New-startup owners think that they probably going to use SEO link building strategies and (boom magic occurs!) they ranked as no. 1 on google search pages. But you know what, that you can’t just sit back and relax for the customers to knock on your door, right? I mean as new in digital marketing you’ve to learn the strategies of link building.
Now you’re thinking what is link building? Basically, it is an SEO term in which you link another website on your very own page just to acquire the trustworthiness of the search engine.
These authoritative links connect to your site when you persistently post relevant and top-notch content. And thus, your website with these recognizable links creates a buzz that you’re trying to outreach.
What Are the Best Link Building Strategies?
From the above moot, you’d understand that for link building quality matters more than quantity. Due to this, you have to keep in your mind that it is a gradual process and cannot be done instantly.
So, let’s dive in as I’m going to round up 11 foolproof yet best link-building strategies that you can put to work today.
1. Guest Posting (The Right Way)
Linking to authentic sites wouldn’t willy-nilly line up you on top-rated pages of the internet. Why? Because it is the job of an upright webmaster who tries to get to the bottom of your content and checks out if this benefits their reader or not.
The plus side: they’ll you for reposting your article or they’ll ask if you’d be willing to write a guest post. And Score! As you hit the ball; that’s a win-win for both of you as it is a give-and-take endeavor. You provide quality content and get the reward of links/traffic back to your site.
Make sure that write a guest post for high-profile sites like Huffington Post or HubSpot. Don’t fritter away your time guest blogging on sites with no buff. As it is better to post on your own blog.
So, here are the few steps involved in the process.
Find new Prospects.
Look out for the contact information you need to outreach and that’s what prospecting is! You must use Google Chrome and install the Hunter.io Chrome extension to prospect for sites that allow guest posting. And when you’ll browse, you’ll get a list of possible contacts for the specific site you want to pitch.
Moreover, if you’ve to various alternatives then out of them always try to find the actual person instead of a catchall email address. In addition to this, you can also do a search like a target site + guest post/blog and take a glance at what shows up first.
Just a click away and you submit your guest post instant, pretty easy right? The beauty of this method is that you don’t need to find a fancy email for the pitch and wait for hours just for a ‘no’. You’ve to fill out the form and judge for submissions.
Qualify the Prospects.
So, I know what are you mulling over. How do qualify the prospects right? Well, it depends on your preferences. But before that, I must say that please research about site’s authority metric with its traffic to figure out its worth.
I mean, of course, there’s no need in putting all your efforts into the content for such a site that has just a handful of visitors (unless it’s a novel one and has a spark in it).
Additionally, you can also use tools like Ahrefs (if you prefer Domain Rating).
Reach out to the Prospects.
Personally, I’m not a maniac of rewriting and sending them out. I mean for sure guest blog must be exclusive. Templates for the guest blogs are out there but you’ve to create your own basic one.
The more customized your emails are; the more it catches the eye of the crowd and eventually, you’ll get more responses.
Moreover, in general, you have to show them your enticing portfolio, suggest some titles, or show your published write-ups. And here you go for the perfect pitch.
2. Your existing network of contacts
This is one of the best and easiest link-building strategies. Do you work for some ongoing/Long term clients? Or do you directly or indirectly work for any agency or industry? Or do probably you have a go-to contractor for products or services?
Then dear folks, what are you waiting for? All of those above-mentioned areas could be potential sources or links in your very own existing networks of contacts.
Use this relevancy and ask them for useful links.
3. Link Bait Content
This is one of the creative link-building strategies if done properly it can do wonders. Ready to throw out your innate creativity? Then use the content strategy i.e., Link Bait where you basically create content to attract more visitors.
When implemented impeccably, link bait content can go viral! You just have to make sure that the content is directly relevant to your brand. Or if not them you could hit on it when it is newsworthy, emotional, tremendously valuable, and visual.
An example of that is (which I came across) the article which takes credit for the success of the movie i.e., Inception. It basically illustrates the plot of the film.
That wasn’t quite linked to the brand that advanced it. Though, the brand through its app allowed the public to share snaps privately. Sharing such memories, the film was attached to people’s memoirs deep down.
4. Link Reclamation.
This is one of the traditional link-building strategies talked about by many folks in the SEO industry. Are you guys thinking what is the next strategy of link building? Don’t wait here just read it further!
