A lot of people think that link earning means creating great content, leaving it, and crossing their fingers for future success. That doesn’t work. Except in rare cases of virus posts, content usually doesn’t get links on its own – it just doesn’t happen. If you and your company are ready to start putting effort, time, and money into quality content so that others would like to share it or link back to it, then let’s learn what link earning means, its difference with link building, and what steps you can take to earn links.
What is Link Earning
Link earning means creating valuable and credible content that’s worthy of being shared (and linked to) by site owners, bloggers, and/or journalists.
Usually, to deserve the link back, content has to feature some sort of useful, unique content — whether it’s industry analytics, original research, topical expertise, or actionable tips.
Also, the content usually can’t be self-promotional. If it talks a lot about a product or service, like a usual advertisement, it’s less likely to earn a high quantity of valuable links. It happens because people don’t like to link to an ad or to a source they believe is one-sided (at least for free).
Difference Between Link Building and Link Earning
Link building is all activities you can do to get the backlinks. You don’t care about the way you get them — just that you get them.
Link earning means you’re producing something of value that’s provoking the site owners and bloggers to link back to your website, making for you high-quality links. This is why links are used as a metric of authority primarily — because Google assumes someone is linking to you because they trust the content you’ve created.
Why Should You Still Do Link Earning?
The advantages of earning links are almost the same as the advantages of link building. But since these links should be received naturally, they’re a lot more valuable and trustworthy for Google than usual backlinks.
Here are the benefits you can get for your website:
1. You’ll get higher-quality links
Due to its shareworthy approach, links received through link earning are usually of higher quality. This is because big sites are only going to reference content they trust and they are afraid to spoil their own reputation.
2. You won’t get penalized
Google uses links to estimate the credibility of a site to check if those links are earned or not. If you are receiving the links in any other way — private connection with bloggers, paid guest posts, etc. — it’s possible Google will notice it.
It’s absolutely true that not every grey link is noticed by search engines. However, if you got the links in a natural way, you don’t have to worry that your site may be penalized.
3. Increase Website Traffic
When another website links to your website, you are automatically likely to receive more website visits. These visits that you will receive are organic since you didn’t pay for them, so are trustworthy for Google.
But you have to remember that these earned links don’t guarantee conversion, so you have to ensure the content on your site is able to do this job and visitors from another website may be interested in the content you have.
4. You’ll create brand authority
The earned links themselves are a positive signal to Google that you’re an authority, especially when the links are coming from credible sites. But along with it, you’re also building authority with a wider audience. When people perceive the content from your brand as the source of a compelling piece of content, they’ll start associating your brand with interest or expertise in the appropriate industry.
5. Improved user experience
One of the major advantages of link earning over traditional link building is that it improves the user experience. User experience refers to how visitors see and interact with your website. Link earning guarantees that users are directed to relevant content, which makes their experience with your brand more enjoyable.
When you get links naturally, they tend to come from reputable and appropriate for your product and service sources. Such links have high credibility and relevance, making them valuable in enhancing user experience on your website. For example, inbound links from authoritative websites can provide readers with helpful information about topics they were looking for. This way you will earn the respect of the prospects.
Getting Started With Link Earning
Creating newsworthy content that earns links is a simple and perspective strategy, but it’s not always easy to implement.
It needs great effort and resources to create compelling content. Also, it’s not easy to distribute it in a way that gets the necessary attention so that authoritative sites pick it up. But in this case, you have great service as PRNEWS.IO. Their professional team and impressive list of partners will help you to do this part of link earning, building, and maintaining trust across the media landscape by establishing strong media relationships for your recognition.
In addition, we’ve prepared some tips so you won’t miss anything:
Tip #1: Create Content Worthy of Backlinks
You will never get the number of backlinks you want if you aren’t creating content that is worthy to be shared.
Therefore, you need to start with a strong content strategy that involves the creation of high-quality, appealing, and appropriate content that others will want to reference.
Generally speaking, there are four types of link-worthy content:
- educational,
- entertaining,
- informational,
- inspirational.
