How should we be doing link building in late 2022 and into 2023?
Jim Boykin, CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Ann Smarty, IMN’s analyst, discuss how link building should work (and how we don’t recommend it working).
Link building starts with creating something linkworthy. This could be a very useful tutorial, a niche report, a free tool or a visual asset (like an infographic).
If you own a big brand with a solid following, that linkable asset will likely attract some backlinks on its own.
However, more often than not, you will need to invest some time into bringing that asset in front of people’s eyes in an effort for it to be seen by those people (journalists and bloggers) who can link to it.
There may be different ways to market your content for it to start bringing links, inducing
- Getting it hot on Reddit or other places that journalists frequent
- Emailing people who have written on similar topics or linked to similar pages
- Getting it rank in Google (which is used by journalists and reporters looking for sources to link to)
Some assets can bring in links quickly, others will take months or even years to attract links, and some will not bring any links at all.
Not each of your content assets will get linked.
But don’t give up. Sometimes it takes more time and new channels to find people who will link to it.
There is another way link building works: Business owners buy links from spammy blogs and blog networks (often not realizing those links are worthless). Google has already mapped these blog networks out, and links form them will hardly do any good to your site.
This is a link building method we don’t recommend.
