Being #1 in Google & Bing search engines is every digital marketer’s pride and joy.
If you’re trying to boost your website’s search engine rankings, then you must be familiar with the term “backlinks”. Simply put, backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website. Each backlink is like a vote in favour of your website. The more high-quality backlinks to your site, the more likely it is that search engines will view your site as authoritative and relevant. As a result, your site will rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
The link portfolio of a website plays an important role in its SEO. However, building links that are both natural and authoritative can be challenging even for SEO experts.
For SEO, the number of links don’t matter. It’s the cumulative weight of the backlinks. You need great backlinks from high-quality and relevant sources. The thumb rule in search engine optimization for websites is to make sure the website is adding real value to the world-wide web.
Here is an exhaustive list of link building tactics that will quickly send your website up the rankings and allow your site to outperform competitors.
- Create high-quality content: This is the most important tip! If you want other websites to link to your content, it needs to be informative, engaging, and valuable to your target audience.
- Spy your competitors: Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to identify your competitors’ backlinks. Once you have this information, you can reach out to these websites and ask them to link to your content as well.
- Guest blogging: Find websites in your niche that accept guest posts and reach out to them to see if they’re interested in publishing a post from you. In exchange for the guest post, you can include a link back to your own website in your author bio.
- Broken link building: Identify broken links on relevant websites and offer to replace them with a link to your own content.
- Participate in online communities: Join forums or social media groups in your niche and build relationships with other website owners. Then, you can reach out to these individuals and ask them to link to your content.
- Use HARO: Sign up for Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and respond to journalists’ requests for sources. If you’re able to provide valuable insights, you may be able to get a link back to your website in the article.
- Create infographics: Infographics are a popular type of content that are easy to share and can generate a lot of backlinks.
- Use social media: Share your content on social media and encourage others to share it as well. The more people see your content, the more likely it is that someone will link to it.
- Distribute press releases: Publish press releases on relevant websites and include a link back to your own website.
- Create valuable resources: Create valuable resources like guides, templates, or tools that others in your niche will find useful. Then, promote these resources and encourage others to link to them.
- Create shareable content: Create content that people will want to share on social media or in their own blog posts.
- Use email outreach: Reach out to other website owners and ask them to link to your content. Personalize your outreach and make sure you’re targeting relevant websites.
- Leverage your network: Ask friends, family, or business contacts to link to your website.
- Offer testimonials: Testimonials for other businesses can help you acquire a link back to your website in the introduction segment of the testimonial.
- Use Q&A websites: Answer questions on Q&A websites like Quora and include a link back to your website if relevant.
- Create video content: Create informative and engaging video content that others will want to link to.
- Get in local directories: List your business on local directories and include a link back to your website.
- Use resource pages: Find resource pages in your niche and ask to be included.
- Replace broken content: Find content that is no longer available and offer to replace it with your own content that includes a link back to your website.
- Leave blog comments: Leave thoughtful and relevant comments on blog posts in your niche and include a link back to your website if appropriate.
- Use internal linking: Make sure your website has a strong internal linking structure to help search engines discover your website content.
Now that you are familiar with the link-building strategies to improve your website SEO, let’s discuss some of the main aspects of SEO link-building in greater detail.
Check Competitor Links
This should be one of the first actions any website should conduct when formulating their link building strategy. You can take a look at the backlink profiles of the top ten sites in your industry and identify the link building pattern that has allowed them to rank successfully for their targeted keywords.
You can use tools like Majestic.com, Ahrefs and Open Site Explorer to download the link data and then filter the links by authority and relevancy. You can then aim to get a link on the same or similar websites. As your link portfolio improves, so should the SEO performance of your website.
Broken Link Building
When this link building tactic is executed well, it is extremely effective. The process involves reviewing relevant websites for broken links in their content. Identify a website from where you want a backlink, and then scan it for broken links.
- Links pages
- Resource pages
- Blog posts
You can then submit the link to the Wayback machine to see what type of content existed on the page. The content can be revamped and published on your website.
Once the content is published, submit the old link to sites like Majestic, Ahrefs or Open Site Explorer to collect information on the sites that were linking to the web content.
Once this has been done, you can forward an email to those website editors informing them of the broken link, while suggesting your link with the revamped content to replace the old link. The impact of these acquired links should be powerful enough to get your site page 1 rankings across your target keywords.
Directory Submissions
This method might be old, but it still works effectively if the directories that are used are relevant and have authority. Some high authority directories include:
- Yellow Pages
- White Pages
- Thomson Local
- Yelp
- BBB (Better Business Bureau)
- BOTW (Best of the Web)
Note: It is easy to fall into the trap of submitting your website to directory networks. Linking to these networks could cause your SEO rankings to decrease. When choosing a directory, consider the value that the directory will provide to a web user.
Roundup Features
Another great way to get featured on highly relevant websites is to suggest your website’s content to publishers of content roundups in your industry. You can find content roundup publishers by conducting searches on Twitter and Google to find blogs that publish roundups in your niche. Get in touch with the editor and suggest some of your website’s content to be included in their next roundup.
Content Embeds
Content embeds are a great way to earn links naturally. You can provide links on your own site or you can promote the content on external platforms and provide an attribution link to your site in the content’s description.
For example, you could upload a video to YouTube and provide the attribution link in the description. If the content is embedded on another website, it should earn an attribution link to the platform as well as your website.
Testimonial Links
One of the quickest ways to earn high profile links to your site is by providing testimonials to your suppliers. Some of these suppliers may feature your testimonial on their homepage or even on a dedicated testimonials page. Both of these pages tend to have high authority which will filter through to your website.
Government Links
Many webmasters want to acquire links from government websites, but have no idea how to successfully approach these sites to acquire links. There are several departments in the government who are looking for valuable and relevant information to share with their community. While acquiring links from national government organisations would be ideal, it would be easier to acquire links at the local or state level. Some ways to acquire these links include:
- Submitting your business to be listed on government directories.
- Submitting your business to be listed on local chambers of commerce.
Educational Outreach
Links from educational sites and institutions are great links to add to your website’s portfolio. Links can be from universities, colleges, schools, alumni groups, etc.
Some of the ways to encourage links to your website include:
- Providing exclusive benefits to students & alumni
- Providing awards or recognition to students.
- Providing internship and work experience opportunities to students.
- Providing sponsorship
Partnerships with Other Local Businesses
You can promote your business and facilitate link sharing by promoting your products or services to other businesses in the local area. You may entitle local workers to ‘corporate discounts or premiums’. This can facilitate link sharing internally and within their corporate network.
Sponsor Online Projects
Open source software, online projects and programmes require sponsors and contributors. Your website can acquire backlinks by sponsoring projects, both online, IT and other activities.
Link Reclamation
One of the quickest ways to earn authority links to your site is by reclaiming mentions of your business, website, products or staff on external websites. You can use tools such as Mention.net, Google alerts or conduct Google searches for your business’s website, products, services, employees and spokespeople.
Once you have compiled a list of sites that have mentioned your business or people affiliated with your business, outreach to the web editor, writer or journalist and ask them to provide an attribution link to your website, product or service catalogues or employee profiles.
Link building for local businesses: If you want to rank for a location-based search query such as “Chicago locksmith”, “commercial locksmith in Chicago”, “Elmhurst plumber” and “San Diego dentistry”, you need backlinks that help your website establish its credentials as a local business. You need backlinks from websites of other local businesses, organizations, local directories and more. You need to build local backlinks for your business website to rank in local search queries.
These SEO backlink strategies have been proven to work. These white hat methods for building backlinks will guarantee improvements in a website’s SEO performance.