Backlinks have so many benefits:
- They increase traffic to your website
- They are votes of confidence for your website that improve your SEO efforts through rankings
- They help you build an online relationship with other websites, and
- When they are featured on an authoritative website, they help you build trust and authority for your business and brand.
Awesome…but how do you go about building these backlinks—and most importantly ensure you get it right from the beginning?
In this article, we are going to discuss some of the exceptional strategies and tactics that you can use to build your website’s authority and ranking.
Let’s start with some basics—what are backlinks?
What are backlinks?
Backlinks, also known as inbound or outbound links, are links on one website that point to another website. They serve as valuable votes of confidence from other websites that tell the search engines that your content is credible and useful.
So, the higher the number of these “votes” you have or get, the higher your site will rank in Google and other search engines—assuming your on-page and technical SEO is at par.
Not all backlinks are going to be important for your SEO campaign. So, how do you ensure that you get only quality backlinks for your site?
More in the next section.
What makes a good backlink?
When building links, it’s important to validate the quality of the link since good links are relevant and authoritative and bring referral traffic to your site.
While low-value links can harm your website and result in poor ranking.
To achieve this and get the best backlinks for your website, here are some things you need to consider.
#1. Relevance
Your backlinks should be on sites that are relevant to the page you're sharing.
For example, if you are selling beauty products or skin care products, you can look for backlinking opportunities on beauty sites—that’s because they’re relevant and most of your target audience is on these sites.
When the quality of your content is excellent, be sure to have other people link to your website with ease, knowing that it is genuine and relevant to their audiences.
#2. Authoritative
The backlinks should be from authoritative sites, generate a lot of traffic, and even rank well in the SERPs themselves.
You better keep in mind that the more backlinks you have from different authoritative sites, the better your website's position in terms of website ranking.
#3. Anchor text
Anchor text is the hyperlinked text that contains the URL back to your website.
A good link consists of a diverse anchor text instead of the same anchor text across hundreds of links
#4. Natural
A good backlink should appear in website content organically and should not be part of the tactic to manipulate the search engine into boosting your ranking, as this is considered an offence—worth a penalty from Google.
The easiest way to gain backlinks naturally is by creating high-quality and valuable content that other webmasters and bloggers want to link to.
Having said that, there can also be bad links. What are they?
Bad links involve;
- Overusing a specific keyword in anchor text
- Large-scale link exchange scheme
- Injecting hidden links into websites
Turns out, backlinks have an impact on your SEO campaign. In the next section, we’ll dig into the matter.
How important are backlinks in SEO?
Let’s start this with a fact. Over 53% of all website traffic comes from organic search.
So, if you’re not using link building in your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to generate organic traffic, you’re losing out.
That’s because, search engines use backlinks to determine the relevance and authority of your website, which in turn can affect your website’s ranking either positively or negatively.
Here is a breakdown of backlinks' importance to SEO.
1. Backlinks for search engine crashes and indexing–search engines such as Google use crawlers, bots, or spiders to crawl websites from link to link, follow the paths the links create, find content or information, and then put them in their index.
This simply means that for a search engine to give you results, it first has to find it and to do so, it uses links.
2. Backlinks as a ranking signal–when your website is authoritative and Google picks up on other websites linking to your page, it sends information that your website is worth linking to.
Moreover, when you link to another site, it is because there is more elaborate information on the other website that you want your audience to get directly from the website.
3. Backlinks as a source of competitive intelligence–backlinks being one of the factors a search engine considers when ranking a page, we still use links to find out who is linking to your competitors.
This will, in turn, help you learn where to earn better links and get you on top of the game.
How do I create backlinks for my website?
Now that you know what backlinks are, their benefits, and how they can impact your website.
Let’s look at a few steps to creating these backlinks.
#1. Identify your target keywords.
The first step in creating backlinks for your website is to find a keyword you want to target within your niche.
