Are you launching a multilingual website? How do you plan to face the challenges of attaining a good position in search engines? International link building is a very effective strategy to guarantee high SE ranking and a stream of high-quality traffic.
Search engine marketing has changed a lot over the past few years. In the beginning, search engines could be used to look up websites containing certain keywords. The formula was very simple: a search query is a query for a certain keyword, so the answer must be websites containing that keyword. It wasn’t just unscalable, but also very easy to hijack.
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Have you read our Global Marketing article? It’s a full guide covering concepts such as international SEO, SEM, Content, Social Media, and more!
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So, Larry Page, Google’s co-founder decided to apply a principle quite common in the academic world: the most relevant documents are the most cited. Put in more recent terms, to rank on search engines, websites must have EAT (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness). And this is built through a system of references and validation from outside sources. This is how link building enters the picture.
In this piece, we’ll take a look at link building as a common marketing practice, and dive deep into its potential to drive growth for multilingual websites. This is one in a series of articles going deeper into our global marketing guide.
Link building’s role in SEO
Link building can be defined as the process of getting one-way links (or “backlinks”) to a website through diverse methods. The goal of link building is to create high-quality references to your website by having it linked to on high authority websites.
Google operates on a principle that can be simply explained as “tell me who you walk with, and I’ll tell you who you are”. Websites “extend” their authority to the websites they link to. As a result, getting your backlinks from websites with high spam scores can hurt you, rather than benefit you.
On the other hand, it’s very important for the websites you get backlinks from to belong to your business’ sphere. If you run a tech company, a link from a tech reviews website will be more valuable than a link from a yoga site.
But, how we get these links, to begin with?
Link Building Best Practices
The most common link building practices are:
- Guest posting
- Crafting valuable resources that can be linked and redistributed
- Broken link building: Does a reputable website in your niche include broken links in its articles? That might be a great opportunity
Guest posting consists of reaching out to the editors of high-authority publications with an idea for an article. The backlink could be included either within the article or in your author bio. Guest posting helps build your brand’s authority, while it guarantees that your links will be placed in the main area of the website, where they’re the most valuable.
Crafting valuable material that can be syndicated or linked is also a great way to create links.
Let’s say you’re browsing through a high-authority website in your niche, and you find a post about a certain topic. The post is doing very well, but it’s a little short – and coincidently, your company once produced an infographic or informative video regarding the same subject. This material could be used as a resource to enrich the website’s content while providing a link to your website. Part of a link builder’s job consists of finding this kind of opportunity.
Likewise, let’s say you’re browsing through a website and find an anchor text leading to a broken link. That place could be taken by a link to your company’s website.
Networking and direct pitching are the heart of link building. Don’t focus on building links, focus on building relationships with people and businesses to whom you can provide value in exchange for helping you build your brand’s authority.
International Link Building
The key challenge of international link building is not in the doing, but in knowing what to do. To get multilingual links, you need to craft high-quality content and get in touch with the right people at the right publications.
It’s essential that you pitch in their language, offer great resources in their language, and link to a flawlessly translated company website. But first, you should learn which are the most popular and influential websites of your niche within a certain locale.
If your target demographic are hoteliers in Mexico, the publications you’ll need to partner with will be far different from those you’d reach out if your target demographic were Turkish vegetarians.
International link building services are essential to make sure your international link-building efforts are successful. A multilingual link-building services provider has the cross-cultural industry knowledge necessary to understand where linking opportunities really are. And, working with transcreation or content writing team, multilingual link builders can be an expanding business’ best ally.