The Power of Links to Your Website
2024 is almost here, and a better economy is just ahead.
You’re reading because looking for that one thing that will boost your business leads and sales prospect pipeline. Normally, we’d say there is no magic bullet. However, there is one thing that could power up traffic, leads, sales and even customer loyalty — links to your website.
Those business owners lacking confidence will look for other business boosters but they don’t have the traffic-building power from Google. To both rank and draw more targeted traffic to your site you need 4 things:
Advanced SEO + Great Content + Links + Time = New Customers
Pundits and experts alike talk too much about content quality, when backlinks have always been the most important factor for big success on Google. Links and mentions on other top sites and influencer blogs provide credibility, trust, authority and even some extra, good quality leads when they click through to your site. So links are a big thing. But wow, are they tough to acquire now.
Prepping the Largest, Consistent Producer of Customers Online
Yes, Google is the largest producer, creating 80-90% of traffic to most websites. After 25 years, it’s still producing and this won’t change.
However, with Google tightening its search ranking algorithm further each month that passes, publishers are finding it more difficult to keep the traffic and rankings they have. Obviously, we all have to do more to maintain our fountain of leads.
Those who live and die on fresh quality content and newsy content updates to rank on Google search, find it difficult to achieve consistent traffic, rankings and leads.
Google prefers to keep newsy items only for the major news sources, and push bloggers and company news posts down in the lower pages of search results. Google only responds to complete rewriting of posts, so they’re presenting more challenge to lower quality sites to keep their traffic.
Ranking Power Drives Traffic and Lead Quality
High rankings do more than deliver traffic though. They actually capture the most desirable leads. Top-ranking websites grab them all.
Websites with very strong ranking power (domain authority and trust created via links) create quality leads and more of them. Their traffic is steady, which shows the power of inbound links to produce consistent exposure on the most important keyword phrases (which are competitive). And that ranking power can be used strategically by an advanced SEO strategist to focus on different customer segments simultaneously.
So you might see how some crafty veteran SEO can get a stranglehold on everything.
The Business Concept of Links
Think about the concept of links. A link is about creating connections and paths where value can be exchanged. Your business might need to change from an isolated competitor to an active participant. And that’s where pro-level linking building comes into play.
Links are that powerful, but so difficult to obtain. Most corporations get their inbound links through millions spent in ad campaigns, publicized partner activities, sales events, and massive content generation. That’s a really expensive way of dominating Google’s search results.
There’s a Better Way, and it Needs to be Properly Funded
There’s a massive link-building industry, but most of it generates low-quality spam links. It’s not just that this involves buying links on websites (which is against Google’s user guidelines), it’s that they’re so low quality. The majority of link builders work out of India and Pakistan, and they’ve built more host sites through the sheer size of that link-building workforce.
But in the final analysis, the sites and links created are junk. It’s a waste of money and time.
To do link building and traffic building and capture the very best customer leads, you must have a big budget and execute the strategy expertly, hitting and leveraging all campaign objectives. It must be done as a separate project, mapped out to achieve objectives together and strategically. It is a challenge.
Many businesses won’t invest money into PR and link building which means they will never be market leaders. 25 years after its launch, Google still supplies about 80 to 90% of all traffic to websites. Even direct traffic is often the result of previous Google exposure.
For top Google exposure to the best prospects, you must do professional-level link-building.
Is Market Leading Content Going to Do It?
I want to say the best content wins, but it actually doesn’t. The fact that thin, slanted content from the major corporations is what B2B and B2C audiences read and engage with every day tells us the truth — money does win over quality.
Of course, if you pour money on top of great marketing talent, you have the capacity to dominate a market, better than low quality plus money. The end result is massive financial success as my hotel client, sports product brand, branding consulting, US moving company and entertainment sector clients discovered in the past.
It enabled and inspired them to launch new products and strive for bigger marketshare. The benefits just seem to pile up.
Whatever the quality of your marketing strategy and content, big money is what powers it. Without money, your content marketing sits there hoping to rank and get seen.
Promotion and link-building are Critically Important
You definitely choose exciting, impactful, helpful content as your top link-building asset. That’s what users and Google wants so you won’t have get tricky or fight desperately.
But first, your content has to get seen by the right audience. And now all readers/visitors are interested in blogging and linking to your great content. You have to further sell the idea of sharing, talking about, and promoting your content.
Link Building and PR Agencies
Today, there are a number of link-building businesses that combine significant efforts to reach and establish links on relevant websites for you. I’ve posted about them before, and this bears repeating.
Although the cost is $3k per month minimum, that’s a small fraction of what some clients will realize.
When you have a link-building budget however, you don’t just hand it over to a link builder. You must have skills too, and work with the link builder actively to get the best results. This means coordinating your content strategy and output to resonate with what they’re doing.
This is the part that none of them offer to do. They often just want your money and to do it by themselves with their system, with offsite content publishing into the network of connections they have.
But they don’t have the right, specific network connections for you and your industry. So together, you must help them find that audience and craft a top-notch value proposition for your target audience. A link builder’s system is valuable, but you must manage them well.
Connecting to the Big Industry Players
Connecting and partnering with the top “authoritative sites and social influencers” is a big part of this too. This is where the top companies in your sector get their ranking power.
Further, to get reach to them you will need a strategy, collateral, and time to work with them. That will include targeted boosts of your best engaging content on social media to boost and promote (trading value for value). Sure, you’ll have your videos, downloadable pdfs, product comparisons, special offers, and your special selling proposition to break inertia and get action.
To break inertia, you have to be more visible. Boosting posts and doing paid advertising to your target audience gives that extra special exposure that builds their intent and gets them focused only on your company/brand.
These are the promotional, pre-sales activities that can generate real leads. So, if you combine advanced link building as a sales-generating tactic, you can fund it with new sales leads and revenue.
There are many more tactical activities you can undertake to build your leadership, but for market-leading growth, link-building delivers the most end profit.
Are you financially enabled and ready to build your company’s market leadership? There’s never been a better time to plan and capture it for the next economic bull cycle.
Call Gord at 416-988-6246 to discuss a powerful SEO strategy and link-building effort that’s going to create benefits for 10 years or more.