Links play a crucial role in helping your website rank higher in search engines while gaining credibility and authority. Links are also an important Google Ranking factor and can make or break your online presence.
To stay ahead of your competitors and rank on top in organic search engine rankings, it's essential to master the art of link building. And yes, it's more of an art than science in the fast-evolving digital landscape and ever-changing algorithms.
In this article, we will delve deeper and learn how do you usually build links of high quality to your website at scale. It is important to craft a unique, actionable, and effective link-building strategy through meaningful relationships to achieve long-term link growth.
In other words, if you're serious about achieving SEO success, you need to learn how to build links and be good at it. Period.
How To Do Link Building Step by Step?
Link building is central to achieving higher rankings in the search engines for your targeted keywords. Good links are those that drive traffic and attract a new audience.
Steer clear of using bad practices for link acquisition, as it will only end up hurting your website in the long term.
Before we go into the details and enumerate step-by-step how to do link building, let us first understand –
What is Link Building?
Link building is the process of getting a backlink to your website from other websites.
When done right, topically relevant and high-quality links can turn around the future of your website by driving traffic, boosting authority, increasing audience engagement, improving search engine rankings, and establishing you as a frontrunner in your niche/industry.
Let us go through the process of link building step-by-step for better understanding –
Know Your Audience
Do some research and engage in market analysis to understand and know your audience better. It will also help you determine what your ideal audience looks like. It’s crucial to dive deep into firstlink research and analytics before engaging in link building.
Once you know who your target audience is, it becomes easier to craft content that addresses their interests, pain points, and queries. You need to do so in a way that connects you with them holistically.
Shortlist Websites Your Audience Likes
Once you've identified who your target audience is, make a list of websites your audience already prefers or visits.
Getting links from high-quality websites that are topically relevant and fall under the same or related niche can help drive targeted referral traffic to your website.
So, if you’re in Follow the mantra of quality over quantity when it comes to links. Links from low-quality, spammy, or unrelated websites won't do your website any good but may end up causing more harm.
Write Great Content
For other websites to consider adding your website's link to their website, make sure to write great content that offers value.
Don't spin and re-spin what's already out there, but offer something unique, showcase your expertise, share insights from your experience, and address your audience's pain points.
Solve the problems of your audience and sound authentic while doing so, even if you're looking to make a sale. When you can show your expertise, experience, and diligence through the content - sales happen as a natural byproduct.
However, just don't write great content; make sure it is formatted and structured properly on your website. It is recommended that you use high-quality infographics, images, and visuals to make your content more appealing.
Match Content Relevantly With Your List
Now that you've written great content, it's time to sort through the list of websites you created earlier. Identify which website is likely to link to the content you just created.
It might be tempting to send everything you've created to every website on the list. But don't do that!
Doing so will decrease your chances of anyone adding your backlink to their website. No website owner or admin is going to read through several blogs to choose one. It may even come across as spammy!
Go through the list of websites and their content diligently, matching the ones that align specifically with the topic of your blog. Topically relevant links drive referral traffic that is most likely to become a part of your regular audience.
Finally, Reach Out!
Once you've matched the content with the websites, it's time to reach out to them individually. Ideally, sending an email is preferred, but these days, social media is also a great way to reach out and interact.
Make sure to know about these websites and the audience they cater to boost your chances of getting the link by personalizing the interaction.
Request website owners to place a link to your content through email or on social media politely. It would help if you could explain why adding the link to your content can be beneficial to their audience as well. However, don't overdo it in the letter, and keep it short, simple, and crisp!
Do know that you may or may not get replies at times, and its fine.
Use The Power of Social Media
Reaching out to websites individually is great and is traditionally known to deliver results. But social media works wonders, too, these days.
Share your content on social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Tweet your content to a few influencers in your niche or tag a few important personalities in your domain, and if they find the content worthy, they might share it with their audience.
In this whirlwind of social media, you'll likely get some worthy links from high-quality sources.
