If you’re familiar with SEO, you’ll know that getting quality backlinks to your website is a crucial part of growing your domain and page rankings. When other websites with high domain authority link back to your websites’ content, Search Engines like Google perceive that your content may be valuable and will therefore increase your domain authority score resulting in a higher SEO ranking. Contrarily, if nobody links back to your website, Google figures your website shouldn’t be highly rated because nobody is talking about you. Think of it like a popularity contest, which it most certainly is.
Getting as many quality backlinks as you can is essential to building your websites’ search engine ranking; however, a vital part of this is also ensuring that your websites’ backlinks come from reputable sources. Backlinks from reputable sources with high domain authority will have a more significant effect in boosting your search engine ranking, whereas getting backlinks from sources that are not viewed as reputable or have very low domain authority could actually damage your own domain authority ranking.
It is also important to make sure that the links you are receiving are attributed properly so that a search engine like Google will recognize it as a valid backlink. Links can be given different attributes which affect the way Google indexes the page. The main attributes you need to keep in mind are the “dofollow”, “nofollow”, sponsored, and UGC links. However, when it comes to gaining backlinks, the most important type of link you should be looking for is a link with a “dofollow” attribute.
If a link is referred to as a “dofollow” link, it means that there are no attributes preventing it from being considered with PageRank and that it should therefore be considered by Google in determining your webpage’s ranking. Your goal should be for your website to contain a high percentage of “dofollow” backlinks pointing to your web pages, as long as they come from quality sources. (Learn more about the difference between ‘follow’ and ‘no-follow’ links in our article The difference between Follow & NoFollow Backlinks).
Gaining quality backlinks from reputable web pages can seem like a challenging task. However, with the right dedication of time, effort, tools and strategies you can be well on your way to gaining backlinks in no time.
If you’re looking for effective ways to gain quality backlinks for your website, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve laid out nine effective ways that you can start creating and earning quality backlinks for your website. Let’s get into it!
Creating High-Quality Content is Key
First and foremost, when trying to receive backlinks to your website from someone else’s website, it is essential to make sure that your content is something that is of interest and of value for them to point to. After all, you can’t expect to get backlinks to your content if it is not something that others will see value in.
The amount of daily produced and published content online is enormous, and for the most part, unfortunately, most of it gets ignored. In terms of getting backlinks, BuzzSumo produced a study that found that 75% of all online content gets zero links. Despite this concerning fact, they also found that some types of content are proven to generate more links than others. The more successful content formats include list-posts, quizzes, “why” posts, “how-to” posts, infographics, videos and ultimate guides. With this in mind, consider creating these types of content pieces in order to gain backlinks more easily as well as to educate and please your audience.
When your website is consistently creating high-quality content, it will make it easier for you to effectively use the strategies within this article. It may even help get your website backlinks without having to put in the additional effort of manual outreach. These types of backlinks are known as earned or organic backlinks, which occur when people discover your content through search engines, social media, or word of mouth and then choose to link back to your page without you needing to ask. You can improve your chances of earning more organic backlinks like these by creating truly valuable content that people will want to link to from their websites. Therefore it’s important to dedicate adequate time and effort to your content creation process. However, don’t bank on a significant amount of organic backlinks coming to your website unless you have a significant following. For best results, make sure that you are consistently putting in the extra effort into building manual backlinks for your business.
Here are 9 strategies that you can start using to build quality backlinks for your website today:
- Outreach to Quality Websites
Outreach is one of the main ways to earn quality backlinks for your website. Once your content is ready to be shared, you want to be reaching out to a variety of websites in your niche that will appeal to the subject of the page or content that you are trying to get them to link to. Send them a personalized and straightforward email complimenting their work and requesting for them to link to your page within a part of their websites’ content.
Ahead of reaching out to third-party websites, you’ll want to make sure that you do your research to find websites that will most benefit your own website. Your goal is to get backlinks from websites with high domain (or website) authority. However, this does not mean that you should only reach out to the websites that feature at the top of your search results. A variety of ranked sources is always good to have and you never know, those lower ranking websites might soon become higher ranking ones, especially if they are newer websites.
There are lots of tools out there to help determine if backlinks from certain websites will be beneficial for your website. An example tool is Ahrefs’ free Website Authority Checker which allows you to see the authority ranking of certain websites that you don’t own.
