You may have heard of inbound links or backlinks and wondered what they were, why they are important, or how to get them. Or maybe you are interested in inbound traffic or SEO, but you aren’t sure where a blog can play into your overall strategy.
We’d like to share a little bit about how you can utilize the blog writing you’re already doing to work even harder for you.
What Are Inbound Links?
An inbound link (IBL), or backlink, is a link to your website from a site other than your own. It is a hyperlink placed by a business other than your own, on a webpage outside of your control. In the scheme of SEO, it is an immensely valuable gauge of the popularity and credibility of your site, and the more inbound links you have—from other credible sites—the higher chance you have of ranking in searches.
Long story short: The more links to your site found on other credible sites, the better your rank.
In the online marketing world, then, inbound links are as valuable as gold, but if you can only get them by being featured on other sites, then isn’t an increase in backlinks out of your control, since it’s up to the other websites to choose to link to you?
Not at all.
There are many ways you can put in the legwork to increase your inbound links, one of which is by carefully leveraging your blog posts and the links they include to increase your likelihood of being featured.
How Can My Blog Help Increase Inbound Links?
When you sit down to research and write your blog, you will often be met with opportunities to include external links—links to other websites.
Maybe you wanted to feature a current partner of yours to increase community awareness, or to make the most of an affiliate link. Maybe you are sharing a How-To and want to provide your readers with additional resources to consult after reading yours.
Maybe you wanted to feature a current partner of yours to increase community awareness, or to make the most of an affiliate link. Maybe you are sharing a How-To and want to provide your readers with additional resources to consult after reading yours.
What if the external links you include could lead to backlinks of your own?
The process is simple:
Make A List As you create your blog, make a running list of any sites, organizations, or authors whose pages are linked in your article. Be sure you are always linking to credible sites, so their eventual backlinks will be worth the effort.
Share the Blog Link After you publish the blog containing the links to other sites, contact the site authors or owners with the link to your blog and a note that you chose to feature them and believe their audience would be interested in your contact. Invite them to share and link to your blog post.
The likelihood is that those you featured will be happy that you have created an inbound link for them and will return the favor.
An aim of maintaining a regular blog is to position yourself as a resource to your community, meaning that including external links is a valuable practice that can increase the marketing value of your blog in many ways.
If you’re excited to get started on gaining more inbound traffic but don’t have time to manage your blog posting yourself, reach out to us, and we can help create an SEO strategy for you!
