15 Ways To Create Quality Backlinks To Your Website
How to Create Quality Backlinks For Your Website?
You will start to hear a lot about link building once you launch a website and start working towards how to get found online.
Appreciating what is link building and how to do it goes a long way toward making your website more visible online. This will make it more successful in reaching your goals.
The following are some guidelines on the basics that you need to know to get started. It will help you understand the importance and the difficult part of online marketing.
Further Reading: Choosing the Right Domain Name
What is Link Building?
Link building is one of the most important and difficult parts of SEO. Any strategy that helps a business or organisation get links from other websites and points back to your website count as link building.
There are lots of different strategies people implement to gain new links. Even the most consistently successful tactics can involve a lot of time, work and failures in order to achieve success.
In SEO link building is one of the strategies that will influence how well you perform in the search engines and how easily can users find your website.
It is worth devoting your time and marketing budget towards it.
Why Link Building Matters?
Reality about SEO is that you are not the search engine’s priority, at least not as a marketer.
Google’s and search engines goal is to deliver the best, most useful and relevant results to their users.
Their algorithms look at various signals that suggest people like and trust about websites or they do not in some cases.
Every time one website links to another it communicates to the search engine that site A thinks site B has something worthwhile to say that its visitors trust.
It is like receiving a reference or a good review in SEO terms.
And if site A has a lot of links from other sites pointing back to it, then it is like receiving a reference from someone well respected thus making it much more valuable.
Links are one of many ranking factors that search engines pay attention to. They hold a lot of weight in deciding how search engines convey which websites are authoritative and trustworthy.
When a lot of other sites link to yours especially when other sites are seen as authoritative and high value by Google, it starts to include your website high up in the search rankings for users.
Main Approaches to Link Building
Since link building is so difficult, it is a good way to set your website apart and stay competitive in the search engines.
There are two main approaches you can take to link building:
- Try earning links naturally with the content you create.
- Reaching out to other websites to try to get your link included on their site.
Most brands that do link building will benefit from doing a combination of the two.
Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO
You have to give something worth linking to before anyone’s going to link to your website.
This means that you should start with some initiatives that will set the stage for making your website worthy of getting said links.
SEO is all about ranking for searches that are relevant to what your website provides. Your first step should be to research what language your target audience is using and what information they are looking for out there.
This will give you an idea of what content to create and what types of links you want.
Spend some time doing keyword research to figure out the topic areas and questions your audience are interested in.
This will form the foundation for both your content strategy and your link building efforts.
Further Reading: Create Your Own Top Level Domain (TLD)
For other people to want to link to your website you have to create a meaningful content that would give them a reason to link to.
That means embracing content marketing which suggests starting a blog and making a commitment to create original, high quality content to publish on regular basis.
It is a lot of work but it is an important step in link building and it also gives you an opportunity to connect with your target audience.
When you provide users with helpful information that gives them a good reason to care about your brand.
They will follow you and think about you first the next time they need whatever you are selling.
With millions of websites and blogs out there users are not going to find you unless you put some effort into making it easier for them to find you.
This is where SEO comes into the equation – when users can find your content in the search engines and drive new views to your website.
For most websites, obtaining links and search engine rankings will only come after you put some effort into helping your first users find your content.
For every high quality content you publish, always plan a strategy to get it in front of people.
That means sharing it on social media – sending a link to people you expect would be interested in it.
Posting it in relevant forums or even using paid promotion on Google or social media sites to boost its reach.
The newer your blog is the harder it will be to get your first followers so expect to spend some time and money working to get your content seen.
Nobody can link to your awesome posts until they know they exist.
Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure
PR personnel in their industry do not think of themselves as link builders.
Their PR work includes helping brands get coverage in national media and on a number of websites usually with links.
By working with an external or in house PR person you can find opportunities to gain mentions of your brand on other websites.
This will position people in the company as thought leaders and encourage newsworthy initiative coverage like a charity drive or creative stunts.
People are more likely to link to brands they trust and know. For people to know you – you have to make connections. A whole industry has grown up around identifying and figuring out ways to connect with influencers.
Think about ways to interact with other people and brands in your industry.
Participate in online communities and join Twitter chats regularly or ask them to be an expert source for a piece of content you are writing.
When it comes to the link building strategies, it is not often straight forward.
You will get a different response from someone who already has a connection with you compared with someone who sees you as a total stranger.
Further Reading: Online Marketing Strategies for Small Business
Guest blogging is the most effective way to reach new audiences and this is done by publishing articles on other popular websites.
This is where you get your content in front of new readers and win more exposure.
Sometimes it is not all about backlinks but about increasing your online reputation or your social media followers.
