Tips to get international quality backlinks
In 2016, appropriate link building strategies revolving link attraction through top-quality content are still valid. Effective international link building depends heavily on the quality of the backlinks, and their relevance. Here are some valuable link building tips that we use to safely improve your international rankings, and to reach your international customers…
Local backlinks
According to Google, links from within countries matter. For that reason, it is recommended to engage in local link building.
One of the most obvious parameters to consider is location of the site on which a link originates. To succeed in a specific country, you will need not only good content targeted at that region and in the correct language, but also links to your site from within that country. So, if your target is to sell machine tools to Italians, you need a site in Italian, receiving backlinks from Italian websites.
Get More Social, Leverage Your Fanbase
Social signals are more important than ever. When you post fresh content on your site or blog, make sure you share it on ALL your social pages. In fact, this should be almost like a reflex.
When we share useful content, we obviously are more able to get likes, retweets, and +1’s. This not only gives you bonus points in terms of SEO, but it also helps virally spread your content far beyond the confines of your fanbase. A win-win!
Inner-Pages linking
During an international link building session, it is a common mistake to always link to the homepage of your multilingual website. Your homepage may be the most important page of your site, but you can be guaranteed that Google will raise a red flag if a large majority of your backlinks point to your homepage and very few of them are linking to your blog posts and inner pages. When we look at a website that acquires tons of links naturally, we willl notice that most of the natural links they get are to their inner content pages.
Don’t forget internal linking
Also, remember that it’s not just about external links. Internal links to your multi-language website are also important. Take some time to improve the internal site’s structure by making sure the right keywords are linking to the right pages internally. This will make it easy and intuitive for both Google and your visitors to crawl your site.
Focus on quality backlinks, not quantity
This has been said over and over, but it is more important now than ever before. Google will penalize your website if you have a large amount of backlinks from untrustworthy local sites.
In case of guest posting, one high quality blog post from a reputable site is better than 100 posts from low quality ones. Do not use shady link building techniques like mass directory submissions or any automated type of international link building. Google will eventually hit hard any website using spammy techniques such as mass directory submissions.
A bidirectional link has less value than a one-way link. In fact, search engines are able to detect a reciprocal link . Priority has to be given to “dofollow” sites for link juice, but Nofollows links can be amazing for traffic.
Check to see what your local competitors are doing
While this should never be a definitive way to define your own global link plan, it’s valuable to see what works for others in your niche. However, we know it will not be possible to mimic a competitor’s link profile and do as well as they have. We use specific tools to check out the sites that link to your competitors and find the sites they link to. It’s a great way to figure out other good sites to contact.
Make Your Content Link-Worthy and become a content provider
We need to make sure you are producing link-worthy content. People use the web to gather information, and if you aren’t giving it to them, someone else (your competitor) definitely is.
Think about an ongoing content plan and write so that it’s easy to write a follow-up piece. Series are great, regular guest post slots are great, and knowing what your “thing” is can definitely be great. If your visitors don’t like your content, they will leave your site. This will produce high bounce rates and bad user experience as well as lower Google rankings. It’s really that simple. If you provide content that has value, people will stay longer on your site and possibly hit the like or tweet buttons on one of your articles. This enhanced user experience will pay off SEO-wise.
Always remember that content is (and will always be) king. Focusing on delivering high quality content that people constantly link to from their websites and their social profiles is agreat way of getting local backlinks.Link baiting is about making your website interesting to the international internet audience. It is considered to be the natural way of link building. It is important to encourage your visitors to tag and share content.
Produce something other than just textual content
An infography or a video can be very useful for international link building, providing the content has been adapted locally. That kind of non-text-based content does get local links.
Different content has different objectives and typically a piece of content will support one or two parts of the sales funnel. From quizzes to white papers, webinars, video content, there are many types of non textual content that can support your international expansion.
Use Press Releases
Editorial links aren’t easy to get abroad. Foreign journalists can be hard to contact, there’s no guarantee of getting your story covered, and even if it is covered, there’s no guaranteed that you’ll actually get a link.
However, while it may be difficult, it is possible. Looking for such links can play a rewarding part in any well-rounded link-building campaign. Press releases are a great source of links (when links are included in them). The websites that host press releases can be worthwhile for link weight, and newspapers or other news sites may sometimes publish the entire release as well.
Use guest blogging
Guest blogging presents a unique benefit of showcasing your work on foreign blogs. When you can write great content for someone else, you get a link and you get known for contributing to something outside of what you control. If there’s a site you read regularly, we can ask if they would let you write something for them.
Don’t forget to use the guest post bio for a link, and to vary your guest post bio. Don’t do it to be spammy of course, but it’s a good way to get different bits of information out there about you and what you do.
Don’t be afraid to link to someone else in your guest post. If you’re referencing a competitor, link to him or her. It’s not going to kill you. If you guest post on someone’s blog and are asked if the person can guest on yours, be gracious and say yes.
Leave Your Links in multiple places
Links can be a calling card if used wisely. This is the same idea as any other marketing really: you want as many eyeballs as possible on your products. Link to your site in your email signature. Link to your site in all your social media platforms. Link to your site on your business cards that you will naturally give out at industry events.
Tell people about your site. You’d be surprised at how much of a resource this can be. Comment on relevant blogs and sites without doing so in a spammy manner. I wouldn’t suggest popping your link into a casual comment because that’s not a good way to build long-term link exposure, but using your site for your comment signature can lead people to you, even if it doesn’t actually generate a link on the spot.
Make sure you’re listed in some relevant online business directories
Make sure you’re site is listed in all the local services like Google Places. Become a member of your local civic organizations, Chamber of Commerce, marketing groups, etc.. Local web directories are a simple way of creating local links and, in some markets, directory listings are adequate to attain high search rankings.
Contact the Openvalley agency to discuss developing a quality, results driven, international link building campaign for your site.