Having gone through the conventional link-building process step-by-step, let us go through some of the most popular link-building strategies followed by internet marketers worldwide.
What Are 9 Easy Link Building Strategies?
Link building is challenging, and it not only takes time, it tests your patience.
You may come across tons of tactics for link acquisition online, but it may not be ideal for you or maybe too challenging for you to give up the idea of link building altogether.
This is why most businesses, regardless of their size, prefer to hire link-building experts to boost their SEO efforts.
Let us name the nine easy link-building strategies to help you get started on the right path –
Reverse Engineer Competitor's Backlinks – Skyscraper Method
Use SEO tools to find keywords competitors are targeting and check where they're getting high-quality links from. Determine the industry trends and keyword gaps and create content around those gaps.
You can use the ahrefs link intersect tool to find out who's linking to your competitors but not you, helping you find link-building opportunities you can explore further.
It also helps you discover the top-ranking pages you should be linking to boost your authority and search engine rankings.
Engage in extensive outreach after discovering link-building opportunities through competition analysis tools or ahrefs link intersect for building links to your website.
Reclaim Old or Broken Links
Find link opportunities by identifying broken links on other websites and asking the website owner/administrator to replace them with your active link with topically relevant content.
You must also check old links placed on websites and see if they're still working or not. If not, ask the website owners to replace it with new and working links.
Old and broken links can drastically impact your authority and rankings negatively, so keep a lookout for that.
Infographics
Visual pieces of content are always a hit with the readers, and it's no different with infographics. They're easy to share and offer valuable pieces of information in a crisp and concise manner.
Infographics can be embedded with content on your blog. The readers can click the link attached to the infographics to visit your blog.
The infographics you create should be easily shareable and easy to embed for other websites that wish to share them.
Unique and informative infographics are of high value and shareable, making it a great way to acquire valuable links.
Case & Data Studies
Spend time doing research or writing a case study with unique, valuable, and insightful data and statistics. Such unique and informative pieces of content are loved by readers online and would undoubtedly be shared.
When people share facts and statistics you've shared on your website, they'll link it back to your website for reference. It's a great way to get more links to your website.
Resource Pages
When you've tons of content on specific topics, many websites will backlink to your pages on their resource pages. It is a great way to boost your authority while gaining organic referral traffic.
You can also create a resource page on your website, the link to which can be used by other websites.
Passive Links
Create great content and content clusters on your website, and it will eventually help you rank high for your focus keywords on the search engines. Once you're on top of SERPs, your content will be linked back by many other websites online.
You get these passive links because of people's habit of using the link of the first couple of search engine results when citing relevant topics in their content.
Guest Blogging
If you've a good network with other bloggers and have invested time in creating meaningful relationships with other bloggers and business owners, it becomes easier to engage in guest blogging.
It is a great way to acquire high-quality backlinks from established websites. All you need to do is reach out to the website owners and ask them to publish your content on an important/useful topic on their website, and in return, you get two links from the content.
It is a win-win deal for both parties as they get great content for free, and you get high-quality links.
Answer Questions Online on Social Media
You can engage in online public communities and forums on social media and other platforms, interact with your target audience, answer any questions or concerns they may have, and boost your brand image and awareness.
When you answer questions from users, especially on Reddit and Quora, it is permitted to add a link to your website with it.
Similarly, if the users find information on your website useful, they might use it on their social media handles and even on their blogs. Getting these links is highly beneficial and boosts your credibility online.
News Jacking
One of the ways to garner many backlinks is by creating content around the latest, hot, and trending topics. Follow the markets closely and keep a watch on the latest trends to create content on any new hot topic as soon as it happens.
However, make sure that you follow the latest trends in your niche/industry to create content around your niche.
Following this process consistently will not only help you drive more traffic to your website but also establish you as a thought leader in your industry.
These are the nine easy, actionable, and effective link-building strategies you mustn't ignore if you're looking to boost your link-building efforts. These methods will not only help you build links but propel your business growth through online marketing.
