Search engines evaluate the links pointing to your site to determine its trustworthiness, authority, and popularity. Once you understand how search engines evaluate links, the next step is to figure out which link building strategies would work best for your B2B company.

Like all other search engine optimization strategies, link building has evolved over the past few years. If you are still using backlink strategies of the past, you could be hurting the performance of your website. For example, if a search engine detects that you are buying links or are involved in link schemes, it can invoke penalties on your website that can result in losing your rankings. Link building is far from being “dead”. However, the spammy strategies from the past certainly are.

Link building of the future is focused on organically building trust and authority for your site through high quality, earned links. So, which link building strategies should your B2B start utilizing?

Create fresh, quality content: By continuously publishing new content on your site, you are encouraging others to share and link to your page. The better the content is, the more natural and editorial links it will garner. Don’t feel limited to blog posts! Videos, infographics, case studies, webinars, and other forms of content are very popular and can earn more links to your site.

Seek out guest blogging opportunities: Guest blogging involves creating content that will be published on other websites. This allows you the opportunity to not only spread your brand name further, but to create backlinks to your website. Make sure to choose these relationships carefully, however. Reach out to credible websites that are relevant to your industry in order to get the most SEO value out of the guest posts.

Take advantage of Google+: While most other social media posts and links are no followed, Google+ activity is not. First, make sure your page is fully filled out and optimized with your target keywords. Google+ allows you to include static links to your site along with anchor text of your choice. That is a prime spot for keywords! Furthermore, content shared on Google+ can rank higher than others if users are logged into their Google accounts when searching. Furthermore, Google+ posts themselves can rank in Google, and are indexed instantly. This means that even before your content is indexed on your site, it can be found in SERPs if it is shared on Google+.

Which link building strategies has your B2B tried? Let us know!