In this competitive world of B2B marketing, businesses need to build new connections, boost visibility, and establish their authority to stay ahead of the curve. Link building is one of the best ways to achieve all that and more.
B2B link building strategies can help businesses build a holistic link profile that drives organic growth. From local citations and HARO to outreach and guest blogging, there’s no shortage of link building strategies for B2B applications.
The question is: Which strategies are the best for your business goals? Let’s take a deep dive into each B2B link building strategy to find the right fit for your needs.
Best Link Building Strategies for B2B
There’s no doubt that link building can make a significant impact on your B2B marketing efforts. The catch is that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Every business is different and requires a mix of strategies to get the best end results.
For your ease, we’re going to break down some of the most effective B2B link building strategies to help you come up with the best plan of action.
Google My Business Page
Before you delve into the world of link building, you first have to establish yourself as a brand with Google. This is especially important for businesses that have just entered the digital space. There are a couple of ways to get recognized by Google and one of the easiest ones is to build your Google My Business Page.
These days, the Google My Business listings are analogous to the Yellow Pages from 50 years ago. Not being on the yellow pages would make your business virtually invisible to potential customers. Similarly, your B2B efforts will go in vain if you’re not in the most important directory on the internet.
Your My Business page should be all dressed up with the verified addresses, content, links, and images to make your operation look legit. This will allow Google to find you and associate all the related search queries with your business.
Local Citations
Local citations are mentions of your company that may include your business address, website and contact details.
Search engines tend to measure your website’s authority based on how many times your business information is mentioned online. That’s why these mentions can help you boost your local SEO efforts and help you rank on the SERPs. Try to enter your business information in relevant local directories to get the most out of this strategy.
Local citations can be structured or unstructured.
Structured Citations
Structured citations can be found on local business directories and provide more control. You can submit your updated contact details and other important information to such directories. Some of the best sites to get B2B links include:
– Yellowpages
– Maps
– Foursquare
– Yelp
Unstructured Citations
Unstructured citations can show up on websites that may belong to magazines, blogs, or newspapers. These are not specifically business directories so you don’t have much control over the information that shows up on these sites.
Press Releases
In your initial days of link building, the goal is to focus on building authoritative and relevant homepage links by using your brand as an anchor text. This will allow Google to recognize you as a brand to aid your future link building efforts.
But with almost no domain authority and poor metrics, new websites usually struggle to earn such highly authoritative links. One of the best ways to overcome this challenge is through press releases.
Press releases can be used to introduce new services and announcements containing links pointing to your website. You may not have a lot of control over these links and they may be nofollow, but they form a nice background of natural links to help more targeted link building efforts in the future. Here are some best practices for press releases:
– Focus on quality, not quantity
– Diversify your anchor texts instead of using the same one every time
– Make the headlines as attractive as possible
– Don’t resort to spamming
– Target relevant platforms
– Only include No-follow links to avoid penalties
Testimonials
As a growing business, you may not have the budget needed to invest in sophisticated link building efforts. In such a scenario, finding clever ways to get virtually free links and mentions can be highly valuable.
One way to do that is by offering testimonials to companies whose tools and services you are actively using. You can simply reach out to the company with a review and they will most likely feature your brand and website in their client testimony section. This is quite an underrated way of getting links to your homepage.
HARO Link Building
HARO or Help A Reporter Out is a free database of resources for reporters that helps them find sources for various stories. Becoming a contributor to HARO can help you build some high-quality links to your website. Famous publications such as Mashable, Time, and Wall Street Journal use HARO to get quality backlinks.
All you have to do is sign up for HARO with your email address and select the type of resources you want to provide. Now you can start going through various requests from reporters. If you feel that you have some valuable information to contribute, you can send over a pitch.
Here are some steps you can take to make the most out of HARO:
– Be prepared to answer the journalist’s follow-up questions.
– Be concise in your pitch and present yourself as an authority.
– Only reply if you are qualified to contribute valuable information.
– Address all the questions in the request and follow all the guidelines.
– Include your website and author bio in the reply.
Outreach Link Building
The strategies we’ve mentioned so far are best for new businesses which are just establishing their presence online. If your business has built a basic link profile through business listings, local citations, paid links, and HARO, you can now switch to a more targeted link building approach.
The first strategy worth mentioning is link building through outreach. This involves reaching out to different businesses in the industry to find link building opportunities. You need to target blogs, publications, and websites that are relevant to your domain and build fruitful business relationships. It’s all about offering value and receiving value in return.
Outreach works best when your website has good metrics such as a decent domain authority that signifies that it’s reputable, credible, and will add value to other businesses.
