Marcus Miller says, “When it comes down to it, the hardest part of SEO for most small businesses is building links and authority. Keyword research, on-page optimization, local SEO — it’s all doable, and to some degree mechanical. But raising your authority? Not so much.

While the importance of links is clear, Google’s messaging is confusing and unhelpful. We are told to “make sure other sites link to yours” while at the same time “avoiding link building as it can do more harm than good.” So, what’s a small business to do?

In this article, I am going to take a quick look at why links influence results and then outline a simple link-building strategy. The goal is to help small businesses build authority and target the commercial search terms that matter to them.

There is still a creative element required here, but my goal is to provide a simple strategy that small businesses can use to help build their authority and improve their overall organic search visibility.

How important are links in 2017?

In the most recent Search Engine Ranking Factors published by Moz.com, domain-level link features and page-level link features are still the top two ranking factors. Keywords and content factors are not far behind, but those elements that are directly under the site owner’s control are far easier to dial in”.

Organic traffic & link building for small businesses

Search Engine Land

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