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It’s understandable when owners of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMB) become nervous or hesitant to do link building. Even though this generation is now highly Internet-oriented, many small-time businesses are just warming up to the idea of creating their own blog and websites. Not all of them are also knowledgeable about SEO or the importance of link building, for that matter. Naturally, when confronted with the idea of investing time, money, and effort into website promotion, they might be skittish at first especially if this isn’t their area of expertise.
In truth, SMB owners should have nothing to fear when it comes to link building. They may not realize it, but they already have the most important faculties necessary for a successful link building campaign.
What Does It Take to Be an Excellent Link Builder?
Link building is all about forging relationships with other people, businesses and other entities on the Internet. Links are used by search engines like Google to help measure the popularity and quality of a website. The more websites link back to your website, the higher you land on the search engine results page.
Since Google has now taken action to sanction the websites that show signs of cheating the PageRank algorithm—a.k.a. link buying—the traditional and ethical methods of link building is once again gaining importance.
When it comes to old-fashioned link building, the most important tools are social and interpersonal social skills. Technical skills can only get a person so far in link building. If a link builder doesn’t have the tact or the skill to warm up to a total stranger, it would difficult for him to convince other website developers to post links to his own website.
This leads us to the three reasons why SMBs may have an easy time doing genuine link building.
- SMBs are innately very good at establishing relationships with their clientele and the public.
It has always been easier for small and medium businesses to be in contact with their clients and establish close relationships. They can even afford to rub shoulders with other businesses and occasionally with their competition. Thus, SMB owners are adept at relationship building and cultivating trust with other websites, which are essential in earning long-term links from more established sites with higher page rankings.
- SMB owners can easily form online networks.
Since SMBs often belong in exclusive clubs and social and business circles, they have plenty of business contacts that can easily become their online contacts as well. If those business owners also have their own websites, or even blogs and other social media accounts, they can be additional sources of inbound links.
- SMBs have higher chances of getting featured in media stations and publishers.
Local newspapers, news channels, and radio stations are always on the lookout for news within the community to publish. SMBs can easily catch their attention by participating, sponsoring or spearheading in worthwhile projects in the community and holding anniversary or holiday promos. The feature may be published online or become a topic of discussion among community members. Both can generate links for the business’s website.
Even if they don’t go all out on SEO campaigns, it would still benefit SMBs if they can do proper link building and establish strong online relationships. Getting a high page rank will expose their products and services to a wider audience online.
