What Is Link Building?

Link building is an important part of SEO for any website or business. It helps your site get recognized by major platforms such as Google and Bing, rank higher on these platforms, and also helps drive organic traffic to your website. Asking for links directly can work but it’s not the most effective strategy, especially considering that the average person receives on average, 88 emails per day (while office workers receive 121 emails per day). Your request could end up in the spam folder, denied, or just not responded to at all. And you especially do not want to use unreputable methods to gain backlinks, or black-hat SEO just to get your website ranked higher in the search engines, in fact, such tactics can result in penalties put towards your website by platforms listed above. Instead of resorting to such tactics, here are a few quick tips to get backlinks.

Link to Authority Sites

If high authority sites are linking to your website it shows Google and other search engines that your site must be offering something of value to your readers. More specifically, if other sites are willing to cite your website as a credible source and direct some of their traffic to your site, your content must be providing a ton of value. As such, the more authority sites you have pointing to your website the more credibility your website will have.

You can see how much weight or authority website carries by using tools such as Moz’s Open Site Explorer and SEO Review Tools.

Find Quality Backlinks

Don’t just use any website to link to for backlinks. Do your homework. Use marketing tools such as Ubersuggest, Mailshake, and SEMrush. These tools will help you identify which sites are best to connect to and are relevant to your site. The process involves getting as many high-quality and authoritative sites linking to your site. Obtaining authoritative sites involves understanding the dofollow and nofollow links.

Keywords

Keyword(s) make sure the site is relevant to what you’re ranking for. For example, you wouldn’t want a backlink from a site that is geared toward infants and your site is for teenagers. The best keywords are within the content itself, but not always the only place. Keywords can be in the sidebar or footer as well.

Relevant

It doesn’t have to be a 100% match. Take LinkedIn for instance… they have many subjects that people are interested in and get a lot of traffic. And since there is a lot of chatter on a variety of topics, that traffic can be driven to your website giving you an opportunity to gain new leads that could lead to new sales and repeat customers. 

Write Quality Content

The content you produce should be original content and link-worthy. Meaning you can’t just write something for the sake of writing. Your content should be something that’s relevant to your site and helps your readers, otherwise, your site won’t be viewed as authoritative. Here are a few examples of content you can use on your site: 

  • How-Tos – create posts for the do-it-yourselfers. 
  • Listicles or Lists – people love listicles. They are easy to read and follow. 
  • Quizzes – quizzes can generate engagement simply because they’re fun to do. 
  • Definitive Guides – create high-quality guides, detailed checklists, and glossaries.
  • Facts and Statistics – bloggers use facts and statistics to lend credibility to their claims.
  • Infographics – Infographics are a quick and easy way to present data in a visual format. 
  • Guest Blog – it’s an easy way to get more eyes on your content. 
  • Comment on High-Quality Blogs – don’t just say “Great post!” Instead, give substantive and thoughtful comments that add to the post. 
  • Respond to Questions on Quora – similar to responding to a blog post and you get to add a link back to your website.
  • Give Testimonials – give a testimony or write a review about another brand. 
  • Help a Reporter Out (HARO) – connect with people such as bloggers and journalists who need sources that need links.

Publish Original Research

Original research content is sure to net you backlinks. The reason this method is so powerful for getting increased backlinks is that it is original research with facts and statistics that no other site has. For this reason, other websites are more inclined to link back to your site since the information is new and fresh. 

Conclusion

And even though this post mentioned a few quick tips to get backlinks, it is not an exhaustive list as there are plenty more ways to get backlinks. 

Build your backlinks the right way and reap the rewards of increased traffic and rankings. By doing so, you won’t run the risk of being penalized by Google or other search engines. 

So, get started creating your backlinks for increased rankings in search by visiting our Offsite Profiles & Backlinking service today!