What Will Link Building Be Like in 2018?

If there’s one thing that’s consistent in the world of SEO, it’s that it’s always changing.

Five years ago, all that companies needed to do to rank in the search engines was focus on keywords and build a few spammy links.

However, this all changed in 2016 when Google devalued link spam and penalised any website that used poor optimisation tactics.

Now that we are on the cusp of the new year, we thought it would be a good idea to speculate on what link building will be like in 2018.

Content Creators Will Need to Add Value

Creating content for use in a link building campaign is something that has been popular for years now.

However, 2017 saw Google devalue any links in content produced purely for SEO reasons. Writing articles for humans has been incredibly important this year and it will continue to be in 2018.

One thing that content creators will need to keep in mind, though, is that their content must add value.

Website owners do not want to publish three articles on the same topic, so content creators will need to think outside of the box and create unique articles that an audience will love.

Email Pitches Will Need to Become More Human

If you’ve ever had an SEO company contact you with the hopes of publishing one of their posts, you’ll know that the majority of emails come across as spam.

You’ll receive something along the lines of “Hello, I have been a long-time follower of your blog and want to send you an article to publish. Please let me know if you are interested”.

A lot of webmasters send these emails straight into their junk box, so marketers will need to change their tactics in 2018.

For your email pitch to even be read, you’ll need to first think of a catchy subject line. The content of your email should then be personal. Include hyperlinks to any blog posts you particularly like on the site and avoid jumping straight into a link building pitch.

Avoid the generic, boring pitches and you’ll be a step ahead of the rest in 2018.

Link Reclamation Will Be Popular

When Google devalued poor quality links in 2016, a lot of website owners panicked and requested bloggers to remove their links to avoid a penalty.

However, this wasn’t necessary for those who had been providing quality content in exchange for a link.

2018 will see a lot of webmasters trying to re-build these links, and also fixing any broken links that direct to their website. Compiling a list of dead backlinks and brand mentions is very time-consuming, however, many companies will be reaching out to link building agencies like Click Intelligence to help them do this.

Link building is something that is always going to be important for SEO. However, the way in which this is done is continually changing.

So long as you avoid purely building links for SEO and focus on your human readers, you won’t go far wrong in 2018.