How to Think About Links in 2014

While plenty of people in the post-Penguin Google reality would have you believe that link building as a form of helping you rank better in the search engines is dead, we beg to differ.

Not so fast, as stated by Google’s own Liege of link building Matt Cutts states: “Links are still the best way that we’ve found to discover (how relevant or important somebody is) and maybe, over time, social or authorship or other types of markup will give us a lot more information about that.”

Now that we have that cleared up, let’s look at some of the best practices for link building in 2014 and likely beyond.

Internal linking on your site – Internal linking means the links you have on your own pages that (hopefully) lad to more relevant content on your site. Google views this as a help to your visitors, and as long as you don’t overuse the linkage with tons of excess keyword links, such as extra menus and tag clouds and stuff like that, you’ll have some love too. Link from textual content to other textual content, and use anchor text that is prudent.

Google+ shares – It may not be Facebook yet, but Google+ can get your pages indexed rapidly, and this definitely benefits you in your search rankings.

Guest blogging – Having your posts featured on popular blogs has long been a way to garner links, but have you considered being the blog that accepts the guest posts? This can also help collect links, in addition to helping you build authority and content.

Curate popular content on your own site – Every now and then we find a post or piece of content that has gone viral in our market and is of interest to your readers too. Curate this onto your own blog, giving attribution of course, and encourage your own readers to share it with their social circles, thus sending them to your pages!

Relevance and diversity – Google is all about relevance now, and so the days of getting a ton of links irrelevant to your niche and having that actually work are over. Obtain relevant links, and make sure to vary the anchor text coming into your site, if you’ve got any control over it.

How to increase the chances of your content getting shared

Social sharing is a great way to ensure that your content has exposure to audiences you may not have had access to, and can build your business far faster than ever before. What’s more, it’s quite simple to set up and implement!

A few amazing reasons why you want your content shared!

To illustrate just how social media enmeshed we all are in social media, studies show that Americans are spending an average of 37 minutes a day on their various social media accounts, even more than their email! And, it looks like about 60 percent of us are doing that from our mobile device of choice.

With so many making purchasing choices based upon recommendations from friends and review sites, having your content shared socially in a positive manner only adds to the appeal of your products and services.

And last but certainly not least, the incredible reach of social media will benefit your brand in ways you can’t possibly imagine.

4 Ways you can ramp up the social media sharing!

• Include social sharing capabilities in your content – If you don’t supply them with the ability to share it, they won’t! Make sure that you prominently display social sharing buttons on each piece of content you put out there, even emails, and make certain you use calls to action to tell them specifically what you’d like them to do! Incentivize if needed!
• Join relevant social media groups and get your brand known – There are many people in social groups on the major social media sites like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and others. Search out these groups, join the ones you are able to, and begin to make friends. You’ll be surprised at the results before long!
• Keep it short – Kissmetrics reports those Facebook posts of less than 80 characters are engaged some 66 percent more than longer ones. Keep it brief, and be sure to include a call to action.
• Love those images and videos! – Everyone knows that images and videos are the most shared items on the web. Studies are now showing that posts with images or videos receive a whopping 40 percent more interaction than others that don’t have visuals.