External Link Building for a New Website
Links to a new website would be unnatural in anything but small numbers. Sites will naturally gain links over time. Google would probably treat large numbers of links as very suspect, so do not deliberately build any!
Links are very important in SEO search engine optimisation, in terms of importance links are maybe second only to search intent or relevance within Googles algorithm.
How should a new site proceed with links?
The best way forward is to “be helpful” by that I mean filling in the gaps in knowledge from other top ranking sites. Suppose Brian Deans “backlinko” site had written an article where he shows several ways to do say backlinking.
In the article, although all the methods were listed, one of the methods was not fully explained. That would be a ‘gap’ and you could write THE expert – all encompassing explanation of THAT METHOD. Filling in the gap.
Then you could write to Brian and hopefully get a backlink from his site. If not then you could post on all the Forums, plus Medium and Quora, about your article and get links that way.
So this is the way to build backlinks, not asking for them for no reason, not paying for them, or agreeing some sort of link swap or begging! But by ADDING good, valuable content, which others would be happy to link to.
Add your Social Media Profile and Local Business links
Most businesses should have all the usual pages, set up and working with some level of content on them. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…. etc. When your site is brand new, with zero links it will be in the ‘sandbox’ establishing trust for a while, adding these initial links can help to shorten the period.
Google Maps local business, is an important major site, even if your enterprise is an affiliate marketing-based website. Show Google you are established and either use your home address, office or even a virtual place that is relevant. Keep it consistent through all your Social Media profiles.
What is the perfect Link Profile
Sites attract links, without any intervention, over time. Google likes to see a slow build-up of links, it would indicate that you have a site with interesting content, that others are beginning to trust. Trust is everything. No one actually has the full details of their algorithm, suffice to say when a new site is published, you can think of it as being in a sandbox.
The traffic to your new site will normally be very, very low indeed. if you can publish regular content of a high standard, in the region of 20 to 30 posts in month one to three, perhaps lowering to 10 to 20 posts per month in month three onwards, then eventually, maybe in the 4th or 5th month you can expect to see, more realistic numbers of visitors. Don’t expect a flood though! If you do everything right, you will see links starting to come in and begin to build up a decent link profile.
When planning your site content, set aside about 20% of your output to be purely “link-worthy” content, detailed posts that fully explore a subject, that others would naturally link to. Of course, all your content should be in-depth and relevant to your subject, but this 20% should be purely for natural link building and have no other purpose like reviewing an affiliate product or anything else.
What about Internal links?
* Linking things in new posts, to point readers to your earlier posts
* Linking material in older posts to point at your new post
Both of these are valuable, need careful consideration, and will play a part in Google’s understanding of your site. Internal links will keep readers on your site for longer and will decrease your bounce rate.
When your site is in its first year, Internal linking should be reviewed on a month-by-month basis. Few of us have the overall plan of the ‘final’ website when we start. It helps to have a visual map of the site’s progress (see planning my future blog post and planned post sitemap ). When you see it mapped out, like that, natural links suggest themselves. Don’t go too overboard with planning ahead though, blogging is a long process and it is always possible that our competitors could come across our ideas in their own research and write the article before we get it done.
Simply read through the site, at the end of the month, knowing what new articles you have written during the month. Go back and include internal links to any relevant new content and see also if the new work needs linking to older content.
Using Silo Structures for Linking
Silos are structures for content. Keeping similar content together in a more organized way. “link-juice” from external links gets shared over the pages that are interlinked
There are many ways to organize the internal linking, using the silos
- Random: This would be more like a natural type of link growth.
- Top-Down: very organized but lacks priority
- Specific pages: Can show priority to your money pages:
Automating Internal Linking
When you have a larger site, in year two you might have over 100 posts, for example, it is worth considering some time-saving method of keeping your internal links optimized.
Internal links are VERY important, users of a recent plugin for WordPress, LinkWhisper, report anything up to 20% increases in traffic for sites with poor or no internal links and smaller but surprisingly high benefits for inadequate internal links.
LinkWhisper suggests link opportunities as you write your post, which you can choose to add or ignore. Also, Linkwhisper can do regular scans and suggest more links from old to new and from new to old posts.
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