Unarguably building backlinks for your website is hard work. While most people still on the internet resort to spamming the blogs’ comment sections as a medium to build backlinks, in 2020 this is neither necessary nor effective for SEO.
Such spamming techniques are a last-ditch effort by the webmasters who do not understand the nitty-gritty ways of inbound link building.
What most of these people don’t understand is that link building methodologies are not as hard as many people say they are. Keeping this in mind, we have compiled a list of 15 ideas to help you build quality backlinks legitimately.
Do you understand what backlinks/inbound Links are?
Backlinks or inbound links are part of the off-page SEO where you earn backlinks from other websites that drive traffic to your site.
Backlinks are different from outbound links and internal links. With the right backlinks you can supercharge your SEO in two ways:
Get traffic to your website: Anyone sharing a link of your site on their blog or website will provide readers a way to go your site and you will get visitors who are called as referral traffic.
Backlinks help you rank higher: The whole point of white hat SEO is to rank your website higher in search engines by building authority for you.
Good inbound links come from authoritative websites and use natural anchor text. Natural links mean you are not paying for the backlinks or indulging in black hat SEO.
Today, Google understands the context of a link as it does the content, which is why more generic “learn more” and “click here” anchor text might be just as valuable as keyword-optimized anchor text.
Here are the best link building strategies to naturally earn backlinks and rank higher
- Build a blog with great content
Consistently creating great content on your blog is a tried way of naturally attracting links from people and organically generate inbound links.
- Link to other blogs on your blog
Blogging is meant to be a social tool. This is why the more you link to others in a natural, consistent and opportunity-driven way, the greater is the likelihood that some of those bloggers will link back to you.
Furthermore, you can never cover the entire information on your blog, you need to leverage the wealth of resources on the web for a better experience for readers.
- Write guest blog posts
Creating quality content that is fit for other authority blogs is a good way to encourage them to give you an inbound link.
Write a great guest post. If you do not know where to start, there are many media outlets like The New York Times, Business Insider and Mashable that allow readers to submit guest posts.
- Curate and publish helpful resource lists
We have never seen any other topic gather as many links as resource lists that readers dig. Resource lists are one of the best link baits. If you create a comprehensive resource list with quality tools, other bloggers are most likely link back to your list, instead of just rehashing your list.
- Expert roundups build relationships
Your website will be benefited if you build relationships with influencers and expert roundups are a great way to go for it. While you cannot expect these roundups to get you leads or backlinks right away but you still will be benefited from the relationship down the line and eventually attract some solid backlinks from authority sites.
You can also reach experts after a roundup session to ask if you can do a quality guest post thanking then for contributing to your previous expert roundup.
Here is an example of an expert roundup I was interviewed for Media Shower.
- Create case studies about your clients
This one is a sleazy manoeuvre but if you make your clients look good in your business studies, then you can bet that they will be linking back to your site. But you need to choose the companies that you have actually made look good and they must be impressed with your results and know your product or service well. Create an impressive and comprehensive case study.
- Write book reviews
Many people do not use book reviews as a way of outbound link building. However, if you provide a comprehensive review of an author’s content, then there’s a good chance you getting a mention in their next writeup.
- Conduct free webinars
Readers are moving past just the text content and they have actively become part of webinars and podcasts. If you create informative webinars then the attendees will absolutely share them.
You can turn your webinar presentation into a PowerPoint presentation that you can share on SlideShare and also embed it in a blog post. You can partner with other companies, brands or influencers to have an even better chance of getting backlinks.
- Create free tools
Have you ever used Neil Patel’s Uber Suggest tool? It’s a backlink magnet.
Remember what we told you about creating useful resource lists for readers? What do you think is included in those lists? You guessed it right, the free tools are a favourite of authors creating these lists. You can get included in such lists if you create a free tool that will help your target customers.
- Create shareable templates
Just like free tools, templates are also a big seller for getting backlinks. Before you create a template, research on the target audience and understand what kind of templates will make their lives easier. A marketing agency might be interested in quote templates while a designer will prefer a library of downloadable business card templates.
- Create shareable infographics
Infographics are a big seller and people love to share them. If you create informative original infographic yourself, other people will link back to you as the original source. To increase the likelihood of the backlinks you can include an embed code in the post that is easily accessible.
- Create other interesting visual content
People have become more and more visual, they are more attracted to cartoons, content visualizations, charts and graphs. Also, such visual content is easy to make. Sites like Canva.com help you create impressive visual content in no time.
- Do something funny
If the internet has taught us anything its funny things spread like wildfire. Think about the insider jokes of your industry and capitalize on it to create some humorous content that most people will want to link to.
- Write interesting company press releases
You can turn your PR strategy into an inbound one and create opportunities for link building that was not there before. Once you write a great press release, push it out on one of the big newswires to get more coverage.
- Search for and monitor your competitors’ backlinks
A part of quality outbound link building is knowing where the opportunities for getting backlinks are. One of the greatest ways to find them is to do competitor research on a weekly or monthly basis so that you can also take advantage of those opportunities when they are still fresh.
Analysis tools like Ahrefs, Majestic, or Moz’s Open Site Explorer are excellent to find the list of the backlinks for one of your competitors. Check what kind of posts are getting the backlinks and how much the off-page SEO is benefiting them.
For instance, if one of your competitors is writing a guest post for a blog or publication, there’s a high chance that they will be interested in more guest posts on similar topics. You have an opportunity to earn a backlink for your website.
Build only Quality Backlinks
We have said it before, SEO is no more about spamming the comment sections and keyword stuffing, but its about relevant and offering value. If you want to build quality backlinks that will stay for years boosting your search engine rankings and getting you traffic, you need to follow these strategies.
