Link building remains the white elephant of the SEO
industry. Many say that link building is spam and dead and hurts your SEO. But
link building remains a crucial part of a well-executed SEO strategy. And when
done right, it contributes to high cultural research standards.
It is important to remember that every link-building
strategy must be well practiced. This is how you get the most long-term success
for your site. Stop viewing link building as a search engine tactic. Instead,
focus on attracting customers just like enabling labels on your products,
i.e., EU energy label, to provide better UX and build relationships within your
business. Your success will be determined by your long-term investment in SEO,
not short-term thinking or tactics.
What are backlinks?
Backlinks are hyperlinks from one site to another. Backlinks
can appear anywhere on the web, and their location affects their value (we will
discuss it later in this article). The essential backlinks are in-text links,
such as internal links from Moz. Internal links direct visitors to another page
on your website. External links direct visitors to a page on another website.
In this post, while talking about backlinks, we will talk about external
backlinks.
Why do backlinks matter?
Backlinks are like a vote of confidence from one site to
another. When a website provides a backlink, the webmaster or content author
considers your page and your website reliable and informative. This sends the
same code to Google. A page with more backlink information is more reliable,
informative, and valuable to Google users, so Google (and other search engines)
will rank it higher. Often referred to as Domain Administration, the scale of a
website's reliability, credibility, and performance.
While backlink-building strategies are essential, they are
only part of a complex search engine optimization (SEO) puzzle. If backlinks
are the only purpose of ranking, it will be easy to "fool" the
algorithm. Companies with many websites will also have an unfair situation,
which we will discuss later in this article. To improve your content, it is
helpful to have a good understanding of SEO strategies in general.
7 Backlinking Strategies to Improve Page Rank
#1. Build Broken Links
A sneaky strategy, this backlink tactic will undermine your
competitors by replacing their old shoes. Although this is an old backlink
system, 53% of marketers still use it.
The idea is to find connections in your area that are no
longer working and create replacements to fill those broken resources. Ideally,
it would be best if you targeted competing sites to find broken links to
content on their sites.
Once you find a broken link, you run that URL through a
backlink checker tool. Ahrefs also has a backlink checker. The backlink checker
will show you all the websites that link to a broken source. Then you write an
article that replaces the first link and links all those backlink sites that
offer your replacement.
#2. Reclaim Unlinked Mentions
Reclaiming unlinked mentions is probably the easiest and
fastest way to build high-quality backlinks.
All you have to do is see who is mentioning your brand in
blogs or news. You can do this using something as simple (and free) as Google
Alerts. If you need more information about your information, such as the number
of shares or the owner of the website the mention is coming from, you can
choose tools like BuzzSumo, Ahrefs Content Explorer, or Tell.
Often you will notice that the author does not include a
link to your website when they mention your brand, product, or service. That's
when you can send them a short letter asking them for the proper link. It also
allows the publisher to give their readers an experience by allowing them to
follow the link and learn more about the said brand. This is a win, win.
The creative part of this trick is that you can use the same
method to get links to other information related to your brand, including your
content, employee names, research reports, and more.
#3. Supplier Links
If you are selling other people's products, you may better
get authoritative backlinks to your website. Many manufacturers and retailers
have "what to buy" pages on their websites, like this example from a
bike. Each of them is a shop that sells bikes of a particular brand. Consumers
like to link to these stores from their website because it draws attention to
their products.
First, make a list of all your suppliers. Then visit each website to see which pages link to their stores. Look for a button or link that says "buy" or "buy." Contact your company contacts and ask how your website can be listed and linked.
#4. Replicate your competitors' SEO backlinks
Finding out who is linking to your competitors is a big win.
Competitive backlinks will almost always be on relevant sites in your niche, so
you know they will be good SEO backlinks.
It can be a lot of manual work, but there are tools (both
free and paid) to help you analyse your competitors' backlink information. I
will use the free tool Online Backlink Checker as an example, but the process
will look the same for any other software.
You must open the tool, enter the competitor's URL, and
click Check Backlinks. The device will search the domain and create a backlink
history, including the number of backlinks, do-last percentage of backlinks,
and historical data.
Look at the pages with backlinks, choose the most powerful
features, and then refer to those sites to see if they are ready to link to
your site. Just one thing: before applying, check if you have a backlink from
these services - if so, show it before asking for another.
#5. Influencer outreach
By using influencers, you can build backlinks and market to
new people. In addition, influencers also become social endorsements by
recommending your products to followers.
For this reason, 40% of marketers use social media as a
strategy. Don't feel like you need celebrity-level influencers to improve your
backlink strategy. Influencers with fewer followers tend to get higher
engagement.
Just reach out to influencers in your niche and offer them
free products or commissions in exchange for a backlink on their website or
social media page.
#6. Get Contextual Links
Have you noticed some articles show or suggest additional
resources in the text or the "Read More" section?
These links embedded in the text of an article are called
link links. The key to getting affiliate links is finding the right target to
reach out to. You can find them by searching for articles related to what you
are promoting that have a Learn More section.
When you contact an author to present your research, don't
forget to say why your content is worth showing. A compelling message and a personalized
email will go a long way.
Once you get used to backlinks, you may notice that other
publishers are reaching out directly to you. Advertisers will come to you with
the right link-building strategy; not ask them.
#7. Link Gap Analysis
One of the fastest ways to get backlinks is to do a
fundamental link gap analysis. This allows you to find sites that link to your
competitors and not you (yet). You will have the opportunity to get the same
backlinks as your competitors or even beat them.
If a website links to more than one of your competitors,
there is a perfect chance they will also connect to you as long as you can
justify why they should do it. You can use the Backlink Gap tool to make this
process easier.
#8. Update Old Content
If you find an article or research report that hasn't been
updated in a while, check how many backlinks that article has. You will find
yourself a valuable resource if there are many ads and links to this content.
You can always go further and create something better, new, with
up-to-date information. After publishing content, you can contact bloggers or
writers associated with old content to tell them about your latest update.
You can usually see the results of your advertising within
days or weeks in the form of backlinks or social media ads. But other benefits
come from building those relationships in the first place. For example, you can
end up collaborating on other projects that will help you expand your brand and
traffic.
Takeaway
Engaging with others in your industry ”through events, social
media, or other connections” can help expose your site and content to more
people who may eventually contact you.
If you are participating in an online community, pay close
attention to what others in the community are posting. If someone says they're
going to write a blog post on a topic related to your business, offer to talk
with them and see what happens.
There is no winning strategy for backlink reputation
management. Experiment with these options to make your profile unique, reliable,
and trustworthy.