Online marketing budgets can get out of hand, and results can be far off if your online marketing department does not have a sound strategy to go by. Many companies will start by putting out content on their blog and expect traffic and backlinks to come in. However, that is rarely the case. Instead, you will need a concerted effort to build links and draw in users. Here are five of the most effective tactics you can use to achieve this without wasting your budget.

1. Add Quotes from Experts

Quotes are…well, quotable, and if you can add a few memorable quotes or tidbits of information from the experts, you’ve increased the linkability of your content. Your readers are much more likely to share a quote if they found it to be insightful, especially if it helps to clarify things for them. You can use existing quotes, or you can contact experts directly and ask them for their opinion on a relevant issue.

2. Add High Quality Images and GIFs, or Professionally Designed Visuals

A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the fast-paced, hyper-reality of the internet, a picture and a title might be your best chance at catching someone’s attention and enticing them to read your content. Not only that, but strong visuals often signal quality to a user, which means they are more likely to have a positive reaction to the content—from taking an action and advancing down the sales funnel, to sharing the content on social media. However, we still have not covered all the benefits. Good images that are well placed in an article or in a blog post can be shared through social media. The images themselves, if you make it easy for a user to share them (as you would with an expert quote), can be a great source for links to your website.

3. Add Statistics to Your Content

Statistics can provide just as much concentrated information (if not more) than a picture. You will often see blog posts that quote statistics and links back to the company or institution that conduct the survey or study. At this point, you might think: “Hiring a designer to produce images and visuals is pretty cost-effective, but we don’t have the budget to conduct surveys!” That’s not necessarily true. You have several avenues if you want to conduct surveys—from promoted Twitter polls, to specialized survey websites such as Survata and SurveyMonkey. You can add even more value and shareability to a survey if you compile it into an infographic.

4. Add Links to Content You Find Interesting

One of the oldest ways to build links for your website is the tit-for-tat, where you link to someone’s content and they link back to yours. There is a degree of strategy and art to this practice. To start, you’ll want to see who is linking who in your niche or industry, and then you’ll want to get in touch with some of those companies. Ask them if they are interested in link building with your blog. The great thing about this tactic is that it grows in effectiveness the more you do it, because if you have a lot of partners for your link building efforts, more are likely to join in.

Interested in Link Building?

If you would like to find out more about link building or SEO in Naperville, contact us today. We will help you make the most out of your marketing budget so that you’ll see tangible results in no time.