You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner to find the best keyword for your niche.
This will help you know the type of content you should create and the websites you will need to link to.
#2. Create high quality content
After identifying the keyword you want to concentrate on, you can now start creating relevant content that gives value to your audience.
Optimize your content for the keyword you chose and make sure it is link worthy. This will earn you a high quality backlink.
#3. Promote your content
The next step in creating backlinks is promoting your content to gain visibility. Make sure it reaches as many people as possible.
This can be done through;
- Guest posting
- Email marketing
- Social media, etc.
#4. Reach out to other websites
In addition to promoting your content, reach out to website owners within your niche and ask them to link to your website.
This has to be done through cold outreach—and this article on Link Building Outreach Email Example: Crafting Compelling Messages for Effective Backlink Acquisition will help you
#5. Monitor your backlinks
You can use tools like the Legiit GMSD dashboard backlink history to track your backlink profile just to be sure that there are no links that can harm your website’s ranking.
How to get backlinks: What are the 10 strategies that work?
Getting high-quality links can be a bit challenging —sometimes—not all the time though.
Here are some of the tactics that work.
#1. Use the Broken Link Building Method
Broken link building is the process of finding broken links on other pages within your niche and reaching out to the web owner with resources to replace them.
This is one of the best strategies because both the owner of the website and the party linking will benefit (it is a win-win situation).
As you add value to the broken link, you also get a high-quality backlink.
#2. Participate in an online community
Participating actively in online communities such as group discussions and forums helps you build trust and relationships, which in turn earns you a backlink.
Remember to do it in a manner that respects your reputation and your business and does not go against Google’s spam policy.
#3. Reach Out to Journalists
It can also be referred to as Help A Reporter Out (HARO) where you respond to journalists who are looking for sources to cite in their articles and reports.
All you need to do is create an account with HARO to start getting pitches and queries from journalists through email. Then, respond to queries in niches in which you have expertise and get featured in their articles—and get a backlink in return.
#4. Internal link building
This involves choosing a page you want to build links to, finding contextual link building opportunities on other pages on your site, and adding the internal links.
This strategy can help you distribute PageRank within your website and help you direct and retain internet users on your website.
#5. Create visual content
This is one of the easiest ways to build backlinks because whenever someone shares or posts your infographics, images, or diagrams, they link back to you as the source.
#6.Skyscraper Technique
In this technique, you find link-worthy content, create a better version of the content, and ask people linking to high-ranking websites to link to you instead.
Some of the ways to improve the content are;
- Updating the outdated information
- Explaining things in detail
- You can also do other things, such as page design
#7.Guest blogging
This is one of the easiest ways to build links. It involves asking other authoritative and relevant websites to publish your content on their websites.
Once they agree, you will be able to link to your site from that article.
#8. Creating linkable assets
Create content that people want to link to; do your research to be sure to provide value-rich content.
Here are examples of linkable assets:
- Industry surveys
- Studies and research
- Online tools and calculators
- Awards and rankings
- How-to guides and tutorials
- Definitions and coined terms
- Infographics, GIFographics, and “Map-o-graphics”
#9. Unlinked mentions
Last but not least, we have unlinked mentions. This strategy involves finding mentions of your brand or product on other websites that don’t include a link and reaching out to the website owner to ask for a link.
The good thing about this strategy is that, if the webmaster or blogger is confident enough to mention you in their work, means they can easily link back to you.
Here is how to find unlinked brand mentions through an advanced Google search:
“Name of Brand” -site:yoursite.com -press -release -site:twitter.com -site:facebook.com.
Final thoughts
There you have it. Link building is an important part of your SEO strategy. That’s because backlinks serve as a ranking factor and also direct traffic from the internet to your website.
In this article, we’ve discussed some of the link building strategies and tactics that you can use to build high-quality backlinks that will increase your web dominance.
The good news is that they all work—get the one you are comfortable working with and start building links.
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