In the past, link building was primarily concerned with quantity rather than quality.
Nowadays, it’s a different game to establish links!
If you're developing a link-building strategy, keep in mind that it won't happen overnight. It's a slow and steady process—at least, if you do it correctly.
Not everyone has a huge list of industry contacts to help improve their content right away. However, they'll be critical to increasing backlinks, so it is advisable to have them.
Rather than regurgitating top random techniques, we'll go through 9 of the most successful link-building tactics from expert marketers who used them and confirmed that they worked for them.
What Is The Definition Of A Link-Building Strategy?
The process by which webmasters accumulate references from other websites that link back to their own material is known as link building. One of Google's most essential ranking signals is a high backlink profile—links from other websites to one's own content.
The more people who link to your site, the more social proof there is that it is useful. While you can obtain backlinks organically by producing good content, you can also utilize tactics to build them on purpose.
What Impact Does Blogging Have on Link-Building Strategies?
The quality and authority of the pages where you generate links are important factors in deciding how high you'll rank in search engine results. This is where blogging comes in. When you blog regularly, you'll obtain 434 percent more indexed pages and 97 percent more inbound links.
There are other proven strategies to build the best links and improve your rating in the SERPs besides blogging.
Why Is Link Building One of The Most Vexing Aspects Of SEO?
Mostly because it's difficult to perform at scale since it necessitates something that isn't scalable: relationship building.
Building backlinks isn't the most enjoyable aspect of SEO. However, it is an important part of SEO best practices. Fortunately, it's not as difficult as you may believe; just read the strategies below.
Link-Building Strategies
1. Compile Data/Statistics About the Industry
Building quality backlinks is as simple as creating a center of the most important statistics in your market. Stats are always on the minds of content providers. They enjoy creating data-driven content, and they require data to do so. It helps content creators cut down on research time if you can curate the stats on one page.
Even when referring secondary sources, having a selected list of clear and to-the-point industry facts will suffice. These articles serve as resource pages for both content providers and searchers.
The Founder of Kingspoint, Steven Macdonald, claims that by employing this link-building strategy, he has been able to “land links from TechCrunch, Intercom, Forbes, Shopify and Mailchimp. I rank number one for all "Industry" statistics posts I've published. I've earned 6,000+ backlinks over the course of 3-4 years using this tactic (to the stats blog posts)”
2. Strategic Guest Blogging
Is guest blogging a thing of the past? Both, yes and no.
The traditional method of mass guest posting just for the sake of gaining links is no longer viable. To gain a backlink, you don't want to post an article on a site that isn't relevant to your niche and has no authority.
That kind of guest posting isn't going to cut it. The search engines are sophisticated, and they can tell if you're not guest posting for the purpose of adding value.
You must be strategic and sincere if you want to gain the benefits of guest writing. Make sure you're writing something unique for the other site (like a case study) and that it's relevant, authoritative, and appealing to your target audience.
You'll reap the benefits of higher rankings, increased traffic and qualified leads if you guest blog selectively.
"Guest blogging continues to work well for us. The hitch is that deploying it in 2021 will require a major boost in job quality. So, if you put yourself in the receiver's shoes, you'll realize that templatized outreach is ineffective. Even if you receive a nice response, it will be from a subpar website. This is why using personalized email outreach is so important.”
Fortis Agency CEO Davor Bometar
3. Add value to the content and adhere to SEO best practices
In order to create quality results, guest writing for a piece of content necessitates study, time, and work. The key is to demonstrate that you are familiar with the blog, care about their audience and brand, and generate something useful.
Irina Kvashali of amoCRM explained how she used a swap—an exchange of articles between multiple platforms to enhance referral traffic—to make guest blogging work for her organization.
“For other websites, we've been spending a lot of effort into producing well-written articles. If the owner approves, we can use this to place a link to our blog. This is, in my opinion, one of the most powerful SEO strategies.”
There Are Three Primary Factors That Contribute To The Effectiveness:
• Backlinks that are Relevant
When you publish content, you can include links to related websites, including your own, to increase traffic. Additionally, because these are high-quality contextual connections, your own website will rank higher on Google.
• Backlinks for Free
“We don't believe in purchased backlinks,” Irina says. Not only because Google can penalize you for using these "black-hat" have techniques by lowering your website’s authority, but also because you never know how long will these backlinks lasted. You may get a lot of backlinks for free by using the guest posting technique.”
• Backlink Development that is Healthy
Another reason that guest posting is one of the most efficient SEO tactics is that it allows you to build a healthy backlink portfolio over time, despite the fact that it demands a lot of patience.
By choosing well-trusted websites with high domain authority, you won’t be jeopardizing your SEO rating and sending it downhill.
4. Associating the Correct Content with the Correct Links/Websites
Which websites are most likely to link to your original content? You may feel compelled to email everything you've written to every site on your list, but this will almost certainly reduce the number of people who link to your work. People don't have time to read five blog posts and choose their favorite.
