The key to success in any business is to adapt and evolve.

If you don’t change with the times, then you’ll eventually lose relevancy with your customers. Just look at Microsoft — they were a dominant force in the 1990s, but have been surpassed by Google and Apple who recognized that smartphones and tablets were the future of computing.

To remain relevant, businesses should change their approaches to keep up with the changing times. If driving traffic to your website is important to your business (and it is, by the way), then you’ll want to adapt your SEO practices.

Any company that has failed to modify their link-building strategies, or has hired employees that utilize old strategies, will suffer as a result.

The good news is that the damage they are doing is not beyond repair. In order to change they simply need to change the way they think, and be more aware of Google’s linking strategies.

The Importance of Links

In addition to my regular job, I own my own eCommerce business. I nearly had to close my business due my lack of knowledge of scalable link building. That was until I started my job at AnnexCore which helped me to gain the insight I first needed about scalable links.

Leveraging my experience and consistent action, I brought my business back to life. How did I do it? Let’s take a look.

The first step in turning around things was recognizing that getting links were the essential to appearing on search engine results.

The former head of the web spam team at Google says they use sophisticated text matching strategies when results are displayed. This is to ensure that the content being displayed is relevant for the person using Google. They use the anchor text and the location of the source link to calculate if a website is relevant to your search.

Over the course of doing research on link building, I learned a great deal. I learned that links are important for maximizing your online presence, and that they are also important for SEO reasons. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the best and most successful link building strategies that are out there.

On-Site Content Creation

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines suggest that the owners of websites have unique high quality content on their sites. Making the content relevant to the business and the industry will help the website become poplar and develop trusted links over time.

When you create unique high-quality content, stuff that tells a story, you’ll have a better chance of getting a response than those who use inferior content. This means that the first step in your link building process should focus first on creating great content because this will offer the first scalable link-building technique.

Tips for Creating Scalable Backlinks

Do Your Research
When I first got started I didn’t realize how important real research was. As I realized that I needed to do research, I ran into the problem of getting started and where to look.

Granted this was nearly 5 years ago, and now there are great resources like Inbound.org, GrowthHacker.com and of course 60 Second Marketer’s Blog.

The good news is if you’re getting into the industry now, you are not alone because there are tons of resources out there. It’s good news because they have already done a lot of the legwork, and made a lot of mistakes for you to learn from.

You can use their work as an example of how to attract readers, and then base your website upon this. This industry needs to reveal its secrets to gain more clients, and thus establish their credibility.

Developing Content
After you have determined the challenges for your industry or important topics, start brainstorming content ideas. The following is a list of some well known types of content that have proven to generate a high level of traffic.

Lists
Lists are the easiest of the following techniques to create because they are simple, to the point, and provide the needed information. Check out this SEO Tools List or this list of Marketing Tools, you can get the attention of your readers by offering them an increasing number of list numbers.

Videos
Recently the internet has been making a major shift toward featuring more video content. Today is the perfect time to jump in and try to get ahead of the curve. There is a huge amount of opportunity here, and you can use YouTube to help get a lot of traffic to your website. The great news is that there are even tips and suggestions you can follow in order to get your YouTube channel ranked higher!

In Depth Guide
When you’re knowledgeable about certain subject matter, then you should talk about it in depth and share your expertise. Although doing this will open you to criticism and you must be willing accept it since it will show you’re open minded and willing to grow. It’s always a good idea to create an introductory guide such as a heatmap guide, or an ultimate guide which you can turn into an e-book.

Pillar Pages
Pillar pages refer to resource lists on your website about a certain subject matter. You can put many different articles about one topic on a single pillar page, and then invite your readers to look at them. This will show your readers that you are very knowledgeable, and also help you to earn links. These are of course than landing pages.

Industry Reports
Create industry reports for your readers that they can go through at their leisure. Make sure that if you take this approach that you include demographics to help validate and authenticate your words.

Content Promotion
Don’t think your work is done because content creation is only half of the battle. In order to attract readers you need to focus on promotion. If people don’t know about your website or content, they can’t visit it.

Try some of these methods out:

Guest Blogging
If your main goal is to generate links, don’t start sharing them on various social media sites or through email marketing. Try something different, and use other sources to reach out to people such as genuine emails reaching out to people or by giving them a call for guest blogging opportunities.

Most people have the wrong impression of what guest blogging actually is. You need to approach the right types of people, with the right concept, at the right time.

If you want to create quality links, then you need to guest blog on the top publications in the field of your website. You also need to ensure that you are getting exposure through social media. To give yourself more credibility, you can also apply to become what is known as a regular contributor instead of just being a guest blogger. After you’ve started to publish content, contact them and connect them with your Twitter or Google+ profile. This will help to further your reputation as an expert in the industry.

Social Bookmarking
If you’re looking for automated ways you can also use social bookmarking sites such as Delicious or use paid social book options such as StumbleUpon paid discovery. That said, these won’t yield the same types of results as guest blogging will.

Using Media
If you can find a way to become a credible source for journalists with good reputations, then this can go a long way to helping you. Journalists are always in need of good sources in the fields they report in, so this can be a mutually beneficial relationship. Be sure to visit Help A Reporter Out for opportunities.

Sponsorships
Donate to charities, be a sponsor, and bring attention to your business and its website. This will help you to gain quality back links by influencing readers. It also has the good net effect of positive branding!

I know many of you may be excited to get into enterprise linkbuilding and my single best piece of advice would be to just start now! I gave you enough tips to put you on the road to success. Whether you’re trying to create a lean digital marketing agency, linkbuilding for your website, or for your company’s website it is important to start implementing these tips!

About the Author: Ryan Chester is a digital marketing connoisseur. Part of the Enterprise SEO Team at AnnexCore. He has helped many multi-national companies achieve success with their digital marketing endeavors.