Part of good search engine optimization (SEO) is building links. This includes internal links to other parts of your website as well as building external links to various pages of your website. A linkable asset is a part of your site such as a page or a blog post – a useful element that your target audience will find useful enough to link to, cite and reference often.
Due to how search algorithm has changed, getting links back to your site isn’t as simple as it used to be. Google wants the links to be “natural” and in some cases that word is in the eye of the beholder. After all, what’s unnatural about a link from a relevant directory? But, what Google really wants is for others to willingly, and without compensation, link to your pages just because the information on them is useful.
Your important SEO link-building task is to build linkable assets that your audience wants to link to. Linkable assets are useful to your audience, strengthen your brand’s online presence, fascinate followers, pique the interest of your competition, and cause your website to rank higher in the search engines. The assets could consist of textual content, events, awards, people, tools, job boards, videos, free lessons, press mentions, images and more – whatever causes a stir among the people who might link to you.
Using an Award to Create Links
You decide to have a contest which you promote through the use of content, blogging, social media, press releases, pay-per-click campaigns and more. You also ensure that every page you create regarding said contest is optimized in terms of keywords, on page and off page SEO.
All the people who enter your contest will also blog about your contest, mention it in social media, send out press releases and more. The winners receive an award that has a widget which looks like an award and links back to your site with a description of what the award means. The awards are mentioned in blog posts, press releases and more.
As you can see, this type of linkable asset is very powerful to get natural links back to your website. They are important because you have not paid anyone to link back to your site, and the links are needed to promote the contest and the contest winners. Thus, they are completely natural links. If you notify industry leaders and resources about your contest, you’ll get even more natural link love in the form of blog posts, interviews, and more.
Links back to your website, pages, content and information are very important for search engine optimization because it’s one of the ways search engine technology determines what your website ranking shall be. Your links need to be relevant, natural, and useful to help rank your website high on search engine results pages (SERPs). By using various types of content to help build links naturally, you will succeed.
Remember that it’s important to enhance all pages in terms of design, usability, length of content, ease of sharing on social media, your call to action as well as the addition of internal links on each page of your site. One feeds off the other. The more optimized and relevant your content is, the more likely you are to create linkable assets and therefore rank higher in SERPs.