The process of receiving more high-quality backlinks is called link building. Backlinks are other websites linking to pages on your own website. The process is undertaken to boost the “authority” of your pages from Google’s perspective. Higher-quality backlinks results in better ranking in SEO and also brings back more traffic.
The basis of your link building strategies is easily summarized in two statements-
- Create something outstanding, attention worthy and notable. Something worthy will obviously get a link.
- Present it to people who own websites so they can link back to yours.
With a conceptual approach, link building strategies fall into one of the four below categories:
- Add- When you can manually add links to websites, that’s called “adding” a link. But, these links have maintained a very low value as per Google.
- Asking for links- you can reach out to the owners of websites to ask for a link. While reaching out, answer why they should give you a link and make it compelling. Reality might hit hard, but having credibility and authority in your space will help.
- Buying links- keep this as the last option, if possible. These links are a waste of money, as there are many bad links that are not even a bit impactful.
- Earning links- Earning here refers to when people link to your website’s pages without you asking them. It is understandable that this only takes place if your page is of good quality and notable.
What is a quality backlink?
Quality backlinks come from websites that are highly trusted by both users and search engines. These backlinks have three characteristics in common –
- Natural occurrence within the context of the page.
- Reputable referring domain.
- Relevance of referring page to the link destination.
Choosing link building strategies can get you confused. So, to get through that confusion, pick three favorite link building strategies and do the one that is easy and quick.
Take advantage of Testimonial in your Niche-
By giving positive testimonials for products or services you can have your testimonial published with a backlink. Here is how you can build a number of external links with testimonials:
- Create a target list to find websites with products/services you can provide testimonials for.
- Pitching the right person, you can find this person either by asking or through testimonial submission forms.
- Sending your testimonial pitch, pitch them with the idea before starting the creation process.
- Writing the ideal testimonial, which is a pretty straight-forward task.
Sponsor Events-
Does not matter if the event is local, national or international, they are all great for link building. There are two ways you can do this:
First, by hosting an event. Create your own event and then you can have it advertised on third-party event sites.
Secondly, by sponsoring an event. Sponsors are often linked by the hosts. To find events you can sponsor, you can use sites like – MeetUp, Events.org.
Strategic Guest Blogging-
The guest post works really well for link building as marketing focuses on building target audience. You create a quality piece of content, add links directed towards your site and get that piece published in another site. Precisely, there are five steps involved-
- Finding websites that will publish your piece of content.
- Checking their domain authority
- Reaching out to the site manager and check if they are interested in your pitch
- Creating an outstanding guest post content
- Building relationships with the blog managers
Use Internal Link Building-
Internal link building gives you complete control over where you place your links. When you place a link on one web page and that links to another web page of the same domain. This is called an Internal link.
Internal links are valuable because they immensely help your SEO by helping Google discover new height quality content.
Copy your Competitors best links-
Keep an eye on your competitors and steal their best backlinks. Start by making a list of your competitors, with relevant factors in mind. Then, analyze their backlinks and thereafter export the list of URLs you found for every competitor.
There are many more strategies that we haven’t discussed in this article, but you can find them on the internet.
Link building is necessary because Google thinks of it as “votes”. These votes help in the identification of what ranking a page deserves in the search engine. According to the ground rules, pages with more backlinks get a higher ranking. The quality backlinks also tend to generate more search traffic from Google.
If even after having lots of links to your page you still rank lower in the search engine, then do make sure to check other factors.
If you found the above article knowledgeable, do check out this one as well A Smart Checklist for your SEO Audit
