How to Find Link Building Services in Australia

You’ve heard about link building services in Australia, or backlinks, but you’re not sure what it’s all about. Even worse, you know it’s important but you’ve got no idea where to start. Don’t worry. This article will look at the following:

• What is link building?
• Why is link building important?
• What makes a good backlink?
• How to get backlinks
• How to find link building services

Wonder no more about the mystery of link building. Read on to find out all you need to know.

What is link building?

In very simple terms, link building is all about getting other websites to link back to your own. Google and other search engines constantly crawl the internet, and this is done in part by following links. Search engines crawl all of the internal links on your own website, but also all of the external ones pointing to one of your pages.

So, link building involves finding ways to get reputable websites to send a link back to yours. This helps to tell Google that your website offers relevant information. Therefore, your rankings are likely to improve. The more high-quality links that point to your website, the more Google will reward you with a higher domain authority and better rankings.

Why is link building so important?

As mentioned above, link building has a lot to do with how well you rank on search engines. That’s the main benefit, but there’s another reason why link building is such an important marketing strategy. It’s a relatively untapped source. According to Social Media Today, 94% of online content receives no external links. So, one quality backlink to your website can launch you ahead of 94% of the internet’s content (in theory).

Also, notice how I’ve added a link to Social Media Today there? To illustrate how it works, I’ve just given them a backlink – maybe they’ll do the same for me? It’s unlikely without me doing a little outreach, but you never know. Remember that link for later on and we’ll discuss this process further.

Improved search rankings

So, the main reason that digital marketers love link building is that it’s such an effective way to improve search rankings. Remember we said that Google is constantly crawling the world wide web? During these crawls, if it notices that a number of high-quality websites are linking back to a certain page on your site, it will deem your content to be quite relevant and worthy of ranking. So, assuming you’ve done other aspects of SEO right, you should see some benefits in search results.

Google wants to improve the user experience. So, a backlink effectively serves as a recommendation for Google. It’s a big part of SEO and increasing website traffic for that reason. For example, if two web pages have similar SEO metrics across the board, the one with a backlink or two is always going to be deemed more valuable.

Check the video below which highlights the importance of backlinks for Google rankings.

Increased traffic

Naturally, better search engine rankings mean increased traffic, right? Well, that’s absolutely true in theory. But what about the other types of traffic a backlink can generate? We’ll get into types of backlinks later, but let’s say you write a guest post for a reputable online publication in your industry. They allow you a backlink to your site, and thousands of people read your post.

Some of those readers might click the backlink and arrive on your website. So, it’s not technically organic traffic – more referral traffic. But the result is the same. The backlink has delivered more traffic to your website, often in two different ways.

Show your expertise – brand recognition

Another reason to pursue backlinks is for brand building. We won’t go into the details right here, but brand mentions online are also a factor that improves your SEO. Backlinks are often a sort of brand mention, especially in the case of guest blogs.

Guest blogging lets you establish thought leadership – that is, positioning yourself as an industry expert and boosting your online presence. When you have a guest blog published, you can share it with all of your social media connections. When people associate you with useful information, it lends credibility to your business.

What makes a good backlink?

This is perhaps the most important part of this article. If you want to skim over the rest, go for it, but make sure this part is super clear. Not all backlinks are created equal. In fact, some are downright damaging to your own SEO strategy.

The relevance Google places on a backlink really depends on where it is published. So, if I scored a backlink from, say, Hubspot, a reputable business software provider, that’s quite a bit of ‘link juice’ that flows to my website because Hubspot’s is so highly regarded.

Now, if I paid someone to create backlinks for me, and it’s done across a variety of dodgy online directories or forums, I’m not going to get much benefit. In fact, many of those backlinks will be considered toxic and I’ll be penalized as a result.

Always find out the domain authority of a website before seeking a backlink. You may need specialist SEO tools to do this, but it’s worthwhile to ensure that dodgy backlinks don’t hurt your SEO.

Popular ways to get backlinks

Many people are intimidated by the prospect of link building. That’s because, outside of the digital marketing industry, link building services are somewhat of a mystery to many. It does take a lot of work to establish quality backlinks, and the results aren’t immediate. So, it’s easy to neglect this aspect of internet marketing.

However, it’s not all about guest blogging or begging people to give you backlinks. There are actually plenty of innovative ways that an SEO agency can find good links. Best of all, if you’ve got time, you can do these things yourself without spending much money at all.

Broken links

This might seem a little sneaky, but it’s completely above-board and totally white hat SEO. Broken links affect the overall health and crawlability of a website. A broken link is basically a link pointing to a page that no longer exists. They’re all over the world wide web, and they could be affecting a website’s domain authority and rankings.