It also helps you leverage your relationships and expand your audience and even Google accepts guest contributors on its Google Analytics blog.
Brainstorm topic ideas that are in line with what they cover but have not been written about on the site before.
This will provide you with an opportunity to link back to a page on your own site. Then send a pitch that follows their guidelines.
Not every pitch you send will get you a Yes but as long as some do you will be able to build a number of links this way.
You do have to be willing to put in the work here to write a really good guest post that is up to the standards of the blog you are writing for.
This is a tactic you have to be prepared to commit some serious time and work to. But it can have a double impact:
- A way to get a link and to reach a new audience with your content
- Also start a new relationship with the blog you write for.
There are numerous ways to find websites that accept guest articles.
Below are a few ways and examples:
Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO
Made by using your keyword (plus) + write-for-us, guest-posts, guest-post-guidelines, become a contributor, bloggers wanted, submit an article, want to write for, contribute, become an author, guest post by, now accepting guest posts.
This is an example of a profile by a freelance writer – name not disclosed due to data and privacy policy.
From their Google Plus profile – click on About then scroll to the contributor section where you can see a list of all the websites they have contributed articles to.
Repeat the process with other influencers and you will find endless opportunities to publish content on third-party websites.
Use social media to discover other options.
On Twitter, search for guest post, guest article or guest author.
To automate the process, use Twitter Analysis Tools to set alerts for the keywords you want to track.
When publishing a guest article, always ensure you link to your social media profile.
If someone enjoys your post, he or she can easily follow you for similar future articles.
Further Reading: Why You Need a Mobile Friendly Website
To get more organic traffic, it is absolutely mandatory that you stay up to date with your main competitors’ online marketing strategies.
You have to spy on your competitors on social media and look for their link-building or earning techniques as well as their content-marketing methods.
Here are a few tips:
Set yourself alerts when competitors are publishing new content on their websites.
Subscribe to their email newsletters or follow them on social media. Another smart way to catch up with their new content is to create a Google alert for the keyword site:yourcompetitor.com.
For example – if my competitor is Forbes, I can set a Google alert using the keyword: site:Forbes.com
This will help you understand better what methods they are using to promote their website and replicate their best backlinks.
If their links are coming through guest blogging try to become a guest author on the same websites.
Should this be coming from blog reviews then get in touch with those bloggers and offer them a trial to test your tool. They might eventually write a review about it.
You can choose which tool to spy on your competitors’ backlinks – SE Ranking or Monitor Backlinks. It allows you to add your important competitor’s websites.
Then you get a weekly report containing all the new links they have earned. Inside the tool, you get more insights about these links and can sort them by their value and other SEO metrics.
Creating New Links
You can also add to your website to ensure that you are creating new links when your competitors are doing so.
Using this technique you can easily determine new link-building opportunities. With Monitor Backlinks, you can keep track of all the backlinks your website is earning.
Each time your link building campaigns are successful, you can see all the new backlinks you are getting in your dashboard.
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Internal links are a key factor for running a successful blog. They are creating internal links within your website and you can use your preferred anchor texts.
What is anchor text? Anchor text refers to the clickable words used to link one web page to another. In this blog, the blue words underlined are the anchor text.
With a good internal linking structure, you can help users easily navigate through your website and increase the overall user experience.
This also helps to create connections between different pages on your site and drive traffic to other parts of your website.
There are tools that can automatically create internal links on your blog if you are running WordPress but you should do this manually.
Microsoft recommends that webmasters keep their number of internal links per page below 100 for both usability and SEO.
Promoting your great content correctly will get you the backlinks you deserve. You have to do email marketing to reach and promote your best articles out to the world to get users to find you.
This tactic involves identifying a number of individuals who you think would be likely to share, like or link to your content and share it with others.
For your regular followers tagging them when you share the post on social media may be enough to get their attention.
If not then try crafting an email making the case for why you think they would like your content.
This can be done by citing similar content you have seen them share or times they have written about related topics.
Disadvantage - Annoying users
The disadvantage of this tactic is coming off as an annoyance to the people you are trying to reach.
You are asking strangers to do you a favour. Therefore you should always do your best to think about how your content might benefit them instead of yourself.
One of the best ways to do this is to contact bloggers or websites running weekly or monthly roundups.
Once again you can use Google and search for queries like keyword + roundup. Make sure you choose, in order to see results – from the past week or month.
Advantage - Relevant Updated Content
Then contact the webmasters and give them a quick introduction to your website with your message and send a link to one of your best tutorials or guides.
If they find your resource useful – they may link back to you in their next weekly roundups. These bloggers are constantly looking for great content and they definitely want to hear from you.
Make sure you do not abuse your relationship with any webmaster by asking for a link directly which could lead to detrimental consequences.
