooled by misleading metrics; always choose the SEO experts you work with carefully.

What are the trends in link building?

For your site to show up in high positions on Google, you need some other sources to put your links. As long as there is SEO as we know it, there is link building. 

In vice versa, your inbound linking profile tells you how trustworthy your resource is.

However, Google Senior Search Analyst John Mueller said during Briton SEO in 2022 (source: Search Engine Journal): 

In a way, link building has become an even more important part of the promotion strategy than ten years ago. 

The answer is quite simple because the competition is only growing, and to compete with high-ranking sites, you need to build up your link profile. 

According to a Serpstat survey of 523 professionals with an average of 3 years of experience in digital marketing, the use, strategy creation and effectiveness of B2B and B2C strategies are different. 

Although it’s clear that link building is a crucial part of SEO whether it’s B2B or B2C, 14.3% of B2C don’t use link building, and 42.7% of them don’t have any link building strategy.

On the other hand, only 55.7% said that link building brings high results for SEO. 37,8% gave a medium to low rating, with 6.5% giving a low score to the effectiveness of link building.

How does link building affect your business?

• Boost search engine positions: When high-quality, high-authority websites link to your site, it can improve your position in search engine results. A high rank in search engines can attract more potential customers.
• Build up authority: links from reputable sources can increase the perception of your brand as an expert in its field. For B2B this can be an especially important factor when deciding to work together.
• Increase traffic: the more high-quality links leading to your website, the more users can click on those links, increasing traffic. This can lead to more sales, especially for B2C companies focusing on the end consumer.
• Extend your reach and build relationships: Link building can help expand your reach by connecting you with new audiences. It can also help you build long-term relationships with key players in your industry.
• Improve brand awareness: Getting links from high-quality sources can also increase your brand awareness, leading to stronger customer loyalty and market position.
• Generate leads: For B2B companies, link building can be a tool to generate high-quality leads (potential customers), as companies and professionals often search for partners and suppliers over the Internet.

Which tactics are more efficient in link building?

• Content marketing: if you create quality, informative content that adds value to readers, there is a good chance that other websites and resources will link to it as an authoritative source of information.
  How to pick a helpful content strategy for you: How to write content that sells. Part 1
• Guest posts: Publications in various publications and media outlets where you serve as an expert on a particular topic.
  We have an excellent guide on guest posting: Guest Posts: A Win-win Marketing Tactic. Jump in.
• Outreach and expert articles: This method is very similar to guest posts. The only difference is that outreach is usually the author’s initiative, while the website commissions guest posts.
• Social media links: External links to your website from social networks give signals to search engines about the popularity of your website.
• HARO (Help a Reporter Out): HARO is a bridge between journalists and experts in various fields. Journalists contact HARO with requests for information or expert opinions on a particular topic, and experts, including company representatives, can respond to those requests by providing the necessary information. 
• Advertising and PR: Paid publications in trusted news sources are an excellent way to increase search engine rankings, provided you have enough budget, because mainstream media charge a lot of money for promo materials.

According to the same study, some link building tactics give the most impressive results. Content marketing is the most popular – at 22.9%. Not far behind is guest posting in second place with 15.2%. Rounding out the top three are HARO (Help a Reporter Out) and expert reviews, which accounted for 12.4%.

What is PBN and how can you grow your link profile?

PBN (Private Block Network) tactic works better than guest posts because it costs a lot less, and you get a lot more links and link weight for the same price, which of course means you get results faster.

Read what it is and why you need it here: PBN Ultimate Guide

Unfortunately, this is a bit of grey area. So if you don’t work with an experienced SEO expert, you can quickly get into trouble by over-optimizing your anchors or negatively impacting your brand’s rankings using PBNs.

Moreover, if you’re not careful, you’ll be penalized, and your site will be banned, so you’ll have to start the journey again.

Good thing is that we at Scale Final know our roll with PBNs. We have a great team of PBN specialists that can create a high-quality and 100% secure network for your project!

If you want to build links yourself, here’s the steps:

You can create your micro niche sites on expired domains and then use them to fuel your main sites. Follow these steps: 

• Find an expired domain with history and relevance in a related niche,
• Buy that domain and salvage any content that might be of value,
• Pick out 20-30 low-competition keywords that are related to your main site keywords. You can carefully use AI to create content.
• Re-link the articles and add images,
• Add links from several other pages to your main landing pages that you want to rank,
• Add 2-3 links to authority sites and YouTube videos for extra credibility.

What’s the point?

In the next few months, the articles will start to rank and bring in highly relevant traffic. You now have authority and link power (since you bought the expired domain) and hyper-relevant traffic from articles linking to your domain.

Total cost?

Usually between $100-200 per domain. Create only 5-10 such domains for a niche with low/medium competition and watch your positions increase.