Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.
Pawan Pawar: What are some best practices for getting good quality links in 2016?
Suraj Gadage: +Pawan Pawar ;First of all we should stop using the term link building. I would call it as 'Brand Building'.
Now brand building activities not necessarily always involve building links it could be sometimes just driving qualified referral traffic or both.
Taking these things into account following are some evergreen best practices that you should follow:
1. Focus your brand building efforts ALWAYS on the platforms where your target audience hangs out or are actively using them (blogs, forums, business directory, etc). ;
2. If your companies is rich in digital assets then leverage the variety of assets to promote your brand online and boost rankings
2. If you are building links, make sure you use a brand + keyword variation (wherever possible). Also, make sure when you are linking to your website, it is contextual. Example- If I'm making a guest post contribution, I would not necessarily link to my services, web page, rather I would link to a blog article that exists on my website. ;
3. Look at your direct/indirect competitors that are ranking in search and see what activities they are doing that is helping them to rank for your target keywords.
4. Wherever link building is not possible, explore the activities that can help you drive qualified traffic. For an example- Sponsored guest posting and Forum banner advertisement to create brand awareness and drive qualified traffic.
5. Think out of the box. There are certain activities that you can do where you can help your customer and in return they link to your brand or mention your brand on their website.
PS: Make sure any brand building activity that you work on, you never violate Google Webmaster Guidelines ;
Hope this helps!
Pawan Pawar: +Suraj Gadage thanks Suraj, these insights are helpful...
Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this week's SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:06:43 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/best_practices_for_getting_good_quality_links_in_2016 +Pawan Pawar
If our assistance with this issue was useful to you, please consider sharing your success story so that others might benefit. ; ;
Greg Kristan: +Pawan Pawar ;not sure what the business is, but if your business offers a student scholarship, you can target a lot of .edu websites. As long as you renew the scholarship every year, you can keep those links. There are other ways to build quality links, but I think that is the simplest most direct way
What are some best practices for getting good quality links in 2016? 
