Matt Cutts, who used to head Google’s Webspam Team, once said link building is sweat plus creativity. This phrase quite accurately describes the ethos of link building strategy.
Link building is crucial to your SEO strategy. It is also among the challenging ones to get right.
It is crucial because this is the way Google gets to know you. It understands you are a reliable source when other websites with high domain authority vouch for you. To rank higher in Search Engine Page Results (SERP), you must bring your A-game for link building.
What is Link Building?
Link building is an SEO strategy to feature your brand on other sites linking back to you. It helps you build a digital repository of websites that vouch for you by either featuring you or providing backlinks.
There are many ways to create a successful link building campaign. Some popular ways are writing blog posts, using broken links, leveraging social media, and creating linkable digital assets.
Why is Link Building Important?
Google will feature your website on the first page if you have the correct number and quality of backlinks. This result translates to users clicking on your website link. Most searchers will not go past the first page. Hence link building is essential for visibility on organic search engines.
91% of the web pages do not get any organic traffic. Do you know why?
If you guessed the lack of link-building efforts, you are correct.
Backlinks are the friends from whom you are likely to take restaurant recommendations. Likewise, Google will also listen to recommendations from other websites about you.
Imagine an employee outside a cafe is screaming, “pick us, choose us!”. At the same time, your friend says that let’s go to this place I tried last weekend.
You will most likely listen to your friend over a random shouting stranger.
Similarly, you can talk about yourself all you want on your website. But, unless someone else does it too, your voice is going into the void.
That is why you must build a profound link building strategy. It increases your domain authority, ranking, trust from customers, and organic traffic.
Link Building Strategies
Now you know link building is essential, let’s understand how to achieve this.
It is not an easy feat. 51% of marketers believe it can take around one to three months to see results from link building.
It is also important to remember to stay within Google’s webmaster guidelines. If you aren’t staying within this set of rules, you can get penalised for trying to rig the game.
SEO isn’t about gaming the system anymore; it’s about learning how to play by the rules. — Jordan Teicher.
We will address this a little later. But for now, let’s understand how to play by the rules and stay ahead.
Here are 10 Link Building Strategies for You
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Create Content That Matters
Every marketer will always tell you – Content is imperative to everything in marketing. Link building is no different.
Creating content that adds value to users will always give you good results. However, sometimes this intention gets muddled. Brands tend to fixate on Google crawlers and write to rank rather than writing to add value.
This practice is where you can be different. The brands that create blog posts generate 97% more inbound links and receive 53% more visitors than brands that don’t.
Here is some more data for you. Backlinks and content are among the leading factors for ranking on Google.
So what kind of content should you create?
The intention is to build content that makes people want to quote you, refer to you as a resource and share your content. Your content has to provide helpful information, solve a problem, address an issue, and educate the user or enable their business.
Making posts that are crafted as lists make content more consumable. They provide a sea of information.
You could also create guides that do a deep dive on topics. They can be a treasure trove of information if you write well-researched long-form articles. What’s more interesting is that long content also improves Google rankings.
You will also receive more natural editorial links when the content material is in-depth.
Skyscraper Technique
As we talk about content, you should try the skyscraper technique.
Firstly, you look up what is written for the keyword you want to rank. Understand what is written about this topic.
Find gaps.
How would you make it more informative if you had to write this content resource?
Suppose someone has written 10 ways to train your dog. See how you could improve it. Look up ways you can write a more detailed version.
You could write 20 ways to train your dog and include exciting videos and photos to enhance the quality of your blog. This article gives you a fair chance at ranking.
Your content efforts can get organic traffic based on their quality. But another technique that can help further your efforts is outreach.
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Email Outreach
Outreach is a technique used to get others to link to your content resource on their page.
Before the Google Penguin update, you could go on asking the XYZ website owner to feature your blog post. It didn’t matter whether they are good domain authority sites, are relevant links pointing to your brand or even if your content is adding value.
All that changed after this update. Today, quality matters more than quantity.
So your email outreach efforts should be niche and with intention beyond a backlink.
So you want people to feature your content in their blog posts or share your content. Achieve this by writing personalised emails, providing insights, having the intention, and being appreciative of their content.
Personalised subject lines even boost response rates by 30.5%!
