Blogs often feel like they have a million moving pieces.
From picking a niche and selecting a sleek design to coming up with content ideas and promoting them via social media, it takes a lot of time, effort and research to keep a successful blog up and running.
However, what happens after we’ve covered all of our essential bases? How can we make the most of our blogging efforts to ensure that we’re getting a positive ROI for our hard work?
When defining the “most important” aspect of driving traffic to your blog, the debate is rather contentious. While many marketers swear that content is the number one factor in search rankings, you can’t hope to compete for significant keywords in your space without dedicating time to building backlinks.
If you’re wondering how to make a blog that really drives traffic, consider implementing a link-building strategy.
The concept of link-building is rather straightforward: it’s the process of promoting your site or content with the intention of other sites linking to your own.
So, why is explicit link-building worth your business’ time?
- Backlinks signal your site as being share-worthy and therefore authoritative in the eyes of Google.
- The more links you have, the more likely your site is to rank for particular keywords within your niche.
- Perhaps most obvious, the more links to your blog (either through other blogs or social media), the more avenues you have to find new readers and grow your audience.
If you’ve never tried your hand at link-building, consider the following strategies as a means of growing your blog’s search engine potential.
Blogger Outreach and Guest Posting
Think about it: if you’re looking for additional links for your own blog, chances are there are tons of other bloggers in your industry looking to do the exact same thing. Reaching out to bloggers in hopes of exchanging guest posts is arguably one of the best ways to build links for your blog.
Guest blogging represents a win-win situation for both parties, considering…
- Both bloggers gain exposure to a new audience and potential business.
- You have a certain degree of control over links and anchor text, meaning that you can target specific keywords during your link-building campaign.
- It’s a completely white hat SEO practice with no strings attached (as opposed to buying links, which is not permitted by Google).
Since bloggers are hungry for new content relevant for their readership, blogger outreach within your niche is a great way to get on the good side of other influencers in your space. If you’re not sure who to reach out to, start by looking at Facebook groups and forums within your industry to see who might benefit from your content.
Blog Comments
If you’ve run a blog for any significant amount of time, you’re probably already aware of the prevalence of comment spam in the blogosphere. Regardless, there’s a lot of hidden potential in linking to your blog in the comment section of other blogs within your industry. The key to effective blog commenting is as follows:
- Don’t just put a link by itself; instead, introduce the link with a paragraph or two of commentary first.
- Make sure that you’re leaving comments on blogs relative to your niche inside of commenting at random; likewise, make sure that your links go to relevant articles or information (rather than simply your homepage).
- Rather than simply copying-and-pasting your comments and links across a bunch of sites, work to tailor each comment to the tone and audience of the site you’re targeting.
The key to not looking like spam is quite simple: don’t leave spammy comments. By crafting legitimately meaningful comments on other blogs, you not only build backlinks but advertise yourself as a helpful resource to a larger readership.
Building backlinks to your blog doesn’t have be a tedious, time-consuming process. By reaching out other blogs looking for links and commenting on those same sites, you can easily integrate link-building as part of your existing content marketing strategy.