Guest Posting
Guest posting is another B2B link building strategy to build authority links and provide long-term results. Before pitching your content to different blogs and publications, you need to first find the most relevant websites for your niche.
The ideal website for guest blogging should:
– Lie within your niche so you can deliver actual value
– Have followers that are interested in your niche
– Have high engagement rates so your post can get the most visibility
– Be partial to sharing guest content
– Allow you to include your website link
– Have a good domain authority
Once you’ve found the right websites and blogs for our guest posts, it’s time for the most challenging part: the pitch! This is the part where you’ll have to sell your ideas for the guest blog. Whether your ideas get accepted or not depends on how suitable your pitch is.
Here are some best practices to write an amazing pitch for guest blogging:
Honesty is the best policy. In a sea of spammy pitches filled with copy-pasted templates, honesty can be quite refreshing.
Follow the guidelines. Rules exist for a reason. Follow all the guidelines to increase your chances of landing the pitch.
Don’t forget to follow up. If you haven’t received a response yet, there’s no shame in following up respectfully.
Linkable Assets
Linkable assets are pieces of content that are naturally great at attracting links. This often includes highly interactive content that users can’t help but click on.
Here are some common examples of linkable assets:
– Expert Roundups
– Industry stats
– Surveys
– Interactive games
– Quizzes
– Videos
– Infographics
– Case studies
Some of these assets are fairly easy to build on your own through various online tools and software. But if you want something truly bespoke for your business, you can hire a developer to create more complex and engaging content pieces.
Hire a Professional Link Building Agency
Link building may be highly effective but it’s not as easy as waving a magic wand that fixes all your B2B marketing troubles. It requires dedicated effort and a high level of expertise to get the spectacular results your business may be looking for.
If you’re looking to go above and beyond with your B2B marketing, you should consider reaching out to a professional link building agency such as Outreachmama.
At Outreachmama, we focus on building mutually beneficial relationships with other businesses in your vertical through blogger outreach and guest posting. Our comprehensive services cover everything from identifying target pages to pitching and content creation.
Summary
| Strategy | Pros | Cons | When to Use It |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google My Business Listings | - No investment needed - For Google to recognize you as a brand - Boosts brand visibility and credibility | - Only for new businesses or ones who are new to the digital space - Not a long-term link building strategy | To establish your website on Google and get your metrics up |
| Local Citations | - A way to get inexpensive links - Boosts brand visibility and awareness - Build credibility and help with SEO | - Can have no-follow links - A beginner strategy not suitable for already well-established websites | To boost visibility in the digital space and build some metrics such as authority and credibility |
| Testimonials | - A handy way to get websites to link to your homepage when you don’t have much authority or budget | - A beginner strategy that’s not long-term and will only take you so far | To websites to link to you for free without having high metrics |
| Press Releases | - Great strategy to build natural links to aid future targeted link building | - They contain nofollow links - Require an investment - Can get you penalties if not done right | To build authoritative and relevant homepage links by using your brand as an anchor text |
| HARO | - Good source of high-quality links for businesses first starting out - Gives you access to expensive media outlets - Helps you establish yourself as an expert | - Can be time consuming - There’s no guarantee for success - Not valuable enough for well-established websites with a good number of links | To establish yourself as an expert, build high-quality links, and have valuable resources to provide |
| Outreach | - Builds mutually beneficial relationships with businesses in your niche - Boosts brand visibility and awareness - Build credibility and help with SEO | - Not suitable for sites with low authority which are just starting out - You need to get your metrics up before you use this -Might give you less control over the content | When you have decent metrics and want to build a long-term link building strategy |
| Guest Posting | - Control over the anchor text and pages on which you get links - Establishes you as an expert - Allows you to reach a new audience, brand awareness | - Requires highly well-written content - May have to invest in content writing, making it expensive - Time-consuming | When you have the budget and resources to write high-quality content and reap the lasting benefits |
| Linkable Assets | - Establishes you as a link-worthy source - Boosts engagement and generates new leads and links | -May be too expensive to create effective linkable assets | To create high-quality content and boost engagement |
| Hiring a Link Building Agency | - Help you devise a sophisticated link building strategy based on your business needs - Have a lot of industry connections to make the process smoother | - May not fit within your budget | To enter the big leagues and take your link building to the next level |
B2B Link Building: Moving Forward
Staying afloat in a highly competitive and fast-paced digital landscape can be impossible without link building. Better reputation, increased brand visibility and good credibility are just a few advantages of link building for B2B.
Keep in mind that not all link building strategies will reap the desired results for your business. You need to experiment and find the one that works best. If you want to enter the big leagues, you can simply enlist the help of a reputable link building service to take your linking game to the next level.
