Link building SEO

I have started to fill the site out with content and need to start building some link authority. It's on an 8 year old domain with limited previous SEO.

The name of the site lends itself to branded keyword links such as "environmental consultants", which will be one of the main keywords.

The specific keywords I am really interested in are covered by the pages below:

adeptus .co.uk/phase-1-desk-study-report-land-contamination
http://adeptus .co.uk/contaminated-land-consultant/
http://adeptus .co.uk/environmental-risk-assessment-toxicology

I realise they can't be in targeted too heavily with links as this would be overoptimisation.


I created the site with a WP theme, which is not technically great in terms of things like page load speed, but it's not doing too badly so far.

The theme includes Visual Composer, which I have only used for the homepage really. I know the VC definitely produces a lot of excess code, and page load times are pretty slow because of it. Having said that none of the site audits I've looked at class this as a deal breaker it seems.

"phase 1 desk study" is about the highest volume (40 in GA tool) KW and Search Console says its averaged position 14 over the last 7 days. I really need this to be top 5 soon!