What Is Link Building?
Link building refers to the process wherein a webmaster acquires links/hyperlinks from other sites. A hyperlink is essentially a way through which users navigate between pages of a site. Search engine crawlers use these links for crawling the web.
Link building continues to remain one of the biggest search engine ranking factors. It’s also the most time-consuming one. Webmasters spend the majority of their time building links and trying to do so rightly. In this post, we look at the best link-building strategy for B2B SaaS companies.
How Important Is Link Building for B2B Businesses?
As we mentioned, link building is one of the most essential SEO practices. Google gives a lot of weightage to websites that high-authority sites link back to. For B2B business, link building is just as essential. Since marketing for b2b is all about forming relationships, they can benefit hugely from link building as it’s also about building authority and relationships.
Benefits of Link-building for B2B Companies:
Building domain authority – If you have a site linking back to you with domain authority higher than yours, it works to your advantage by naturally giving brownie points to your domain value as well. The more high authority sites link back to you, the better it is for your position in the SERPs. You’ll have an easier time ranking higher for the most competitive keywords.
Referral Traffic sources – Link building can be used as a source of gaining referral traffic from high-quality websites. In this way, link building can help you generate quality leads.
Quicker Google Indexing – If you can secure domain authority for your site, Google is likely to index your site faster and is likely to consider it as a valuable source of information.
Effective B2b Link-building Tactics
Blogger Outreach
This is easily the #1 link-building method webmasters used today. For this technique to be successful, you need to reach out to bloggers and ask them to publish posts with backlinks to your site. You must contact sites that publish similar content and can publish a post in the right context. Guest blogging is effective but it can be tricky so you must pay attention.
When you reach a blogger, you pitch a topic which once approved will add value to both the blogger and your site. Because it can be tricky, you may work with a link building agency.
Broken link Building
To build broken links, you have to recognize broken links across the site. You then have to notify the site owner. Essentially, you request to replace the broken with a fresh one that points to your site. To make this work, you must write quality and relevant content that can replace the old link sensibly. If you don’t have an existing blog to replace the link, you can always pitch a fresh topic and write a new article.
Round-up Articles
Round-up articles consist of interviewing multiple leaders and influencers in the industry and then using their opinion to write a piece. The best thing about these kinds of articles is that the influencers are highly likely to share your post so others can see their contribution. It’s even possible for them to link to your site in one of their articles.
Social Media Links
Social media is a powerful way to build backlinks. It’s a highly underutilized tool that can be put to excellent usage. Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are great for sharing informative content and reaching a wide audience.
The more people see and share, the better likelihood you have of people citing those articles and backlinking to them. More shares and backlinking are going to help you with rankings in SERPs and building excellent link health.
Use HARO aka help a reporter out
In this particular link building tactic, you have to help out influential reporters on the topic of their choice. Here’s how HARO works: you get a topic from researchers and you have to give your feedback on it. If they happen to like your researched material, they will reward you by giving you an authoritative backlink in return.
Get Interviewed on Podcasts
The last few years have seen massive growth in podcasts. This popularity is only likely to increase. Getting yourself interviewed for a podcast can be a game-changer for your link building strategy.
Almost every popular podcast will have a website where you can find either a blog or a transcription of each episode along with a guest introduction. You can always find an opportunity to get a backlink somewhere there.
Create & Submit Infographics
Infographics are big on the visual appeal. However, they can be quite time-consuming. They also cost a lot more to make. That’s probably one of the reasons you won’t see as many infographics as regular blog posts.
But, if you are big on scoring high-quality links, you CAN use infographics. You can pitch your ideas to bloggers who only allow infographics. Be sure to pitch your idea to the mighty players of industry to get the most link juice.
Claim links for your Brand Mentions
This applies to brand names that the industry looks at as ‘thought leaders’. If that’s the case, many bloggers, columnists, competitors, and experts may often cite your brand in their articles/blogs. However, often they forget to add a link back to your brand.
If you notice this frequently, you can always reach out to the website manager and ask him/her to provide you with a link. To ensure that you do get link-backs from those mentions, you must keep an eye on the mentions regularly. For that purpose, you can use tools like Buzzsumo. You can also use Google Alerts to inform you about your brand mentions.
Final Thoughts
Link building has been a tried and tested strategy for gaining a higher ranking for years. If done right, it can produce amazing results for your Saas business.
