Difference Between Link Building and Outreach
Building Links
Whether it be outreach or link building, both are powerful tools to increase your viewership. We have compiled these articles to assist you in determining the best method to suit your marketing methods.
Difference between link building and outreach
[1]As business owners, we want our websites to be found by as many people as possible. We want to rank the highest for our chosen keywords, attract incremental organic traffic and build solid credibility within our respective industries.
Link building and outreach are two ways in which a business can accomplish this. However, both take time and patience, and there may be setbacks along the way. In addition, link building and outreach are also ongoing affairs, and it could take quite some time before your business sees the results of your efforts.
Both methods have evolved to a point where they only work when backed by resourceful content. Businesses cannot just promote themselves anymore. The Internet has forced companies to orient themselves, thanks to Google, towards value creation. Good intentions matter more than ever. The digital world now thrives on the exchange of useful perspectives and new ideas.
In this piece, we cover the basic concepts of link building and outreach, why they are necessary for the success of a business online, and how the two tie in together for best results.
Link Building
The digital world is similar to the real world in that people are often judged on the company they keep.
For a website to rank well on Google (indeed, even to be found by it), it has to get a few things right:
- All the web pages need to contain quality and up-to-date content.
- They should not produce any technical errors.
- They should be free of bad links.
- They should link to authoritative sources.
- They should be linked to credible sources.
This is where a good link-building service comes in. Link building is about getting third-party web pages to link to your site to boost your ranking.
The greater the number of these links, the higher your website’s Google ranking.
However, it was not always as straightforward as that. Businesses and ambitious SEOs have long used spammy links to game Google’s search algorithm and raise the ranks. Does Google want links? We’ll give them plenty!
There was a time one could list on Web directories and get links from there. But, unfortunately, one could also buy links or create embarrassingly promotional and weak content and post it on third-party sites after stuffing it with the desired keywords in a bid to earn more backlinks.
These practices quickly fell afoul of Google, making certain tweaks to how its algorithm ranked websites.
Now it’s not just about the number of the links. The quality of these links matters as much, if not more, than the number itself.
For example, getting a mention in and a link from Huffington Post would carry much greater importance with Google than a link from an upcoming blog that few have heard of yet. No offense to small blogs, but the overall standing (domain authority) of websites matters.
Outreach
What Is It?
Outreach is one of how link-building is carried out.
A business can outreach in several ways: email outreach, social outreach, influencer outreach, and press outreach.
Each of the above involves reaching out to people to get them to click on the link(s) to your website or include a mention in the content created by you on their websites to earn backlinks to your website.
Email/PR Outreach:
This involves straight-up emailing people and asking them to link back to your website.
However, you cannot just randomly email people. Carry out proper research and find websites that are relevant to your link-building purposes. Then, craft a personalized email to the owners/web admins and make a value offer to them. This could be in the form of giving them critical feedback related to their website or pointing out a few broken links. In return, and as a nice favor, ask them to link back to your website.
Neil Patel has written an excellent guide on building links via email outreach, which you might want to check out.
Influencer Outreach:
This involves reaching out to influential bloggers, websites, and communities to offer to write for them in return for something – a link back to your website and/or a link to your social profile.
It sounds fairly simple, but how this type of outreach is conducted has changed significantly over the years.
Initially, it was about getting a blogger to say yes to your pitched idea. Then, wait for your content to get published with your preferred links and keywords. Boom. Done.
However, as Rand Fishkin points out, we live in a jaded world. Bloggers are skeptical of such unsolicited emails because guest-blogging has been abused aplenty by businesses with the sole aim to earn backlinks.
Bloggers are passionate about their areas of expertise. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much consideration or regard displayed towards enhancing knowledge of the existing community of followers of the blogs. This led them to feel used, so while most still accept guest posts, it is often on their own terms, with strict guidelines about the content and links.
Google has also made this approach unviable with consecutive updates to its search algorithm. When marketers stuff keywords randomly into text in a bid to link back to their websites, it reeks of dishonesty and malpractice, bad enough for Google to penalize fraudulent websites.
The focus today is on quality content, as opposed to flagrantly promotional content and building relationships. Digital marketing works based on the exchange of ideas. We benefit from each other’s presence and expertise.
Guest blogging for link building now involves making a value proposition to the concerned website and earning a chance to write for them.
