Link building continues to play a factorial role in SEO endeavors and still considered to be a viable way of building popularity and brand authority on the web. However, the tactics for a modern SEO link building strategy have changed slightly since the legacy days. Brands should be cognizant of the revived methods of SEO link building to ensure continued popularity growth and authority on the web.

Remember the days of bulk link building? You know, that one tool that helped send out a mass amount of link requests to an enormous amount of websites? Yup, that was the legacy way of employing a link building strategy. Something that I would strongly avoid at this point in time. Instead, you need to refine your approach a little bit and consider a more manual initiative to acquire results.

The modern SEO link building strategy requires manual input. Precisely due to the fact that search engines have become more peculiar about brand reputation, authority, and recognition. Here are five ways you can enhance online relationships and popularity by utilizing these five modern SEO link building tactics.

#1 Interact with Current or Former Customers

One of the easiest ways to spread the word and grow popularity of your brand is through current or former customers. Given that likability remains intact though. Amplifying the traditional sense of relationship building should also be carried onto the web for enhanced brand visibility. Here’s what I’m referring to more precisely:

• Identify trusted partners that you’d like to establish an online association
• Find those brand advocates who support your company. Social media can play an integral part in identifying those by employing an outreach
• Develop brand cohesive badges that you can distribute throughout this customer base. The AdWords program or even Google+ currently does a great job at this initiative. It provides users with badges that can be distributed. This is a great way for customers, brand advocates, or partners to link back to you brand

#2 Leverage a Blog to Its Fullest Potential

For the last several years and to this day blogging acts as a viable source for link building. From a thought leadership perspective, blogging offers unprecedented SEO link building opportunities. Something that web users seek in high demand when consuming information regarding specific topics. Also, search engine crawlers are constantly on the lookout for dynamic content freshness they can deliver to its users. Fresh blog content provides the ability for continued information distribution with high potential for linkage from other websites on the web. Ones that compliment topically the subjects you write about. Here’s a few things to consider when employing blogging as an SEO link building endeavor:

• Write about topics that are interesting to your audience
• Include links to supportive pages/articles that coincide with subjects
• Develop a sense of consistency in your blogging endeavors. This pattern will help establish increased inclusion of articles within the SERPs
• Engaged with topical conversations across the web. Especially on sites like Quora or Reddit. Google specifically keeps an eye out on the content shared on these platforms and factors them accordingly in relation to online reputation of a brand

#3 Create Authentic & Shareable Content

“Linkbait” is one of the best and easiest ways to acquire backlinks from around the web. Employing a linkbait strategy as part of modern SEO link building can be utilizing in a variety of different ways. In the grand scheme of things, it provides content freshness and invokes the desire for linkage to such information from other website on the web. Here’s a few examples of how to leverage authentic content for modern SEO link building:

• Create publicly accessible and downloadable pieces of content that is also linkable. Websites such as HubSpot or Marketo do a phenomenal job at pumping out whitepapers like it’s Halloween candy
• Comparison or how to blog articles are a great way to acquire linkbait. For example, “5 Ways to Employ a Modern SEO Link Building Strategy”. See what I did there?
• Publish shareable, funny, and viral content that encourages user interaction. Static content can also be utilized as a companion to this initiative

#4 Newsworthiness with Local/National/International Media

It’s important to catch the attention of the media. They are the ones that can also amplify a message across many other avenues that you may not have access to. I personally am a bit skeptical about this endeavor. Especially when utilized as part of a traditional marketing approach. However, from a brand awareness standpoint, catching the attention of local/national/international business may also be considered as a viable modern SEO link building strategy. Here’s a few examples on how you can be newsworthy:

• Employ an outreach campaign to the local media networks and request a link inclusion to a supportive article
• Get in touch with the local newspaper for a digital inclusion. Most newspaper now have a website which can act as a great companion for link potential
• Write a complimentary article to an event that can be considered for inclusion given its relevance

#5 Utilize Social Media

Recently Twitter made an announcement regarding its new deal with Google. The nuances of the deal will entail in inclusion of tweets within the Google SERPs. Quite honestly, I think that Twitter ended up getting the better end of the bargain. What does this mean for brands on Twitter? How does social media impact a modern SEO link building strategy? Here’s a few ways you can explore to build authoritative links from social media:

• Acquire links from relevant and authoritative brands on Twitter. Keep in mind your customers as well
• Squeeze out every last bit of Google+. Since the announcement of its demise, it is difficult to project the course in the coming months. So, in the interim, being a Google product, you can still leverage Google+ as a source for backlinks
• Explore inclusion of links on YouTube within respective videos and conversations. Being the second largest search engine in the world, YouTube still offers untapped potential for linkage opportunities

Employing a strategic modern SEO link building strategy requires a lot of manual input. Something that a lot of companies do not account for and therefore miserably fail at this initiative. In the grand scheme of things, there’s two things that I would highly consider when engaging in an SEO link building strategy.

• Relevance – creating associations with supportive brand instances on the web
• Authority – linking to website domains that are authoritative in a sense of PageRank

Any thoughts, suggestions, comments, or recommendations? Would love to hear them in the comments section below.

Happy link building friends!