If you’re reading this, chances are you’re looking to improve your website’s visibility and rankings through link building. It goes without saying that backlinks, or links from other websites to your own, are one of the most impactful ranking factors in determining just how high your pages rank in Google search results. But how, precisely, do you build those links?
Before we dive in, let’s set the scene with a few fast highlights:
- Foundational links are crucial for new websites to establish credibility.
- Relationships with site owners play a substantial role in your chances of securing links.
- People link to useful, unique, or interesting content naturally.
- Links from authoritative and relevant websites hold the most value in ranking.
Understanding the Basics of Link Building
Think of backlinks as endorsements. Each time a website links to one of your pages, it is like telling Google that your content is useful and reliable. This actually emanates from Google’s PageRank algorithm, which considers links as “votes” of confidence.
In general, pages with more high-quality backlinks tend to rank higher in search results. Links are not the sole ranking factor, but they remain a cornerstone in SEO strategies because of their direct impact on visibility.
What Is Link Building?
Link building is a way of gaining hyperlinks from other websites back to your own. The strategic means to accomplish this are multifarious, but each generally aims at enhancing the perceived authority of the site for better rankings and, thus, increased organic traffic.
How to Build Links
Most link-building strategies allow one of four main courses of action:
- Adding Links: Manually placing your link on another website, such as through directories, forums, or social profiles.
- Asking for Links: Contacting webmasters and requesting a backlink.
- Buying Links: Trading in money, or other incentives, for links. Not recommended, due to the policies of Google.
- Earning Links: Creating quality content, which naturally acquires backlinks.
Let’s explore each category in depth.
Adding Links
Adding links is a process of manually placing your website’s URL on another site. Examples would include: the creation of profiles on social networking sites, submitting your site to business directories, and contributing to forums or Q&A sites.
While these links often have limited SEO value, they are still useful for building a foundation for your website. Foundational links signal to Google that your site exists and is active. For example, profiles on platforms like Twitter or Yelp can accumulate their own backlinks, which may indirectly benefit your site.
Asking for Links
This approach, often called link outreach, involves contacting relevant website owners and asking them to link to your content. Success depends on targeting the right prospects and presenting a compelling reason for them to link to your page.
Popular outreach strategies include:
- Guest Posting: Writing articles for other websites with a backlink to your site.
- Broken Link Building: Finding broken links on other websites and offering your link as a replacement.
- Unlinked Mentions: Converting mentions of your brand into links by contacting the website owner.
- Resource Pages: Request inclusion to featured lists or guides in your niche.
Buying Links
While buying backlinks is a standard practice in the SEO industry, it’s a very risky behavior. Google prohibits buying links and will likely punish your site once it detects this behavior. Besides that, most paid links are low-quality ones that don’t bring much value.
Earning Links
With link earning, links are created by generating such useful or unique content that others will want to link to naturally. It relies on the creation of linkable assets, for example:
- Industry surveys
- Data studies
- Infographics
- Comprehensive guides
- Tools or calculators
Promoting these assets to the right audience increases their visibility and likelihood of attracting backlinks.
What Constitutes a Valuable Link?
Not all links are born equal. There are several variables that make a link valuable, hence having an impact on your rankings:
- Authority: Links from authoritative websites-e.g., news outlets or well-respected blogs in their industries-carry more weight.
- Relevance: Links from sites or pages relevant to your niche are more valuable than ones from irrelevant topics.
- Anchor text: The text, visible and clickable from a link, which describes to Google what the destination page is about.
- Placement: Links within your body content are more important than links within sidebars or footers.
- Destination: Links to high-priority web pages on your site (such as product pages, informative content) do more to help accomplish your SEO goals.
Effective Strategies to Link-Build
Creating high-quality backlinks is crucial for establishing your website’s authority and improving your SEO score. Down the page, there are a number of effective link building tactics that I have been able to implement successfully and, together with them, examples of how you could implement them as well.
- Acquiring Links From Competitors
One of the effective and simplest methods of getting backlinks is by studying the link profile of your competitors. If a particular site links to one of your competitors, then, it is highly probable that they will also be willing to link to your site. It requires a strategic and carefully thought plan.
