If you are into SEO and link building then you know just how pricey this effort can be. This is why you should always aim at achieving the most out of your investment of time and money. With that said one of the major factors of SEO effort performance is the choice of link-building strategy. Your traffic and ultimately the profit is largely dependant on your link building. For it to work, you should know how to build a network of contacts to support your link building. These relationships will be crucial for the success of your SEO. They can be even called the backbone of your link-building effort.
Link building and contacts
Content is king and it is the factor that can get you quality links. Good and quality content is still very important for link building. First, you need to have something worth linking to and that is good content. But collaboration and promotion of this content are also important. Although you can get professionals such as the Link Department to do it for you, a good network of contacts can support your link-building campaign and generate good links. This means that you will have more attention and be better promoted online.
Having a list of good contacts is vital. It is also vital to have a long-lasting relationship. they can provide promotions and generate links that are natural. This will promote your content as trustworthy and authoritative and help earn you a better ranking with Google. Longstanding partnerships can allow you to use this relation in proper link building. However, to do so you must find partners for this and utilize their input.
How to find partners to build a network of contacts
Finding partners to join your network and help your link-building strategy is hard work and it takes time. However, you should keep some things in mind when searching for partners.
- Relevance,
- Content,
- Experience,
- Branching out.
Relevance
Keep in mind that your networking partners should be relevant to your product/service and cause. There should be an overlap between what your partners are doing and offering and you. Only in this way, mutual link building will be beneficial to both sides. Meaning that only in this case your new partner will be interested to join your network. If this is not the case you are wasting time and money. In addition, any links generated from a source that is not relevant will not provide adequate results. So, maybe you should start with your own Rolodex to get you going.
Also, keep in mind that you should not only seek partners with a big audience. First, you should seek potential partners on the basis of your similarities and common ground, and interests. Everything else is a bonus. Also, seek out potential partners that are open to this kind of cooperation and have similar partnerships. All this will lead to the creation of a natural set of backlinks, a network of cooperators that you will benefit from in the time to come.
Content
It is fine to build a network of contacts but it has to be backed up by proper content. You should not forget about this main aspect in your link-building strategy. You can develop a large network but without content, it won’t work. Only with relevant and authoritative content, your partners will have the interest to create a set of backlinks to your webpage. So do not forget about compelling and relevant content.
Experience
Your business experience is also important when building a network. Well-known and established businesses already have a good base of contacts to use in their link-building. New companies in comparison have to double their effort in creating this network as they are new and unknown. They must be creative and interesting in order to achieve high-quality contacts and finally breakthrough.
Branching out
You should also do research into influencer marketing and blogging. Chances are that if you are a known company someone already mentioned you online. These mentions appear naturally without any connection or initiative. However, that can be a first step in achieving communication. After this, you can create a relationship where these influencers can start mentioning you more frequently and creating quality backlinks to you. In this way, you can initiate and build your network of contacts.
Communicate
After you have a good list of prospects and contacts to build off you should start the communication. Reach out to them and attempt to establish a good contact and relay what you need from them and how you can for a partnership. Although you can start sending mass emails you really should start with a more personal touch. Make sure to tailor-make your emails for each contact so they can have a more personal feel about it. This is a polite and more effective way of getting someone’s attention. These influencers also have too many similar requests to deal with. So, be creative with your approach, be clear about your needs and ideas and present the mutual benefit of such a partnership. Be genuine and clear in how it would benefit you both when working together.
Things to keep in mind
You must be aware of two things:
- Do not give up and learn from this process. Even negative replies have their reasons and lessons to be learned. Try to maintain contact as it can open up future possibilities. Try to get the feedback and learn from it
- Keep communicating. Getting cooperation and establishing a few backlinks is not the end of this process. The key is to maintain a long-standing relationship that will last for long. So keep communicating and see how your partners are satisfied with your cooperation. This will help you just and keep working together for longer. It will also open new doors and pave the way to new fields and forms of cooperation.
So, there are quite a few ways on building your network. How to build a network of contacts to support your link building is up to you. But, you have to understand! Content is still king, and good communication is important for building a good network that can support your whole SEO effort. This cooperation must also go both ways and you have to provide benefits to your partners as well.