Building Thought Leadership for Your Business
Link-building has a tremendous impact on SEO, but it’s one of the most challenging and time-consuming methods. Businesses have to reach out to third parties and ask them to link to their website from their own, forming backlinks that direct traffic.
Backlinks are a driving force of SEO and have a strong influence on the search ranking, and in turn, your business’s exposure. Gaining backlinks isn’t easy, however, and requires a lot of time and effort.
One of the reasons backlinking is so difficult is because it relies on others. Businesses can’t do much to control backlinking, unlike creating content and fixing technical issues. Link-building relies on the generosity of authoritative third-party sites, which starts by offering something of value to them.
Understanding Thought Leadership
If you want to gain backlinks quickly, thought leadership is a big help. Thought leadership is when a person or brand demonstrates expert knowledge in a particular field or topic. Most often used in social media and content marketing, thought leadership helps a brand build trust with customers and establish authority in an industry or niche.
Aside from that, thought leadership is an effective strategy for link-building. As an authority, external sites are more likely to feature your content and link to your site, which improves your link-building efforts considerably. It also offers an opportunity to build your brand and credibility while increasing the links that send traffic to your site.
Thought leadership can be used by reaching out to external sites and asking them to partner with your brand or allow you to contribute articles, interviews, or other content that will show on their site. Many businesses are eager for these types of partnerships, as it offers something new for their audience and provides versatile content for the site.
How to Get Started with Thought Leadership
I know what you’re thinking – you don’t qualify as an expert. Many people believe that thought leaders hold PhDs, have massive online followings, or maybe published a few books. While many thought leaders do have these credits to their names, they’re not necessary to thought leadership. Really, all you have to do is be an expert on something to be considered an authority, and in all likelihood, you have that part covered.
Perhaps surprisingly, many businesses and individuals are eager to be part of the backlinking process in return for authoritative content from thought leaders. They’re looking to partner with someone to share new content and boost their own authority in the industry, which you can help through podcasts, reviews, testimonials, blog posts, or feature articles. One of the biggest obstacles for many people with thought leadership is getting the ball rolling. It’s important to start small and build confidence. Imposter syndrome can affect the best of us, but you can manage your confidence and expectations by taking on smaller projects, such as interviews for niche outlets, speaking engagements at community events, and collaborations with other small businesses.
The most important part to remember is that you know this. Whatever your product or service, you could probably speak for hours on the topic and show your passion – in this case, all you have to do is speak for 20 or 30 minutes. Start out with engagements like that, and you’ll eventually get comfortable with the equivalent of a Ted Talk. The more you practice, the better you’ll get – and you’ll build a name and reputation as you go.
How Does Thought Leadership Impact SEO?
As an aspiring thought leader , you’re putting yourself out there and seeking opportunities to contribute ideas and knowledge. During this process, you’ll come across people who want to learn more about your topics, your brand, your products, and the ideas you share. These conversations will likely unfold organically, which is when you can bring up the discussion of link-building.
How do you make this segue? Whatever idea you shared that caught their attention, use it to direct them to a resource on your website that digs deeper or covers a different perspective or issue in the same broad topic. Then, ask them if they would be willing to include in on their website. They already like your ideas, so they’ll likely be happy to share what you have to offer with their own audience.
Of course, you should still sell the benefits for both of you. Show appreciation and discuss how the link helps your business grow and how it can benefit them in return. Maybe they need to build authority and credibility, so partnering with you and sharing your content can give them the expertise they need. Maybe they need to improve their own link-building, and you can offer to add a link to their website in return.
How does this influence SEO? Search engine algorithms use bots to “crawl” on websites and establish its relevance and trustworthiness. Links provide site structure and show how pages connect to each other. If a large number of external links direct to a page from authoritative sources, the bot interprets your site as an authoritative site and improves its ranking on the search engine results page.
To give you an example of the importance of links let me use Hiperwall as an example. When our team was strategizing for Hiperwall’s video wall basic informational page, we noticed the lack of links was holding back this keyword. Our team decided to research and compiled a list of possible publications and reach out to them. As the image shown above, you will notice that rankings increased. Of course this is a rare occasion as usually clients experience a steady rank increase overtime.
So what is the key takeaway from this example?
The more backlinks you can build from relevant and credible sites, the higher you can rank in the search engine results pages. Combined with other efforts, building links from authoritative sites can boost your SEO significantly, so don’t be shy about asking others for help. After all, you’re offering to link in return and share valuable content, so they benefit just as much as you.
Find SEO Success with Thought Leadership
Customers can’t buy your products if they can’t find you, and SEO drives sales by making you discoverable in the first pages of the search results. While seeking out links can feel pushy and vulnerable, having organic conversations about interesting topics in your industry can drive your link-building, and by extension, your SEO ranking. So, move past your fears and doubts about your own authority and start positioning yourself as a thought leader to build valuable links from trustworthy third parties.
Author Bio
Jason started freelancing in SEO back in college, sold his first agency, and now is founder of Zupo, which is an Orange County based B2B SEO consulting agency helping construct powerful long term SEO strategies for our clients. Jason also enjoys multiple cups of tea a day, hiding away on weekends, catching up on reading, and rewatching The Simpsons for the 20th time.