- Become a Source for a Reporter
Backlinks from reputable news sources are very valuable. Try building quality backlinks for your website by featuring in a journalist’s article as an expert in your field or helping them find missing information. To find journalists looking for help, sign up as a source for free with news tips websites such as the Help a Reporter Out (HARO) website.
Websites like HARO will connect you daily through emails with reporters seeking information. Some of the top media outlets using HARO are renowned companies like the New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Globe and Mail, Refinery 29 and many more. Not all the requests will fit your work, however, once you find one that fits your line of work and expertise, you can reply and start helping out. With this system, the reporter will be receiving the information they had been searching for, and in return, your brand will be getting featured in a quality piece of work and receiving a highly rated backlink to your website. It’s a win-win system you need to be taking advantage of.
Additionally, building relationships with journalists and reporters is generally good practice. It will help you to continue receiving backlinks and growing your online presence over time. The next time a reporter you have worked with needs help with a piece, they are more likely to come directly to you, especially if they had a positive experience working with you.
- Do Some Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is one of the oldest link-building tactics in the book and is still a great way to build backlinks to your website. The strategy is simple:
- You write an article for another website in your niche.
- They publish it.
- In return, they link to your website from that article, which is posted to their website.
Of course, you can always reach out to websites that advertise that they accept guest blogging, but everyone is doing that, and those prospects get tons of guest post pitches daily. It’s unlikely that they will accept your request right away, or ever unless you really stand out.
Instead, to start with, search for websites that don’t advertise the fact that they accept guest posts. Find one relevant to your industry and expertise, then pitch to them an idea you could write for them. Make sure you do your research and that your message is personalized and original so that you stand out from the crowd to grab their attention.
Many highly rated sites don’t advertise the fact that they accept guest posts anywhere on their site. However, if someone reaches out to them with a well-written creative idea that fits well alongside their existing content, they’ll almost always accept it.
A great alternative guest blogging strategy is that instead of pitching to write a brand new piece of content for another site, pitch that you could revamp or update one of their existing pieces of content that have out-of-date information. Ideally, this is a piece of theirs that might have previously received a lot of traction and still receives a decent amount of views. Getting your name and website associated with an existing piece after completing a refresh can be an easy way to gain an additional backlink.
- Leverage your Social Media and Online Presence
Although it is seen as a controversial subject with varied opinions, using your social media presence to create backlinks for your business can still be a great tactic. Backlinks created on social media platforms are not pointless as some might believe, in fact, they are an effective way for your website to start easily creating backlinks. The trick is they need to be done carefully.
Leveraging your social media presence to create backlinks can be tricky to navigate as you want to ensure that the links you are creating are not seen as being “spammy” by Google. This strategy is most effective when your business has a relevant social media profile in which you have a strong following and that you post regularly. These factors will signal to Google that the social profile has authority and is, therefore, a reliable source for your business to have a backlink from.
Leveraging your social media presence to create backlinks can include doing things as simple as adding a link to your website in the bio of your social media platforms, inserting links to your articles or website in your posts, adding links to your page’s About Tab, your profile and cover photo descriptions and more.
Things you should be avoiding are posting links in the comments section of social media posts or overusing links in your content as this is viewed as spammy by Google, and will not bring any value to your website. In fact, it might tarnish your SEO ranking.
- Appear as a Guest on Podcasts
Podcasts have become a very popular form of media that people regularly consume and therefore, appearing on one as a guest can be hugely beneficial for multiple reasons. Not only does appearing as a guest on a podcast help get your brand out there, but it can also be a great way to gain backlinks to your website. It will also help with establishing yourself and your brand as credible experts in your field or niche.
When you feature as a guest on a podcast, there are many opportunities for backlinks to your content. The creator can link to you and your brand within the description of the podcast piece as well as through their social media platforms when they promote it. Going even further, if they create a blog post on their website associated with the podcast, they can link to your website from there as well.