Further Reading: How To Use Heading Tags For SEO
10. Write testimonials.
Easiest method to earn quality backlinks is to write testimonials for websites you are using.
You will only spend a few minutes and you can earn a link from the homepage of an authoritative website.
As long as you are a customer of that product there is a high possibility you can get a link in exchange for a testimonial. List all the tools you are currently using.
Communicate and reach out to discuss the likelihood of featuring your testimonial on a desired website with your tools providers.
11. Contact journalists and important bloggers.
To get links to your website you have to spread the word about your business. And the best way to do this is via email outreach to journalists and influencers from your niche.
Finding someone’s email address can be challenging but it is not impossible – It can be done.
Here is how to find anyone’s email address:
Over 90 percent of the email addresses at publications and websites are formatted like this any of the following:
john@website.com sjohn@website.com smith.john@website.com
You can try sending your pitch to these emails directly.
Should the above formats do not work then use tools like Voila Norbert, Thrust.io or Emailfinder.io.
Just enter the name of the person you are trying to contact and the website he or she works for.
Alternatively you can send your message using social media, Google Plus or LinkedIn.
Point To Note: Every pitch should be short and to the point. No one has time for long and boring emails from strangers.
12. Get interviewed.
Online interviews are a hot topic right now and it is a great and easy way to earn backlinks to your website.
Once you become the authority in your niche you will get lots of interview invitations but before that you need to make the first step to get started.
Look for websites that are running interviews and tell them you would like to participate and what knowledge you can contribute.
13. Skyscraper Content
The first step in this strategy is to spend some time seeing what shows up on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for a number of relevant keywords for your brand.
You are looking for content in the first few spots that is not actually that good or outdated.
If you feel confident that you can create a better content or already have then these are your targets for the skyscraper content strategy.
For each of the identified terms create a really awesome content or improve the content you already have.
Endeavour to make it your best work and definitely make sure it is more thorough and helpful than the current content on those top spots in Google.
Once your content is published, find out which pages to include links to the sub-par content you want to replace on the SERP. Start contacting those sites to recommend their link to your content instead.
Be aware and extra vigilant on how you word your emails. You want to state why your content is more valuable than the content they link to now. Point it out if the other content has outdated information.
If your post is more thorough and includes more actionable tips than the competitor’s – emphasise that.
Focus on what makes your content valuable and relevant rather than trashing your competitor.
Further Reading: Different Types of Websites to Create
14. Broken Link Building
This is another great tactic – how you can provide the website owner time, value and at the same time ask for a link back to your site.
Broken backlinks can cause bad experience for a site visitor and make them lose trust in a website that looks sloppy or outdated.
If you can identify broken links on websites that once pointed to content that were relevant to what you cover on your website then you have found a link building opportunity.
You can either create better and valuable content based on the broken links you found or you can try to spot broken links on topics you have already covered.
In either case by contacting the website owner you are accomplishing two things that can make their life easier:
- Alerting them to a broken link on their site that they are not aware of and no longer works.
- Providing them an updated link to replace their old one so they do not have to find an alternative new resource.
Take a minute to visit their website and make sure that the content you are suggesting will make sense on the page you are recommending they add your link to.
As long as your content is helpful, relevant and high quality there is a decent chance your recipient will consider giving you that link.
15. Brand Mention Campaigns
Every time someone mentions your brand that is an opportunity for a link.
Using link reclamation tool, Google Alerts or advanced search commands in Google – you can find places around the web where someone has talked about your brand or the personal mentioned seen as thought leaders.
In every instance where your brand or CEO or founder gets mentioned this is an opportunity for a link back your website so create a pitch to the webmaster asking them to add one.
Point To Note: Do not send a template email to every website without taking a minute to actually visit the site. If they are already criticising your company then you just annoying them further.
And if the mention has nothing to do with your company or used as an alternative term. This is definitely wasting your time and will look unprofessional to the recipient.
But for websites that are mentioning your brand because they think you are worth talking about for positive reasons. In this case they may be inclined to take a couple of minutes to add the link at your request.
Wrapping Up
As you can see ink building can mean a lot of different things. You do not have to try every tactic suggested here to start building your backlink profile.
Every business can pick and choose which tactics are relevant to the chosen outcome.
But if you want to compete in the search engines then doing some form of link building is an essential and important part of achieving that goal.
Best-Digital Marketing’s skilled SEO experts are here to help you with all the components of SEO marketing described here. We have the experience on how to identify backlink opportunities that is most valuable to your brand and earn you those links. Contact us now to learn how we can help your business rank better in the search results.
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15 Ways To Create Quality Backlinks To Your Website