For example, with Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, you can determine which pages on your competitor’s site have the highest amount of backlinks. Target these pages in your outreach. Say, if a competitor has a popular blog post that has received various backlinks, consider writing about the same topic but in more than one blog post; or write about the same topic but in a more cove and figure adjusting it to your website. Once your work is complete and you’ve published the new material, contact the websites mentioning how your resource was improved.
Another useful sites like Moz Link Explorer or SEMrush Backlink Analytics allow you to do your own research and come up with a more focused link acquisition plan.
- Making Linkable Assets
I believe that it is possible to create high-value, linkable assets and it can also be a good way of generating backlinks. The content that can be in this category can include;
- Original Research: This offers a self-sustaining profit plan. Publish data reports or case studies on new topics. A good example is an SEO report for the year 2024 or any recent period which can be sought by people in the industry.
- Interactive Tools: I’m talking about calculators, quizzes and even graphics that are interactive as opposed to plain slides. “Backlink ROI Calculator” can easily maximize the chances of grabbing links from marketers and SEO professionals.
- Infographics: Nice visuals speak for themselves as they have high chances of getting circulated and linked back to the original source. Ensure them to be share friendly and easy to embed.
A case in point for a linkable asset would be the “Periodic Table of SEO Factors” developed by Search Engine Land. They were able to obtain hundreds of links coming from various other websites because they were able to create a visually appealing and informative asset.
When working on these assets it is also important that you target journalists, bloggers, and influencers in the industry. HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a perfect platform to find reporters who look for data and scenarios fitting to their stories.
- Targeted Outreach
Targeted outreach is a tailored and successful approach to getting backlinks. Tools like Ahref’s Content Explorer help to get websites that link to themes related to your industry. The important thing is that you concentrate on quality and not quantity.
In this situation, please ensure that your message contains the specifics and focuses on targeted outreach. For example:
- Provide the url for the specific piece that displays the article that says your content would be useful.
- Explain how your work improves or adds to the materials that have already been posted.
Suppose, for instance, that one site has a piece with the headline: “The Best Digital Marketing Strategies,” You have a well-explained article called “Tips for Content Optimization for Voice Search.” One can approach the site and recommend that the link be included in order to expand the readers’ understanding of the subject.
- Guest Posting
Guest posting is still a good approach to adding links while promoting yourself on the area of specialization. From my experience, the best way to success when guest posting is through provision of original and informative materials.
Look for authoritative websites in your niche that allow guest posting. GuestPostTracker or writer for us pages googling can assist you with finding guest posting opportunities.
Let’s say you are a fitness coach, for instance, pitching an article called “The Science Of Effective Weight Loss” to a reputable blog in health and wellness can not only give you a good backlink but also allows you to reach a relevant audience. Be sure to customize your article for the target audience of the host website as well as its editorial requirements.
- Content Promotion
Even the best content out there won’t attract backlinks if nobody is aware of it. It is necessary to maintain a marketing strategy for your content so as to put it out there.
Still there are some possible ways out that I would recommend:
- Social Media: Post your articles on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook and ask your audience to help share or mention them.
- Email Marketing: Market the articles to your subscriber list and call them to action to promote them in their networks.
- Paid Ads: Enhance your presence through Google Ads or sponsored social media messages. e.g while writing blogs, a post on “10 Easy SEO Tips” on LinkedIn could be a way to capture marketers who could be interested in linking to your page.
For a case study, look into how BuzzSumo markets their articles and tailor their campaigns so they target the right audience.
Best Tools for Link Building
Employing the right tools will make the link-building task easier and more effective. In that regard, here are some of the must-have tools:
Free Tools
- Ahrefs Free Backlink Checker: See the top 100 backlinks pointing to any URL or domain.
- Google Alerts: Receive notifications when your brand or keywords are mentioned anywhere online.
Paid Tools
- Ahrefs Site Explorer: Explore backlinks, competitors, and link prospects.
- Ahrefs Content Explorer: Discover link-able assets and outreach opportunities.
- Pitchbox/BuzzStream: Manage email outreach campaigns.
- Hunter.io: Find outreach target’s contact information.
Final Thoughts: Building Links That Matter
Link building is more of an art than it is a science. Although having technical knowledge and tools is great, the core essence of successful link building in providing real value to others. Give your concentration on creating content that will resonate with your audience, building relationships, and promoting your work in effective ways.
With a strategic approach and consistent effort, you’ll not only improve your rankings but also strengthen your website’s authority in the eyes of both search engines and users.