Tell them how your content enhances their page too. It has to be a two-way street. Likewise, you can also share your content with industry experts as a “Hey, check this out and let me know what you think” kind of email. If they share it, there is another link in your repository.
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Feature Reliable Links for Resource Pages
Resource pages are long-form features that tell the consumer of all the websites catering to a specific need. These are pages that help you and other websites.
As you can see in this survey by Moz, resource pages are second to content publication
When you create content and ask others to show some love towards it, you may or may not get the success you hoped for. Create a post relevant to your industry. If you are an eCommerce site, you could write a blog on the Top 20 Shipping Companies.
With this, you could approach these 20 companies and tell them you appreciate their work. Unlike the previous section, you have already provided a platform for them on your website.
When these companies share this feature, you will get more clicks and backlinks.
Also, always maintain a natural backlink profile. Your links have to be a combination of nofollow links and do-follow links.
A nofollow link tells Google not to count them for your page rank, but the associated link may be necessary to your content. Whereas in do-follow links, you want to pass your page authority.
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Use Testimonials in Your Niche
I do not want a well-written testimonial about my product – said no one ever.
Everyone loves to hear good things about their product and services. That is why using testimonials for your link building strategy is a brilliant yet underrated strategy.
While email outreach and building pages are high effort techniques that yield outstanding results, this is a relatively low effort initiative but can add to your bank of backlinks.
To do this, understand who you can write a testimonial for? It has to be a brand you have used and trust. You cannot write one for the sake of a link.
If you are running a content marketing agency, you can review hosting providers, video creates, SEO strategists, etc. Pick one and reach out to them, asking if they would like you to write a testimonial for them.
Make sure they will provide you with appropriate links too.
Once you get the go-ahead, craft a testimonial. Make sure it is informative and talks about the problem the brand solved for you – that’s what a good testimonial should do.
Here are some excellent examples where the testimonial is relevant and provides backlinks.
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Guest Blogging
This one is a little more controversial than the others. There has been a lot of back and forth over the effectiveness of guest blogging with today’s Google algorithm. However, backed by several marketers and their practical opinion, it is here to stay.
With a guest post, you have to be mindful of the brand you are collaborating with. They need to be relevant to your domain. It cannot be repeated content that barely adds any value.
Instead, come up with a collaborative approach. Create case studies and research together. Produce high-quality content. Make your guest blogging a column that readers can look forward to.
Authoritative and authentic content will be received well by readers and SERPs.
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Use Competitor Backlink Profile
If your competitors with better search rankings already have established backlink profiles, then why not use that?
Your competitors probably have link building strategies that you want. Keep a close eye on what they are doing and use it to your advantage.
As much as it sounds like you are a spy, this will get you more links.
Using tools like Ubersuggest and Backlink Gap, you can analyse which websites link back to them.
Then understand which websites would you like to be associated with. You have a list of websites you can reach out to provide backlinks to you!
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Reclaim Your Links
When you create valuable content, people will link back to you. However, it is vital to make sure they are pointing toward the correct links.
Revisit Your Old Links
Maybe you have been creating content for a while now. You may have deleted some of your old web pages and content source. Then what happens to the external sources that have linked them to such web pages?
Conduct a search on your Google Analytics for 404 pages and look at how many links are broken. If you can fix them, do it! If not, look into who is providing backlinks using it.
Reach out to them, make them aware of this situation and provide alternate links they could use instead.
Link to Your Digital Assets
Maybe you created a fantastic infographic about myths and facts about building links. Now whenever someone uses it, they may or may not have credited you with an appropriate link. How will the search engine know you are the one they are talking about?
To fix this, you must conduct a reverse google images search and look at the results. If you think someone has missed proper attribution, you can reach out to them and ask them to make this right.
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Leverage Social Media
Social media has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade. It can even be an asset for your link profile.
This strategy doesn’t stop with your posting X times a week. For effective link building strategies, you have to constantly engage and build a community.
Create posts that promote engagement. Interact with comments and shares.
Use social listening tools to know whenever your brand is mentioned and take appropriate actions.
You could also create collaborative social media strategies with your brand partners and quickly acquire a backlink. Or you could take the initiative to mention relevant websites. There is a high chance they will look at it and engage with you.
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Broken Link Building
You can create as much as you can, and it will be an ongoing process. This link building work is a constant process of creating and outreaching. However, another simple way is to get your internal links out on relevant sites.