Content is truly the king. The focus is so much on the quality that bloggers are increasingly insisting on not allowing businesses to link back to their websites from within the content published on their websites. Instead, only allowing links in author bios.
Is blogger outreach, then, an effective way of link building? If you cannot link back to your website from within a guest blog post, why guest post in the first place?
Well, it depends on how you approach the matter. First and foremost, you will be exposing your content to a whole new audience that you might not have been able to reach before.
You might not link to your website, but you would still have your business credentials included in the form of a short bio at the end of the article. This will likely include a link to your Twitter profile, so interested parties can follow that link and find you on social media.
Bloggers share guest posts on social media as well. Be sure to ask them to tag your Twitter profile.
Social Media Outreach:
This involves scouting for and building relationships via social media to popularize your content and maximize its impact.
Social media is also a great way to engage existing customers and begin conversations with potential ones. Follow people, favorite their tweets, promote your content where you feel is relevant, DM followers to check out your website, add them on LinkedIn, participate in discussions – in short, make your voice heard. Start conversations and participate in ones that are already taking place.
[2]Difference Between Link-Building And Blogging Outreach
Link-building
There are various ways Google ranks the credibility of web pages to showcase them on SERP. One of these ways involves credible backlinks that link back to your website. Google sees backlinks as a vote of confidence from other websites, which basically shows that a site or webpage has excellent content, such that other websites are linking back to it.
However, the new Google algorithm considers the quality of websites that are linking back to yours as a way of judging credibility. So, for instance, a mention from the Huffington Post has greater importance than a mention from a blog post that isn’t quite in the limelight.
The Effect Of Link-Building On SEO
When authoritative websites link back to yours, Google or other search engines see that as a vote of confidence and boost your Search Engine Optimization. The higher the quality links you have, the better your SEO, and great SEO means excellent reach!
However, getting quality links is in no way an easy task. Algorithms change, methods change, preferences change, and so does the way you boost your SEO.
Here are a few ways link-building is carried out:
- Great content creation
- Guest posting
- Blogging outreach
- Email Outreach
- PR outreach
Blogging Outreach
Blogging outreach is one of the strategies involved in getting quality backlinks. Over the years, bloggers have gained influential status, giving rise to influencer marketing. Influencer marketing involves reaching out to bloggers in your niche, who have a significant following and authority in the niche, and asking them to promote your products or services.
When influential bloggers promote your products and services on their blog or video, you get a vote of confidence from them, which prompts their audience to try out your services. The result? You get tremendous reach from an audience already in your niche!
However, over the years, blogging has become a serious business and a means of living for people. Therefore, bloggers are very protective of their content and only want to invest in a brand that values it. Therefore, they are likely to accept shout-outs and guest posts with their own terms and guidelines.
Benefits of Blogging Outreach
Blogging outreach has two main advantages:
- As a business that has just started, you need to maximize your exposure and reach. When famous bloggers in your niche mention you on their blog post, you get that ‘vote of confidence that boosts your SEO and credibility.
- As bloggers give you shout-outs on social media, you are exposed to an already-established audience loyal to their blogger and trusts their opinions. Therefore, you get more followers and potential customers!
Benefits Of Outreach
Since ranking on Google is predicated on the volume and quality of links a website generates, procuring links from established websites is a great way to generate “link juice.”
The biggest challenge for new businesses looking to make a mark in their niche is that very few have heard of them. So even if they produce great content weekly and promote it proactively on social media, they will need big names to link to them to receive greater traffic and improve their search rankings.
When you reach out to expert websites relevant to your purpose, you gain immensely from their credibility.
This is how Link building & Outreach can help boost a website on search engines.
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Benefits Of Link Building
Link building is one of the crucial aspects of SEO. It brings traffic to the website and improves the ranking on search engines. I mean, that’s the main goal of SEO.
The greater the number of external quality links your website generates, the greater the chances of more people finding you and trusting you.
The Internet is now moving towards trust-based transactions and relationships. As a result, relevant and quality link building is now carried out in the following ways:
- Useful content creation
- Guest posting
- Email outreach
- PR outreach
- Influencer outreach
- Social media outreach
Wrapping Up
Link-building and blogging outreach are essential elements of digital marketing for businesses. In this article, we looked at each of these elements, thereby differentiating these marketing strategies.
Article compiled by hughesagency.ca
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