Doing SEO and focusing on online marketing is the only way forward for SMEs in 2021. Creating and expanding an online presence can be a slow and arduous process that requires a lot of time and dedication. Link building, in particular, is one of the most cumbersome parts of the SEO process.

SEO, in general, is a complicated subject, not least because the rules of the game are always changing. There are a ton of factors that influence rankings, and they are always in flux. This is why SMEs have such a hard time playing the game. Unless they have experienced SEO specialists on board or a link-building agency doing the work for them.

Link building is by far one of the most crucial aspects of any online marketing and SEO effort. If done right, it can produce truly impressive results. Here are nine strategies you should focus on if you want your link-building efforts to bear fruit in 2021.

Make Content That’s Worth Linking To

Publishing link-worthy content is the bedrock of any link-building campaign. Always strive to make content that reputable and well-ranking websites would want to link to.

Polish your content as much as possible, and make it as tight, concise, and visually appealing as you can. Make it as truthful, objective, and authoritative as you can. Regular users, as well as other businesses, will appreciate your efforts, and link to you more often.

Reach out to Others in Your Field

Contact respectable peers in your industry with an offer to take part in a joint link-building effort. As long as they’re not your direct competitors, this can work miracles for your link-building efforts.

Reciprocal links are something that Google frowns upon – but only when it’s done for shady reasons and on a large enough scale. If you do it within reasonable limits, it is going to boost your SEO efforts – not harm them.

Make Your Links Clickable

A link must be well-positioned in the body of the content to be attractive to users. It needs to be striking and visually distinct, and it needs to be attached to a crucial bit of text that’s thematically related to its subject.

Make sure you adhere to this golden standard of linking. What’s more, make sure that all your link-building partners also adhere to it. If their links are poorly positioned, unremarkable or the anchor text is not interesting, they won’t be of much use to you.

Diversify Your Referring Domains

Ideally, you want to have links from varied and unique linking domains pointing toward your content. Getting linked by the same few domains time and time again is not very effective.

Focus on securing links from new domains that have never linked to you before. Be careful who you reach out to, though. Do your due diligence and make sure you’re in good company before undertaking joint link-building efforts.

Maintain Your Theme

Links to and from your content should connect it to other content with a similar theme and topic. Failing to maintain a consistent theme can alienate your audience and generally discredit you.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t diversify your portfolio. Just make sure you don’t make your linking efforts look artificial. When you link to other sites, the links must always make sense. Further, get your link-building associates to do this when linking to your content.

Claim Credit For Your Work

If you’re in the business of generating visual content, make a habit out of reverse-google searching your work. If you’re good at what you do and at least somewhat popular, there’s a chance that some people are re-using your work without crediting you.

Get in touch with these people, and convince them to give you what you are due. And what you’re due is a mention of your authorship and a proper and prominent link to your original content, at the very least.

Dip Your Toes Into Guest posting

Guest posting is one of the most popular tools for doing SEO. If you want to do effective link-building, that’s certainly one of the tactics you could lean into. Just remember – it is not a universal tool, nor is it a strategy that can scale up well.

On the contrary – diminishing returns are very much a thing when it comes to guest posting. Still, while its SEO utility is limited, guest posting can be very good for online marketing in general. It allows you to share your content on new platforms and attract users of other established names to your platform, where they can see your content. It can produce great results – but don’t rely on it as the groundwork for your success.

Consider Newsjacking

Sometimes, the best sort of online marketing is not proactive, but reactive. Newsjacking, or reacting to news stories as they break, is a legitimate way to generate an explosion of engagement and lots of links.

It’s a strategy that demands commitment, dedication, and quite a bit of skill to put in place. Тhe window to provide valuable commentary on that topic or story is usually very narrow. If you manage to get on that treadmill, you could reap tremendous link-building and general SEO benefits. However, you need to be at the top of your game and always on your toes. Always being online and looking out for the latest developments can take a toll on any marketing team.

Think of Unorthodox Link Sources

Try reaching out to niche forums in your field and their users. See what value you can provide them, and what link-building opportunities can arise from connections you make there.

Diversify your portfolio by getting your other content linked to in videos and video descriptions. Youtube, Twitch, and many other platforms can be of great use for link-building as well.

Podcasts and webinars are exploding in popularity right now – so why not try those? Wiki sites are also a popular platform that tends to get overlooked when link building is concerned.