Creating a link strategy to enhance your SEO efforts is essential to ensure your website is getting as much organic visibility as possible. We have created a guide to help your charity perform to its maximum potential.
The importance of SEO
SEO is crucial for all charities with an online presence as it helps your website become more visible in the search results. The more visible you are, the more traffic you are likely to receive, opening up more opportunities for your site users to perform the conversion you want them to.
There are hundreds of charities and websites out there, all competing to be visible, so without best-practice SEO implemented throughout your website, you are less likely to appear for your target keywords, and hence lose out on potential traffic.
The role links play in SEO
Links play a pivotal role in SEO by acting as pathways that connect different web pages, enabling search engines to crawl and index content effectively, ultimately influencing a site’s visibility in search results.
In SEO, the quality of links to a website serve as a key indicator of its authority and relevance, with well-crafted link strategies not only improving rankings but also establishing a webpage’s trustworthiness in the eyes of both users and search engines.
The more credible the website that is linking to you, the better reward you will see in the search results.
Why a well-thought-out link strategy is beneficial for optimal SEO performance
A well-thought-out link strategy is crucial for any website’s success because it enhances a site’s visibility in search engine results, improving the chances of attracting organic traffic.
Link strategies not only contribute to higher search engine rankings, but also establish a website’s authority and credibility within its niche, ensuring your website is deemed trustworthy.
In the competitive online landscape, a robust link-building strategy serves as a powerful tool to navigate algorithms, ensuring sustained growth and relevance for a website in the ever-evolving world of digital marketing.
What is link building?
Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from external websites to your own domain with the end goal being improving a website’s visibility, authority, and credibility.
These links should be acquired naturally and not be part of any paid link schemes – as that can have detrimental consequences on your organic visibility.
Understanding the different types of links
Understanding the difference between dofollow and nofollow links is crucial. Dofollow links are hyperlinks that allow search engines to follow through and crawl the linked pages. These links pass on authority and influence search engine rankings.
Nofollow links instruct search engines not to pass authority or credibility to the linked page, essentially signalling that the linked content is not necessarily endorsed.
Website owners commonly use these nofollow attributes for user-generated content, advertisements, or links that they don’t want to vouch for. Striking a balance between dofollow and nofollow links is vital for a well-rounded link strategy, as it not only influences a site’s SEO but shapes its overall online reputation.
Prioritise the quality of links over the quantity
This is always a popular topic of debate in the SEO world. However, while accumulating a large number of links might seem appealing to many, the emphasis must be on the quality and relevance of those links to make any impact on your SEO.
Search engines, especially Google, will always prioritise the quality of the backlinks over the number of backlinks your website has. The reason being, the higher quality the backlink, the more weight they carry in influencing a website’s organic performance. This means you may only need a handful of high quality backlinks to move the needle on your performance.
It’s more valuable from a time perspective to focus on securing a small number of high quality backlinks than an abundance of easy-to-gain, low-quality links that offer no long-term value.
These high-quality backlinks must come from reputable and contextually relevant sources to make a meaningful impact on your organic performance. These links signal the trustworthiness which helps when optimising for E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness – an algorithm update which you can read more about here).
Setting smart link-building goals
The first fundamental step is to set clear and strategic goals to craft an effective link-building strategy. Defining your link-driven objectives —which could be along the lines of improving search engine rankings, increasing organic traffic, or enhancing online authority—will provide a foundation to keep your efforts aligned. Remember, these objectives should be specific, measurable, and aligned with the broader charity goals.
Link-building goals not only provide a roadmap for the implementation of the strategy, they enable you to evaluate success and afford you time to adjust and refine your strategy throughout its timeline
Researching keywords and competitors to focus your link-building strategy
Researching keywords and competitors is a pivotal phase in developing a robust link-building strategy.
Identifying relevant keywords for a specific niche is essential for understanding the language and topics that resonate with the target audience. This knowledge forms the basis for creating content that not only aligns with user intent but attracts natural and authoritative backlinks.
Simultaneously, by analysing competitor link profiles you can discern valuable insights and include them within your strategy to maximise success. By understanding where competitors are earning their backlinks, you can uncover potential opportunities and gaps in the market to take full advantage of.
By leveraging advanced tools (such as Ahrefs and SEMRush) and techniques for keyword and competitor research, you will develop a link-building strategy that is informed and poised for success in the competitive digital landscape.
