5 Benefits Of Link Building To Small Businesses
One of the challenges small business owners face is getting a consistent number of customers.
Whether it is a brick-and-mortar business or a business set up in an online store, knowing where to get your next customer is always a top priority for SMEs.
Digital marketing for small businesses is nothing new. There are many methodologies and platforms where one can promote their business without spending big on advertising channels.
The practice of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has been around for more than a decade, helping any business (including small local businesses) to get new customers from people searching online.
And it’s no wonder why there are many companies in need of search marketing services (including professional link building services), as it could drastically change their number of current and new customers.
Part of optimizing websites for search is adding new inbound backlinks to their essential pages.
Inbound backlinks are links coming from other websites pointing to your site’s internal pages.
Link building is crucial to a small business website, as it can improve its search performance ranking in Google’s local pack.
So, here are five benefits of link building to a small business and why you should care about it.
1. Improves Search Performance
Links are one of the ranking factors of Google (and of other search engines too).
For local rankings, having inbound backlinks from websites and blogs that target the same city is powerful to dominate local keywords.
Effective link building for small businesses can help establish their search presence online. As more high-quality links are built to specific pages of these small business sites, the more it increases their chances of ranking for their target keywords (including local keyphrases).
Having an excellent technical website audit isn’t enough — it may help establish the foundation for SEO, but it would need some relevant links to see better results. Particularly in competitive industries, where significant players are dominating the search engine results pages.
Having relevant and authority websites linking to your small business website helps search engines perceive more signals that your brand deserves to rank for specific keywords.
With tools such as Ahrefs, or SEMRush you can monitor backlinks to your overall site search performance.
2. Generates More Brand Awareness
Link building isn’t just for ranking sake. It also helps in generating more brand awareness for your customers.
If you’re still starting your business venture, you only have sets of people who know about your brand and your offers. As you grow your business, you need more eyeballs, vendors, and partners who can help spread the word about your brand.
You get brand exposure on different relevant blogs and publications through backlinks where your potential customers engage in. They read about your content — your story, experience, and expertise, which persuades them to click on one of your links.
When these people are directed to either your informational page (i.e., article) or sales page (i.e., product page), they already know about your brand and might purchase one of your offers.
You may have a social marketing plan, but everyone knows that it takes some time to grow one’s following.
That said, having SEO (link building in particular) set up can be additional support in generating more brand followers and advocates — that, in due time, would have a ripple effect on your marketing and sales.
3. Establishes Brand Differentiation
Every small business owner should know who their competitors are. These could be brands competing against their offers or people who indirectly compete with you (potential partners, vendors, or your business suppliers).
Once you know your brand competitors, it’s essential to establish differentiation of your offers. While it’s true that you can’t easily have that in your first months of running your business, it has to be kept in mind as you do your day-to-day business activities.
Aside from ensuring you have the best quality products, you must also establish brand differentiation in your marketing initiatives.
Through link-building campaigns, you can set that part of your objectives to target publications within your niche or industry. This makes a big difference in how your potential customers perceive your website.
While your competitors are getting backlinks from generic blogs and websites that don’t seem fit to their brand topic themes, you set them apart by building backlinks from sites where most of your target customers reside.
4. Assists In Purchasing Decisions
Consumer behavior has changed dramatically over the years.
New competitors are coming up in almost any industry, while brands are innovating their products to provide the best experience for their customers.
That said, people do their research first before making purchasing decisions. Then, they look for reviews about different products offering the benefits while diligently asking for recommendations from friends and networks.
There are different ways to help potential customers to choose your offer over your competitors. One good example is to include testimonials from your past and existing customers showing how your product/service helped them achieve results for their life or business. These testimonials will serve as social proof that increases the trust and confidence of potential buyers in your brand.
Links can help assist potential customers in their buying decisions. Moreover, given they’ve seen your inbound links with surrounding descriptions (plus anchor texts), it adds a positive psychological effect on people’s minds on what value your brand has to offer to them.
5. Builds Thought Leadership
Branding is crucial in digital marketing. When potential customers choose which product or service to buy, they opt to research companies with brand recall (popularly known in the industry).
Through link building, you establish thought leadership.
When you contribute informative articles to other publications, your brand is perceived as an authority and expert in the industry. It is a non-verbal gesture of telling them you know what you’re talking about — and therefore, they can trust you with their money decisions.
Invest In The Right Marketing Channels
There is no one size fits all marketing channel. It all depends on your industry, resources, brand, and risk tolerance.
SEO, in particular, link building is one of the channels you should heavily invest, as this can pay off returns long term. Whether the benefit is improving your website’s search performance, generating more brand awareness, establishing brand differentiation, assisting in purchasing decisions, and building thought leadership — your link building investment is indeed worth it.