If you’re new to podcasts and this is a strategy that you would like to implement to gain backlinks to your website, it’s best to start small with relatively new podcasts and work your way up to being a guest on a podcast with a higher listener rate. Although more prominent podcasts will likely create stronger rated backlinks, you want to make sure that you are up to par with the standards of highly rated podcasts as a guest speaker. You’ll want to ensure that you know what you’re talking about and that your expertise is communicated clearly, concisely and with confidence. To do so, practice with smaller podcasts. Get more comfortable and confident with the setting, master your topics of discussion, and ensure that the content you are providing is as great as the backlinks you will be receiving.
- Get your Business Featured in Link Roundups & Directories
Utilizing link roundups and directories can be a great strategy for getting quality backlinks to your website. If you don’t know what a link roundup is, simply put, they are curated lists of the best content in a particular industry. This type of platform is ideal for anyone building links because the sole purpose of these pages is to link out to other websites.
To utilize these content platforms, you need to start by finding the best web pages that do roundups in your industry. Roundups can be as simple as gift guides or more complicated like an educational (.edu) website resource page. Once you’ve found a platform that would be a good fit for your content type, it’s time to pitch your content through outreach, as we previously discussed.
From there, if the website accepts to include your content into their link roundup, you’ll have successfully created a backlink. Avoid only reaching out to one roundup list. Instead, reach out to multiple websites. After all, some might accept while others might decline, and it’s best to have multiple opportunities.
As mentioned, educational (.edu) websites are also known for having link roundup resource pages for their staff or students to access. In Google’s rankings, .edu pages are viewed as having some of the highest relevance and quality for their users. Getting a link from one of these pages is ideal as it can boost your ranking significantly compared to other websites. However, this is a much harder process to achieve as educational websites don’t just link to anyone. You’ll need to make sure that the content you are pitching to them is well researched, very well written, accurate, current, and something that fits perfectly into the industry or subject resource page where you’re asking to be featured.
In addition to being an effective way to create backlinks for your business, having your business included in link roundups or directories is also a great way to get attention for your business and build credibility for it within your industry.
- Utilize Broken Link Building
This backlink strategy is a favourite among many as it’s relatively simple to do and can be done quickly purposely or in passing. With broken link building, instead of just directly asking for your content to be linked to another company’s website, you are adding value to their website by pointing out that they have a broken link, while also asking them to link to your content instead of the broken link. It’s a win-win.
First, start by using a tool like “check my links” with Google Chrome to find broken links. Add it to your Google Chrome browser for free and let it help you find broken links on any page that you enter. Find a site where you want your content to be linked from and see if they have any broken links that your content can fill. Once you’ve found broken links, you can try to fill them with your content through outreach. Reach out to the website owner and let them know that they have a broken link while also mentioning that your content could be a good replacement.
Not only is this strategy great for gaining backlinks for your website, but it also helps with creating relationships for future backlink requests that you might have. As you’ve now offered value to the website owner or content creator, they will appreciate your help and in return, may be open to helping you when you reach out to them again in the future.
Overall, it can be quite difficult to find a large number of broken links at once but if you stick to searching regularly, you can over time build a nice amount of backlinks for your site.
- Correct Unlinked Mentions
If you’re a startup or a small business without much online presence, this tactic might not work for you as other web pages are probably not mentioning you in their content just yet. However, as a larger website or brand that does get mentions from other websites, a great way to get backlinks is to make sure that they link back to your content whenever you are mentioned. It’s simple, manually reach out via email or even social media, asking them if they could add a link to your content where you were mentioned in their content.
These unlinked mentions can be found and corrected by searching for your business’s name in search engines and reaching out to the authors of the content anytime you see your brand come up without a link associated with it.
- Submit your Brand for Awards
Last but not least, every industry has a list of available awards for companies to apply to or submit themselves for consideration. Within the descriptions of these awards, nominated and winning brands will often be mentioned, and their websites will be linked. Therefore, as a part of your online presence management, this should be something your business is keeping up with and ensuring to be a part of.
It can be challenging to win awards, and it might take some extra time and effort compared to some of the other tactics mentioned in this piece. However, it is a great way to earn high-quality backlinks while also getting your brand out there for potential clients to see. In addition, if your brand can rank highly in these awards, you will also be gaining credibility and building a great reputation in your industry.
Need Help with Building Backlinks for your Webpage? We at Admiral Creative are here to help! Our team of experts are ready to help you implement a data-driven approach to SEO and Link Building so that your business can work towards earning top Google search rankings. Contact us today!