High-quality content necessitates high-quality links. This might be blog entries, infographics, unique insights, or any other type of material.
Successful Example
Usman Akram of Unlayer.com and Linkbuilder.io leveraged guest blogging to grow organic traffic by 500 percent.
This Method Increased Rankings For Keywords In The Targeted Country:
- Topical relevance to your website influences how he pitches sites.
- The ratio of incoming to outgoing links.
- A high-quality backlink profile.
- The amount of traffic that comes from organic search.
- The keywords for which the website is ranked.
5. Develop and Disseminate Infographics
Infographics are still effective till today and can be an important part of your link-building strategy.
The benefit of infographics is that they will continue to drive organic traffic to your blog and earn you great links without you having to ask for them.
Infographics generate 178 percent more links, according to several researches. As a result, making infographics is a link-building strategy worth embedding.
6. Make it Personal
Spammy emails are a pain for both the sender and the recipient.
Each encounter must have a human element in order to produce quality results.
“In order to develop a long-term engagement with content partners, it's vital to lighten up your conversations,” says Iris De Geest of Survey Anywhere.
She can easily develop 8 backlinks every week with this method, and her Ahrefs domain rating continues to grow.
Also, if you send out 100 emails each day, having an email signature with a link back to your website can bring in an extra 50+ visitors every month. It's not much, but it's completely free.
7. Stay Active on Social Media
Share fresh posts, photographs, and updates to become more active. By publishing it in more places on social media, you may make it easier for your fans to find what they want to see.
Even if you're new to social media, you may quickly increase engagement by being more active. As a result, more individuals will be exposed to your brand and site, and they will be more likely to share your finest pieces with their target audience.
What is the best way to accomplish this?
Send a few tweets to folks who might be interested in your post. Facebook is another wonderful approach to get your articles seen; it also allows you to market your material and reach out to new individuals. You're guaranteed to succeed and receive more links if people like, share, and discuss your work on social media.
8. Make Use of Resource Links From Reputable Websites
It's time to begin utilizing resource links from reputable websites. A resource is similar to a guide that you write or compile for your target market.
Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Jeff Bullas, Social Media Examiner, and Copyblogger all have resource pages that you may use as you create yours.
Visitors will be able to find what they're seeking more easily if a major site in your sector has prepared a list of blogs in your industry.
An example of post: Here Are 25 Copywriting Blogs That Will Help You Make More Money.
A marketing team can benefit greatly from such a resource. After you've finished writing it, use email outreach to get links. Send a simple email to everyone whose blog you included in your list.
Example of a Successful Case:
Neil Patel once stated that he emailed 30 bloggers who were featured in a resource post. Within 10 days, twelve of them had linked to his resource page, and there has been social interaction.
Because you've already linked to them, email outreach works better than the standard broken link or link request email.
9. Skyscraper Technique
According to AbdulGaniy Shehu, founder and lead content strategist at Your Content Mart, this strategy resulted in a 36 percent increase in organic traffic month over month. His Skyscraper page also ranks for over 800 organic keywords and receives about 3300 visitors each month, with a 20% conversion rate. So, how do you do it yourself?
Step 1: Examine the Best-Performing SERP Content
Analyze the top-ranking pages in the Search Engine Result Sites (SERPs) to get a clear picture of the search intent and what the current ranking pages are doing. This aids in determining the search intent, the type of material people are reading in relation to the keyword, what the current ranked pages are doing well and where they are falling short, and so on.
Step 2: Create a Content Outline Based on SERPs
Create a SERP-based outline because it is based on science and research rather than speculation.
Of course, if a page ranks highly on Google for a specific keyword, it indicates that they are doing something right. Identify the primary headings that appear in all of the SERP results. This also aids different members of your team in distinguishing the most significant parts from the completed research, such as strategic features like URL structure and content-related elements like alt text and subheadings, during the content development process.
Step 3: Develop Original Content With a Unique Perspective
Duplicated material and writing the same stuff found on the internet will get you nowhere.
You're delivering something of more value to people by putting in the effort to generate content with a unique angle. Try to come up with a distinct dimension for your content that the other pages don't have. Images and screenshots, as well as a presentation slide, are all options.
Step 4: On-Page Optimization
The importance of on-page optimization cannot be ignored.
- Use the appropriate heading tag
- Place the primary keywords in the appropriate location
- Write a catchy title tag and Meta description that is optimized for search engines.
Step 5: Contact People Who are Linked to the Top SERP Results
This is where the link-building part takes place. Following the completion of your masterpiece, you contact people who are linking to your competitor's page and persuade them that yours is a superior resource to link to.
Again, this is most effective when you have solid contacts and relationships.
To Conclude: Link Building Is A Growth Strategy
A smart link-building plan should always strive to attract a fresh, targeted audience to your site. But remember to be clever and strategic when it comes to blogging, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and any other link-building strategies.
The true challenge is earning quality, trustworthy, and natural links throughout the process, not solely link building. That's because it's no longer about the quantity of links…it’s about the quality.