Creating high-quality content to attract links
Creating high-quality content is the forefront of any successful link-building strategy. Quality content serves as the magnet that naturally attracts backlinks from authoritative sources. It’s not just about information provided; it’s about crafting engaging, informative, and shareable material that provides real value to your target audience.
Linkable content that is forever valuable, such as answering questions, solving problems, or presenting unique perspectives, is the secret sauce to success here.
In short: Understand the dynamics of your target audience and cater to their needs through content that becomes a go-to resource within the industry.
Incorporating visual elements, such as infographics and multimedia, further enhances the content’s appeal, making it more shareable across various platforms. By focusing on creating content that stands out in quality and relevance, link builders can organically cultivate a diverse and authoritative backlink profile, contributing significantly to the success of the link-building strategy.
Building internal links to spread the value
Now you have written appealing content for your readers that will also attract backlinks naturally, you need to ensure this content is visible on your website. This is where internal linking comes in.
Not only will internally linking to and from this content enhance user experience across the website, it will allow the authority gained from your backlinks to flow through the website, giving other important pages on your domain a boost.
Outreach and relationship building
Outreach and relationship-building are how you generate these powerful backlinks, and they work best when they are personalised with the human touch.
A one-email-fits-all approach isn’t always the wisest. Crafting personalised emails is a strategic art and one that involves reaching out to potential link partners in a genuine and compelling manner.
The best approach to building relationships within the industry is to put effort into establishing a long-term relationship, as opposed to a one-time short in the dark . Ideally, you want to ensure you are always engaging with influencers, connecting with other industry professionals in online communities, or networking through social media to build relationships that can lead to valuable backlinks.
By establishing long-term partnerships, it will not only open the doors for future link opportunities but also go beyond this and contribute to the overall growth and credibility of a website which will benefit all in the long run.
Why you need to track and analyse link-building results
Tracking your link-building performance will allow you to prove success and get buy-in from stakeholders for future projects or even more budget.
Monitoring the growth of backlink profiles, understanding the sources of incoming links, and assessing the anchor text diversity are essential metrics checks for evaluating the effectiveness of your strategy.
You have the SEO performance to consider here also. A successful link strategy means increasing several metrics, including organic traffic,search rankings, and the overall authority score of your domain.
Analysing performance on a regular basis allows time to refine and optimise strategies to ensure improvement is continuous and moving in the desired direction.
There is no use continuing with a link strategy that is clearly not working for your particular industry. What works for one will not necessarily work for another so it’s best to try a range of tactics, monitor performance, and then tweak where needed to ensure you are reaching your initial link-building objectives.
Link-building can be hard, so no need to get disheartened over one tactic. Simply try another until you find what works for your website in your industry.
What does the future of link building look like?
The landscape of link building is constantly evolving, and understanding future trends is crucial for staying ahead of the game in SEO.
One emerging trend that is repeated to us with all the latest Google core algorithm updates, is the increasing importance of user experience as a ranking factor, emphasising the need for links from websites that enhance overall user satisfaction.
As search engines continue to become more sophisticated, there is a growing emphasis on context and relevance, making niche-specific and contextually relevant links more valuable than ever.
The rise of AI is also expected to influence how search engines interpret content, which will more than likely impact the way links are evaluated.
However, we think the integration of multimedia elements like video and interactive content is likely to play a more significant role in link-building strategies as we move into 2024.
It’s crucial to keep an eye on these ever-emerging trends and proactively adapt your approach to link building to align with the evolving SEO landscape.
Key takeaways
In summary, there are 8 questions you need to ask yourself when crafting the perfect link-building strategy for your charity.
- What is the end goal you want to achieve?
- How do links play a part in this?
- Who are you competing against in your industry?
- What are they doing to stand out?
- What do you need to create that will naturally attract links?
- How will this be integrated with your wider website?
- How are you going to build mutually beneficial, long-term partnerships?
- How are you going to track performance to show those all-important results?
By developing a plan based on these questions, you will have a solid foundation by which to execute a successful link strategy. Remember: link building is all about testing what works and iterating with different tactics until you achieve the desired outcome.
Contact us if you are keen to grow your organic presence in your industry. Our SEO experts will help you develop a link strategy that will increase your website’s authority and trustworthiness.
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