Several years ago, the art of link building was really more of a practice. It didn’t involve much consideration or thought, and due to the inability of search engines to differentiate between legitimate links and link farms, the buying of links for search engine prominence was rampant. Since then, link building has become a more delicate and less prominent way to build SEO credibility. Choose poorly, and your website could be damaged by bad or ill-gotten links. Choose wisely, and the benefits may still not produce the results you were expecting. As SEO and content marketing continue to change, so must the strategies for attracting traffic. Below, we’ll outline a few ways to replace outdated link building strategies with more effective and efficient strategies of today.

Social Sharing

In order to be seen easily, quickly, and when you want, you will almost inevitably have to rely upon social media. “The modern day search engine” as some have called it, sites like Facebook and Twitter allow audiences to be tuned into content that they find interesting, intriguing or engaging in some capacity. If your content fits these descriptors, then social shares may be the prime way in which you can replace link building. Not only does social sharing tend to spread very quickly, but it often reaches large segments of relevant audiences that you might otherwise never make an impression on. Pinging links through these social media platforms can be an excellent, quick and effective way to reach new people and bring a large amount of traffic to your blog, website and social media profiles.

Brand Shout-outs

Perhaps the social equivalent of earning back links on standard websites, we once again look to social media for the future of what building links will transform into. Brand mentions can propel a lot of traffic your way, and can be earned through a variety of means. Whether through an excellent piece of content or the providing of a sample to a well-known review brand, there are many different ways that brand shout-outs can be earned. This can also be done via traditional websites and blogs, which can earn notable ranking potential if done properly – Google, Bing and others have been reported to possess the ability to detect brand mentions and influence rankings accordingly.

Nofollow Options

Despite the fact that link building does not provide the type of link juice or rankings effects (at least, in a positive sense) that they once did, earning traffic through them is still crucial. There may be instances in which building links on other sites can actually earn you traffic, but might not be ideal from the perspective of how Google views them. Enter the concept of the nofollow link, which allows users to produce links to and from sites without being ranked one way or another by Google for having them. The simple <nofollow></nofollow> tags being added on either end of the link via HTML code is all that is needed to transform a traditional link to a nofollow link, so do keep this tactic in your bag of tactics when considering how to accumulate more traffic from less than ideal sources.