So, you can use some SEO tools to research reputable websites, especially sites known for giving backlinks. If they have broken links on their websites, why not contact the webmaster and offer an alternative. They may have a blog post from 5 years that links to a similar business to yours. Maybe that business folded and no longer has a website. You could suggest to the webmaster that they use a link to your site instead.

It’s a win-win – the website in question fixes a broken link, and you gain a backlink.

Publishing useful content

Ok, remember we talked about Social Media Today and the fact that I gave them a backlink earlier? That’s because they have published some excellent content that I wanted to use. The statistic about backlinks I used came from a Social Media Today article that had heaps of SEO statistics. Writers like myself are always looking for statistics, and I always give recognition to wherever I found those stats. That gives the team at Social Media Today a backlink, simply because they’ve published something useful.

It doesn’t need to be statistics. It might be a useful infographic or another type of image. If people do the right thing and credit your work, you should be able to get a few good backlinks. Infographics are also relatively inexpensive to create but could lead to multiple backlinks over many years.

Guest blogging

One of the most popular ways to get backlinks is guest blogging on relevant industry websites. It should be part of any link building strategy. There are websites set up for this purpose, and a range of other industry publications that don’t exist purely for link building. Regardless, if the website is high-quality, it’s worth pursuing a backlink from them by contributing quality articles.

Many blogging websites have submission guidelines, so do a bit of a search, find ones that appeal to you, and check their guidelines. If you’re not much of a writer yourself, this is where you’ll need quality copywriting. Hiring someone to write articles is obviously an expense, however, if you invest in quality content, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Online directories

Having your website featured in online directories is another way to earn some high-quality backlinks. It might be a simple industry directory that allows you to include a website link. These are fairly easy to obtain by researching relevant directories.

The issue is, that Google places less emphasis on this as a ranking metric these days because the practice was easily abused by marketers looking for quick backlinks. Think of it this way – if a backlink is simple to obtain, it’s probably not going to have as much relevance for Google.

We’ll touch on paid backlinks later, but this is an appropriate time for a warning. Many paid link building services use online directories and say, “Look what we achieved for you, we gave you 25 backlinks.” The likelihood of those backlinks being of good quality is extremely low.

Be interviewed

Another interesting way to build brand recognition and score some backlinks at the same time is to be interviewed. Podcasts, articles, it doesn’t matter which. Ideally, if you’re interviewed for something, the interviewer should be providing you with some type of backlink when they publish their work.

How to find link building services in Australia

So, how do you actually get backlinks? It’s a mystery to many people, but there are a few distinct ways to go about it. Here are some popular methods that can be very effective.

Outreach

This is probably the hardest way to get backlinks, but also the best way to get high-quality links. With a bit of research, you can identify websites related to your industry that have good domain authority. If Google already sees them as reputable, these are your prime targets.

However, you’ll need to do some outreach to ask about the possibility of getting backlinks from them. Remember, many websites already have guidelines for things like guest blogging, so do your research and get started. Worst case scenario, you write a blog that someone doesn’t publish. You can always publish it on your own blog or try another outreach site.

Networking

If you’ve got a large number of industry contacts, why not try your luck with them? Put a call out on social media, asking for guest blog opportunities. You can be as blunt as you like. Many business owners and professionals understand the importance of building backlinks, and they may be willing to give you a backlink if you give them one in return.

Approaching competitors probably isn’t the right way to go, but if you know people in a related industry or those who aren’t in direct competition with you, backlink swapping can be a great idea.

Paying for backlinks – a good idea?

The other option is to pay for backlinks. All you need to do is a quick Google search and there will be companies lining up to take your money. We don’t like to generalize and say that all of these services are dodgy. But let’s be honest, MOST of them are dodgy.

Some tricks used by these services include giving you backlinks from completely irrelevant websites, forums and directories. Alternatively, you might end up with some fast backlinks from websites that have a good standing with Google – for now. In 6 months’ time, Google works out the backlink site is dodgy, and your links become toxic. You’ve paid for the links by the time you find out they’re toxic though, and now you need to waste more time removing backlinks that damage your search engine optimisation.

In short, we don’t ever recommend paying individually for backlinks, unless you’re absolutely certain the service is legitimate.

Hire SEO link building professionals

Finally, if in doubt, hire professional link building services. If you’re time-poor and can’t do all of the outreach and content creation necessary for great backlinks, call the professionals. It’s extremely important though, to understand the difference between paid link building services and paid backlinks.

Professional link building takes time, skill and usually some excellent written content. This is a process, but a very worthy one. You’ll find most digital marketing companies can offer some type of link building service. However, if companies offer a service where you pay per backlink, stay away!

Contact the experts for link building services in Australia today

If you’d like a professional team to take care of link building for your business, contact Content Solutions Australia today. We can assist with all aspects of content marketing strategy, including quality copywriting and link building services. For honest, transparent SEO services, give us a call today and find out how we can help.