How To Build Links To Your Website – 10 Ways For Beginners?
SEO may have changed over time, but the importance of links hasn't. The SEO is more or less similar to a popularity contest where links are the votes.
The more votes you manage to get, the better it is. In the end, the website with the most high-quality and relevant votes (links!) wins.
If you're new to link building, be mentally prepared to be in it for the long haul. Whether you're a beginner or have been at it for a long time, link building is challenging, and it continues to get challenging as time passes.
Let us list the 10 best ways to build links to your website –
- Unlinked Mentions – Reach out to websites that mention you but don't link back to you!
- Do Paid Promotions for Your Long-Form Posts or Linkable Assets – Get in front of the audience fast with paid promotions - it works.
- Repurpose old content to make infographics and videos and share them online on video-sharing websites.
- Steal links from inferior posts by creating better content – most website owners will agree to give you the link!
- Create high-quality Tutorials, How-To Guides, Blog Posts, and Visually Appealing Content.
- Guest Blogging – Write high-quality content for other websites in exchange for links from them.
- Engage in personal brand and networking. Establish yourself in your industry and ask for backlinks from bloggers in your network.
- Link Roundups – Create high-quality curated content like "Best Free SEO Tools List." When done well, it becomes a popular resource in the industry, generating backlinks for you.
- Content Pillars – Create an in-depth post on any niche-relevant topic with proper structure. These cornerstone resources help with your market and brand positioning and help get backlinks to your website.
- Social Mentions – Reach out to people who mention your brand, products, and services and request if they can embed links to their posts or websites.
There are many other ways you can acquire links from relevant and high sources, but these few methods will help you get started on the right path.
The key is to be consistent with link-building because it is an ongoing practice that needs persistence, perseverance, and patience. Things might not always go the way you want, and building a link web of high-quality links is time-consuming.
Just like in anything else, don't seek perfection and just get started.
How To Build 61 Links Using Social Media?
Social media is a great place to garner high-quality backlinks. It is where the link-building experts spend more time identifying link-building opportunities and building backlinks to their websites.
Whether you're looking to build 61 or 61,000 links – know that it is possible through social media.
Like all good things in life, it takes time, but it works!
Here are the few practices you must follow –
- Optimize our social profiles and add links to your website there.
- Gather customer reviews on social media platforms – Boost engagement, gather social proof, and get more links!
- Track people who mention you/your brand on social media – Reach out and earn links from them.
- Reclaim old and broken links.
- Find people who have linked to your social media profiles and ask them to link to your website instead.
- Invite people to guest post for you, and then they'll invite you, too!
- Network with brands and influencers and request them to link back. No one says no to high-quality, well-researched pillar content!
- Share visually appealing videos and infographics on social media to get links to your website.
- Generate second-tier links. These are links that you get by first linking their site on your website.
- Create social content as well, and don't just link blogs on your website on your social handles.
- Host contests and promote events to unveil link-building opportunities.
Tapping the power of social media to create links is important as finding backlinking opportunities the traditional way continues to get more and more competitive.
Social media helps you interact, network, and engage with other influencers, brands, and businesses and creates meaningful relationships that naturally lead to link-building.
Make sure to use social media to become a known brand/influencer in your domain before you follow up with others with email pitches.
Following these few steps can boost your link-building game drastically, allowing you to build 61 or more links sooner than you thought.
Final Thoughts
Link building constitutes five of the top ten Google Ranking factors, and it's important if you're looking to dominate your niche.
Link building isn't easy, but it isn't rocket science either. It needs work, patience, consistency, and the will to execute new strategies.
Many of these strategies will work, while others may not. The trick is to keep testing new, relevant, and ethical link-building practices out there to see what works for you.
Remember, link building isn't a one-day job but an ongoing process that you can't ignore. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, new and effective link-building strategies continue to surface.
Stay updated with the latest market trends and link-building strategies to continually improve and diversify your backlink profile.
Mastering the art of link building may take time and effort, but it is worth it!
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