In addition to focusing on one of these categories or including all of them, you also need to check out that you are creating original content. Such content can easily be created with sufficient research, expert interviews, your own experience, and infographics.
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Tip #2: Work Side-by-Side with Influencers
If you can reach out to the influencers who have large audiences, respect in their field and have gained success through the link-building process, you can try doing also this method. You can work with them to create quality content that will be valuable for your and the influencer’s audiences.
In doing this, you get access to their large audience. So, not only will you earn a link from them, but you are likely to get a considerably higher number of visits to your site, increasing the potential of attracting more prospects.
A similar process can be applied to bloggers. Often, when contacting bloggers, you have to make sure they have a similar audience and then offer to create a guest blog post.
Your guest post will take the work off their shoulders while providing you with the opportunity to reach a new audience and earn some links.
Finally, another reason for doing this is because it is a quicker way to earn the quality links back to your site that you want, as opposed to waiting for it to happen naturally.
Tip #3: Work in Reverse with Reviews/Endorsements
Rather than trying to attract influencers, bloggers, and others to feature your brand on their blog or website, think about featuring them on your blog or website.
You can do a post about the founder of a company, or guide how their product can help you, or you could directly endorse their products/services in a blog post.
Most brands have it set up so they’re alerted when they are featured somewhere on the internet. In most cases, they will return the favor with an endorsement of your company because it is simply considered smart business practice and networking to do so.
Therefore, with a brand endorsement or review on your website or blog, you are essentially motivating them to give you an earned backlink without ever having to reach out or negotiate about the conditions.
Tip #4: Actively Comment on Posts
Visibility is key in the digital marketing world. In order to get backlinks from reputable brands, bloggers, influencers, and the like, you will want to ensure you are known to the world.
One of the easiest and most effective methods to do this is to engage with their brands online. From commenting on a blog post or interacting on a social media post, engagement is critical.
Start off simply by valuable commenting on their posts, but remember not to be spammy.
As time passes and you’ve earned some respect, you can begin to reference your own relevant posts, which automatically encourages backlinking.
Tip #5: Focus on Quality Over Quantity
In many examples, the more information (content) that you are able to create and publish, the better off your campaign will be.
Talking about earning links, it’s better to have more pieces of content. However, remember about its quality.
For instance, if you spend the same amount of time on one piece to make it the highest possible quality as you do on five pieces of ordinary content, you can see that one piece of high-quality content will bring in more earned links than the other five ordinary posts can.
Therefore, you should always try to create quality content instead of quantity. It really matters more than you assume.
Tip #6: Craft Press Releases
Press releases are a great way to get some high-ranking links. The great thing about press creation and distribution services, such as PRNEWS.IO, is that they are affordable and cost-effective.
However, you remember that quality over quantity is crucial here. Further, your posts are only going to be published by some of the major outlets if the content is actually worth it.
Therefore, you want to ensure that your brand has done something significant that you can write a news piece on. This content needs to be as detailed and valuable as possible, and when the opportunity occurs, push the content to as many possible outlets as you can.
Tip #7: Always Be Original
Although you are probably familiar with this point in this article, original content is an absolute must. If you are not creating original content, your website will either be penalized or not interesting to your prospects.
In order to increase your success in being seen and earning links, take the time to conduct your own research. Take the information you find in your research and gather it into a piece of content that is written in your own words and cases from your experience.
Perfectly, you should focus on a topic that wasn’t written by anybody else before—a new idea, new guide, or analytics.
This will provide new information on the internet, and if you’re the unique source, there is a higher chance of earning links back to that content.
Wrapping Up
While traditional link building may seem like a quick way for ranking higher on search engines, it comes with many short-term and long-term risks such as penalties from Google and negative user experience. On the other hand, by focusing on earning quality links through valuable content creation, you can boost your website’s authority, improve user experience, and attract more relevant traffic leading to higher conversion rates.
It will take some time and effort on your side, but it is a proven tactic to get more awareness, visibility, and credibility to your online project.
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