08How to Promote Your Content

With all that hard work you put into your site and content, you would want the world (or at least your target audience) to know about it! And it’s not just you, Google wants more people to read your content too. In fact, it can help Google discover new content on your site and index it quickly.

Whereas without promotion it might take days or weeks to rank. It is important to remember that site visits and recommendations from other sites are signals to Google on how relevant your content is to readers. In fact, the best way to show Google that your site offers high-quality content is through acquiring backlinks.

Does Your Site Need Backlinks?

Backlinks are external links pointing to your site. The best way to understand backlinks is as recommendations for your company. For example, if you are an ecommerce site and a customer writes a review about you, they might include a link to you in their posts. This would tell Google that this site is recommending your site.

Therefore suggesting to Google that your website offers high quality content which should be ranked higher in the search results than someone with no backlinks. Backlinks can also be great for increasing exposure of your brand, especially if you are mentioned on a reputable website in your industry. And even great for building relationships with experts and leaders in your industry.

Every Link Is Not Created Equal!

If your goal is to improve your rankings on Google (which I bet it is, if you’re reading this post), then you might be tempted to go out there and start buying links from all sorts of sources. But don’t ever do this! If Google suspects your backlinks have been bought, instead of ‘naturally’ earned, your site could be hit with a massive penalty. Some signs of unnatural link building may include the following:

• A big jump in the number of backlinks you have gained in a short period of time
• Backlinks with no relevance to the content on your site
• Lots of links from spam or low quality sites

The most difficult area of SEO is getting backlinks. It’s also the most important too. According to backlinko’s study of over 1 million Google search results, backlinks remain to be one of the most important Google ranking factors. Sites with thousands of quality backlinks rank in the top position for tons of keywords, while sites with only a few will find it really difficult to rank top positions.

When trying to get backlinks for your website, we suggest the following tips:

• Create unique, engaging content which encourages readers to share
• Do not buy backlinks
• Do not spam irrelevant forums with links to your site
• Reach out to sites and experts in your industry (You might want to read our article on influencer marketing and creating a simple outreach plan)
• Make your content easy to share by adding social share features