If you’ve been in the digital marketing space for any amount of time, you likely know about the basics of link building. By earning and placing links pointing to various internal pages of your website, you can generate traffic – and even rise in rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
But why is link building so favored as a long-term strategy? Why is it that, if you spend many months to several years in link building development, you can see better results than with most other marketing strategies?
The Benefits of Link Building
Before we can understand the full long-term benefits of link building, we have to understand its primary purpose. These are just some of the most important benefits of this strategy:
Search engine optimization (SEO). According to Link.Build, link building is an indispensable part of any SEO strategy. SEO is all about increasing your website’s rankings in SERPs. To do that, you need to increase your website’s authority, or trustworthiness. While you can boost this factor with onsite changes and well-written content, the most reliable way to increase authority is with offsite links. Over time, a solid link building campaign can cause your authority to skyrocket, ultimately leading you to higher rankings.
Referral traffic. These external links aren’t just about SEO, however. They also function the same way any hyperlink does; when a user clicks on the link, they’re taken to a destination page on your site. Accordingly, link building is often used as a strategy for increasing referral traffic. Depending on your visitors’ onsite behavior and conversion rates, this could be the most valuable part of the strategy.
Brand visibility and awareness. Building a link often means calling attention to your brand name. Even if you don’t get much referral traffic and your SEO is slow to develop, over time, you’ll increase brand awareness – which can help you land more sales and long-term, loyal customers.
The Long-Term Value
The benefits of link building are clear, but the real value in the strategy lies in its long-term development potential. For example:
Link permanence. Every link you build is going to be semi-permanent; it will remain in place unless you or the publisher decide to remove it. That means after your initial effort in building the link, it will have the power to send referral traffic your way indefinitely. If each link you build generates 1,000 visitors in the first month of its existence and 200 visitors each month thereafter, you’ll have a stacking effect from your subsequent link building efforts, compounding your overall returns. And, of course, you’ll still be getting the SEO benefits as well.
Ongoing publisher relationships. Link building requires you to reach out to major publishers for an opportunity to post guest authored content. Writing a high-quality post, tailored to a publisher’s audience and getting good feedback from readers will put you in that publisher’s good graces. It can open the door to future publishing opportunities – and even more brand visibility on that platform.
Climbing the visibility ladder. More than that, as you get your content featured in a variety of different publications, you’ll earn a better reputation for yourself. You’ll become more visible, more highly regarded, and welcomed at higher rungs of the “visibility ladder.” Put simply, the more you practice link building, the more valuable link building opportunities you’re going to find – and the more valuable each of your links is going to be.
Snowballing domain authority. Your domain authority will increase based on both the quantity and quality of the links you build. The more time you spend building links as part of your strategy, the more links you’ll have, the wider range of sources you’ll have pointing to your site, and the more authoritative those sources will be. The longer you spend improving your approach, the more value each new link you build will bring to you.
Analytics and adjustment. With a backlink profile analysis, you’ll have no trouble identifying which links have been most valuable for your organization and which ones cost you more than they were worth. Over time, you’ll be able to fine-tune your approach, establish a rhythm, and ultimately yield a higher ROI.
The cost factor. Speaking of ROI, we also need to address just how cost-efficient link building is. In the early days of your campaign, your returns will be tight, but ROI tends to increase the more you invest in this strategy.
Whether you want higher rankings in search engines or just a more reliable stream of incoming traffic, link building has the potential to be the most important long-term marketing strategy in your arsenal. With proper planning, a quality-focused approach, and the prioritization of future development, link building could give you the power to completely transform your brand.
