Eric Ward, the legendary SEO linkbuilder, said the best links have value even if search engines didn’t exist. This makes sense, since more referral traffic comes from related websites. We also know that Google analyzes topical relevancy to determine a link’s worth (1).
These referrers need a non-financial incentive though. This can be earned through great content. Try leveraging the executive team within your business, having them generate assets by…
- writing guest blogs for partner or industry websites.
- providing interviews or quotes for industry websites.
- participating in Q&A sites or relevant forums.
This is essentially PR. A good SEO optimizes their company’s efforts, improving search engine rankings too. This means addressing follow links, anchor text, proper landing pages, relevant context, link desaturation, and so forth.
1. Topical SEO: 7 Concepts of Link Relevance & Google Rankings