If you are doing link building the right way, you will agree with the fact that most of our outreaching and link opportunities are dependent upon social media and content marketing. This is probably one of the reason why when we get more social activity on a piece of content, it tends to get more links as compared to other content pieces that get less social media hype.
It is very easy to get social media attention when you are in a responsive niche like fashion or internet marketing, but when it comes to niches that are not social media friendly getting quality links can be tough. Saying that getting quality links for tougher niches is impossible is simply not true, but indeed can be difficult.
In this post I am going to cover some of the ideas that you can quickly implement on your website which will help make your boring website a link magnet, which will allow you to start getting quality links without too much effort.
1. Clean Code and Quick Load Time
Many ecommerce websites, especially in boring niches, simply do not pay much attention to the technical details of their website. This can result in slow page load times or sometimes bad coding, which leads to SEO and other related problems.
Technical problems aside, slow page load times can potentially lose you links that would otherwise come to you naturally. When a potential blog or website considers linking back to your website, a slow to load site can scare them off. They simply won't link because they don’t want their user to click on that link and wait minutes (over 10 seconds is way too much time) for the page to load.
The idea here is to analyze your website and make sure there are no errors related to coding and the load time is fast. Ideally the web page should be able to load within the first 3 to 5 seconds if you want user to stay and continue their journey on the website.
When you have a website that is error free in terms of code with fast page load times you will have happy visitors on your website, see a significant increase in leads and conversions, and have the opportunity to gain some quality links pointing back to you website and mentions here and there on the internet.
I would recommend checking out PageSpeed Insights from Google as well as their PageSpeed Developer Tool.
2. Quality Content
Another reason why it is hard to get quality links in boring niches is that most boring niches do not work too much on their content. Instead of writing customized descriptions and updating their blog they prefer not to have a blog section and use the same product descriptions their suppliers use on other websites.
Having quality content is important as this will not only help visitors engage with the brand, but also attract quality links, which will increase the amount of referral traffic and your SERP rankings for desired keywords.
Workplace Depot is a website that offers industrial supplies and they work hard on their content. This helps them secure a good amount of quality links. Links lead to good rankings in SERPs and according to SEMRush data they are currently ranking for 300+ plus money making key phrases within their industry.
3. High Quality Images
Very few websites in boring niches are using unique high quality images, and to be honest this is one of the reasons why they don’t get good leads as well as good links back to their websites. When you are in a boring niche where people are not very responsive, you have to go extra mile to catch their attention.
In my opinion, the use of high quality product images on the website can make the website an audience and thus link magnet machine. If you use quality images you will see more and more people come to your website and buy from you, just because of your investment on product photography.
This use of high quality product images will help you get natural links back to the website as well. Kaufmann MercanTile is a website that perfectly uses their images. They don’t need anything else to attract links and word of mouth, their images do it all for them!
4. Proper Use of Title and Meta Description Tags
Another important thing that boring niches ignore is the proper use of their title and meta description tag. It's a common held belief that titles and descriptions are just for SEO, which isn't true. Title and meta description can affect much more than SEO.
In the bigger picture if you properly set your meta title and description, chances are you will get links for internal informative and product pages. How? When you setup unique and relevant titles and keywords on your website, you will see more organic traffic because you will rank better for long tail keywords without much effort.
Once you rank for long tail keywords you will get found by bloggers who are writing posts related to the industry. The more they find you, the more chances they will link to your website.
5. Audit for 404 and Other Errors
Websites change overtime, particularly ecommerce sites. For many websites (especially larger ones) finding 404 errors is very difficult, as they are extremely busy. Temporary products come and go all the while, and yet more pages permanently disappear.
The idea is to make a strategy to deal with this so that at the end of the day site visitors don't see any broken pages on the website. This will not only help site visitors continue a hassle free journey, but will also help you get the maximum utilization of the links pointing to your website.
When you don’t have a 404 error on your site links will flow perfectly. If you do find broken pages, you should redirect to the most relevant page in order to get maximum utilization of link equity, as well as redirect the user to the right location.
There must be more ideas obviously but if you are in the boring niche and looking for quality links, implements these strategies and you will start getting some links soon!
