What is link earning? How does it work? These questions are among those of most website owners. It’s important to understand link earning and to know the difference between earning and building links. Knowing the difference and using it to your advantage could grow your business through your website with higher traffic and brand awareness.
Link Earning
Earning a link means another website has felt the need to link content on their website to something on your website. By earning links through other websites, you’re gaining traffic to your page and earning awareness for your brand. Another reason earning links is a good idea has everything to do with search engine optimization (SEO). By earning a link, you’re increasing your SEO, because when someone lands on the other website, the presence of your link allows others to find you, as well. Additionally, it tells Google and other search engines that your site is both credible and valuable. It’s a win for all involved and a boost to your website – and, by extension, a huge boost to your company.
Why Link Earning Is Important
When building your business through your website, the first step is creating a quality site with quality content for visitors to enjoy. The second step is drawing others to this valuable content by being seen, usually by being found in search results, such as organic search rankings. How do you get organic rankings?
The best way to achieve higher organic rankings is by having high-authority websites link back to you and your page. Earning links in other domains is the best way to bring light to your own website. It’s important to remember that SEO is one of the biggest and best marketing strategies out there. In order to rank better on the SEO scale, you need organic rankings.
Link earning provides this organic ranking and allows for customers, potential customers, and anyone reading content from the other sites to easily find you. It also gives the opportunity for your website to get hits on searches from other topics.
Link Earning vs. Link Building
Many hear link earning or link building and think they mean the same. This is not true and confusing the two can damage your SEO and cost you all the positives that link earning can bring.
Link earning is the preferred method. As mentioned, this is when other websites link back to your domain or page. With link earning, you are gaining website traffic, brand awareness, authority, and allowing people searching for other topics to still find your site.
With link building, however, the strategy has long been at creating your own links back to your site. Instead of other sites linking to you – lending to your credibility and justifying your content’s value – search engines such as Google see that the links being sent out in emails or posted around on various forums are nothing more than spam meant to draw people in.
They recognize these links are not drawing in users through quality and value but purely through generic advertising. While many website owners have used this technique as a short-term way to build the number of links to their page up quickly, this practice is no longer recommended and certainly does little benefit in the long run. All long-term strategies instead recommend taking the time to create quality, sharable content that other websites choose to link to or promote.
Further, Google has begun cracking down on the practice of link building and will actually dock your site if it finds evidence of needless link building. For this reason, focus on link earning and letting others promote your brand rather than building up your brand yourself through what amounts to little more than junk mail. Because of its bad reputation, link building has become a thing of the past in marketing.
How You Earn Links
Earning links is simple, but it is certainly not easy. It requires creating quality content that adds value to others and to other websites. It also takes building relationships and community in your industry. Essentially, you want to be a credible source that provides consistent and useful content worth citing and linking back to for other companies in your industry and beyond.
One Note of Caution
It is possible for some sites to link to your site and still appear to Google as though these links are spam rather than legitimate linking. For this reason, it’s important to know who’s linking back to your website and why. Otherwise, you may be losing page ranking without even knowing it. If a website isn’t very reputable, for instance, it’s likely you might have an issue gaining SEO points and building your business. Be sure to keep watch over who might be linking back to your site, and alert Google if you see any links to your page being used nefariously.
Conclusion
Link earning is a fantastic method of marketing your business, if done properly. Link earning is the best way to gain more SEO rankings and higher traffic to your site.
With link earning, you’ve got the potential to create more brand awareness, raise your traffic level, and provide a higher ranking for overall SEO. It’s important not to get too impatient and begin partaking in any link building quick fixes. If your website doesn’t earn credibility and authority with search engines, you won’t see the page ranking you are hoping for. By following best practices and proper guidelines, you can have the optimum SEO and traffic flow for your website you are looking for.
Building your company through your website can be much easier once you’ve started earning links with other reputable companies and websites. After all, the more your community and the general internet population see you as an authority, the greater your brand value will be, and the stronger your business will be for the foreseeable future.
At Vizion Interactive, we have the expertise, experience, and enthusiasm to get results and keep clients happy! Learn more about how our Link Profile Management services can increase sales and boost your ROI. But don’t just take our word for it, check out what our clients have to say, along with our case studies.