Use the broken links!
Use an SEO tool to help you check the broken links in a website. Find an internal link to help the web page replace the existing broken link with yours.
You can achieve this manually as well. Type the search query for your relevant result.
For example, you have good social media resources on your website. Then look for websites that have made such articles before.
Here is a search result we tried for you.
Google the search query – Social media intitle:resources
We got these resources on the first page. There is a specific one that says 22 social media resources. Let’s check it out.
For this exercise, let’s try Ahref’s broken link checker.
And the result…
And in three simple steps, we found a link that is broken.
If you have a good guide about sponsorship marketing, you can pitch it to the relevant website and hope they give you a link!
This broken link building process can help you get a backlink and help the website fix a broken link.
You could use a simple email outreach technique to do this well. Write an email to let the prospectives know about this situation and make your link as added information.
Your intention may be to remove the broken backlinks and get one for yourself. However, your email has to be personalised and of service to them.
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Make Visual Content
Writing 5000-word guides are a beneficial and great way to build links. However, a lot of consumers prefer more visually appealing content. They are more consumable.
They can be infographics about data, differences, benefits, stories – literally anything.
With a talented graphics team, you can conceptualise them and create something informative and easy on the eyes.
If your infographic is valuable enough, people will repurpose them in a blog post. This way, you get natural quality links.
53% of SEO specialists use infographics to gain backlinks.
Articles with infographics in them gain 178% more links!
But, you don’t have to stop at this. Create gifographics! You can take it one step further and use GIFs to create more engagement and even go viral!
If you consider creating visual assets more seriously, video content is another excellent option. It has great engagement rates and is more consumable.
If you have the budget and resources for videos, go for it!
These are great numbers for you to rely on and start your video marketing strategy for link building.
Get Creative
There are many technical and strategic ways to approach creating content and building backlinks. However, sometimes having a little bit of fun and being creative can also generate a lot of buzz around your content.
Use Pirate Day, April Fools’ Day, and other such holidays to create content that makes consumers smile and share.
Imbibe creatives that stand out on your website. Here are some examples:
The website Waitbutwhy does a fun job with this. The website uses a creative stick figure to narrate content.
Then again, you can’t always use some concepts that are not in line with your brand, but you can create more visually appealing content.
What Kind of Link Building Should You Not Do?
Link building strategies can be a game-changer for your SEO efforts. But, it is also essential to know what you probably shouldn’t do.
Spammy Links
Do not try to get backlinks from websites filled with spammy links. They are often websites that cater specifically to this demand, and you want to stay away. They also often have low domain authority.
Low-Quality Links
Do not try guest posting where your content and brand are not relevant. This practice will show you are there solely for the backlink and not add any value.
Link Exchange
Do not get into an exchange scenario where you provide a backlink in return for yours. Google is smart enough to understand such situations. Of course, the case is different if you have an existing relationship with the website and site owner.
But, if your association is purely for this purpose, reconsider it.
Black Hat SEO
White Hat SEO has intelligent techniques, whereas Black Hat SEO can get you into trouble. Engaging in activities like using invisible texts on your web pages, stuffing keywords, paid links, spammy comments, etc. These can get you penalised by Google, especially after the Penguin update.
Marketers and site owners complained about the impact of Penguin updates. They mentioned in some forums how their impressions drastically reduced, and traffic was low when analysed on Google Analytics.
Sometimes, you may not have engaged in severe Black Hat SEO activities. But tried activities like asking guest posts to have an exact match anchor text. Since Google prefers you have a variety of texts linking back to you, this would be counterproductive. Stay away from this link building tactic.
Concluding the Link Building Strategies
Here were some of our favourite link building strategies. You can choose to use some or all of them.
Making a guest post, creating a resource page, getting editorial links, building high-quality links, and more can be excellent link building tactics in your SEO strategy.
However, patience is an essential quality for you to have with any strategy.
“Short cuts make long delays” – J.R.R Tolkien.
This quote is appropriate for Search Engine Optimisation as well. Short cuts and cheap techniques will land you in trouble.
On the other hand, understanding your target audience, creating helpful content and playing the long game will eventually yield results. That is guaranteed.
Leverage the right strategies for success in link-building, and see how your organic traffic will soar!
Now that you have all this information, good luck and happy link building.
