Top 10 Link Building Tactics for Traditional Publishers

It’s important to understand that the term “publishers” has changed a bit over the years. Now that SEO and web content development have come into the equation, there are many more publishers out there. Brands are becoming publishers and working to build links, typically for SEO purposes. However, traditional publishers, or publishers that publish for the sole sake of the audience, are still relevant. In most cases, the link building tactics that works best for traditional publishers involve utilizing the PR team and outside influences to build links. The best part: Brands and other new-age publishers can (and should) also take advantage.

A Few Suggested Link Building Tactics for Publishers

Below are ten link building practices that work great for publishers who are focused on reaching a new audience through publishing as opposed to only SEO and rankings:

1. Email Newsletters. Email newsletters are the perfect way to get your content into your audience’s inboxes, and there are ways to use this as a link building opportunity. Consider putting the URLs in your newsletters so that people can easily jump back to the content that is published on the website.
2. RSS Feeds. Submitting your website to an RSS feed is a great way to get your content published in many different places. The more visibility, the better chance you have of building a few links. Many people use RSS feeds to power a blog on a website (Social Media Today is a great example), so you want your content to be involved.
3. Social Media. This might be an obvious point, but it’s important nonetheless. This is a great place for users to discover your content, but it’s also a great way to find authoritative individuals in your industry and make those connections. Reach out to bloggers and influencers on social media and try and build links that way.
4. Blog Roll. This is a tactic that was used more frequently a few years ago, but it’s still a great way to build links. Consider putting a blog roll on your website and syndicating the content every few weeks. The site on your blog roll should appreciate this and do the same for you. It’s an easy way to get new, great content on your site while also getting your content syndicated on another.
5. Interactive Content. This is something that all kinds of publishers will take seriously. You want to create interactive content such as contests, polls, and even offer special deals.
6. Link Recovery. It’s important that your current links are performing. It’s easy to tell whether or not you have a lot of broken links pointing back to your website by going to your Webmaster tools and checking out your Crawl Error report. It will pull up a list of how many URLs send back errors, and then you can click and make changes.
7. Sponsorships. Creating sponsorships with other companies is a great way to earn a lot of links and social shares as well as build links for your own website. This isn’t quite as popular anymore (especially when it comes to SEO), but it still works great if done right.
8. Press Releases. Links within press releases don’t usually mean much when it comes to SEO, but it’s still a great way to get those reading the press release to click and potentially share the article on social media or even better, link back to it.
9. Outreach. Find influencers in your niche and simply ask to build links. See what they are looking for on their website, and write something up that’s similar. Because your piece will be of interest, you are more likely earn a backlink (plus you created that all-important relationship).
10. Badges. Badges are small graphics you can include on your website to show you are affiliated with a particular website or have been featured on a particular website. This is a great way to not only build your brand, but help build that relationship (and hopefully links) with another website.

In the end, link building is ultimately a great way to gain visibility and therefore gain a larger, relevant audience. It’s a domino effect of success, and whether you’re a traditional publisher or a publisher focused on SEO, no white-hat link building tactic is going to be a negative.

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