If your brand is already having the top rank in searches then for you, link reclamation is very effective! For instance, on the google search operator write your brand name and then replace the initial keyword with your product or brand’s name.
This will uplift every instance of it being mentioned on the internet. Plus, you can even use Ahrefs Content Explorer to do to extract a report.
And don’t forget to respond to them with a simple yet creative email just to thank them for mentioning you! Through this, your users are just one click away to learn more about your brand.
5. Resource Page Links.
A streamlined lined way of link building is to use sites out there that have resource/link pages. For instance, the British Woodcarvers Association linked out varied companies that are related to their niche.
Thus, this is a potential source of traffic that will eventually turn into sales. So, you just have to think about the keywords for your specific niche and tag them on some advanced operators.
Such as your company sells woodworking machinery and your suggested keywords are woodworking or woodworking course. Then you have to tag advance operators with them. Like Keyword + resource pages or Keyword +, helpful/useful links are some of the alternate options.
You just have to choose the right one for you when your keyword is relatively associated with your own brand then it is more likely that you find the competitors.
6. Lookout for Trends and Recent News.
To find the right niche for your write-ups you have to track down some of the current hot topics. As Google likes to see what’s in trend. Here, you’ve to think more like a PR and less like an SEO.
So, ponder or research the current topics or news which is going to be viral soon like a jungle fire. And now on then in everyone’s mouth.
Think about what’s current, or something which people will be talking about very soon – and create ideas that relate your niche to that topic.
For example, with everyone talking about Boris Johnson (the UK Prime Minister), Wired created this “techie” SEO piece, which discussed how he might be gaming Google’s results with his PR campaigns. And I’m sure a few SEO blogs picked up on this and started discussing it as well.
7. Get all podcast equipment in order
Podcasts are a fun and growing medium for people to receive content. I listen to them on a daily basis, whether I am flying, writing, working, at the dog park, at the gym, etc. More and more consumers will be moving to podcasts in the future, so participating in them can really help build your brand and get links to your website.
Luckily, getting on podcasts is fairly easy—you just need a good story and a really good audio recording device. Make sure that all the podcast equipment provides amazing noise cancellation with good durability.
But, if I did want to focus on podcasts, I would focus only on two things: Basically, I will try to position myself as an expert in a field and try to bring other renowned figures involved in my domain expertise and make sure that all the podcast equipment are basic enough to suffice my podcast needs.
However, you want to be careful—because, sometimes, they can be big-time sinks. You have to find others to do a podcast with—make sure you check out their domain authority, their social media following, and their average listeners so that you can judge the return on your time.
Then you have to pitch them your idea and get accepted. Once you have the podcast locked down, then you have to make sure you are prepared—do a dry run or two and seriously spend some time getting ready.
It’s not the end of the world if you do a couple of podcasts and don’t get a ton of value back, but, if you are constantly doing them with no subsequent SEO value, then it is most likely a bad return on your time.
8. Competitor Research
This can be really good if you have a very successful competitor who has been building links for a while, and you want to reverse engineer what they’ve been doing.
You can use good paid SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush. What I normally do is:
- Make a list of the top 5 competitors (10 competitors if they have relatively small backlink profiles)
- Plug each site into Ahrefs
- Go into the “Backlinks” section
- Filter for Link Type “Dofollow”
- And extract a spreadsheet report of these links
Now, where some people make a mistake, is to reach out to each site and ask to guest post for them. However, you need to assess each of your competitor’s links on a case-by-case basis. What did they do to get that link? What “link type” is it?
It can often be an opportunity to get a feel for the kind of content that is deemed valuable enough to link to – so this will come in useful for your content strategy going forward as well.
9. Expert Round-Ups
Ever seen those posts like “50 (Industry) Experts Share Their Thoughts On XXXX”?
That is an expert round-up and is often a brilliant way of attracting links, engagement, and traffic. And it does that primarily by stroking people’s egos. Here’s a crash course on how it’s done.
Create a content idea for your industry or sector, which can be defined as a single question. Make sure it’s something that you’d be able to gather enough “influencers” (people with expert opinions) in your industry to provide a comment or paragraph.
Make a list of these influencers and reach out to them, asking them to give their “tip” on some comment or their answer to a question.
Collect all this data from everyone and combine it into one piece. Make sure it’s constructed well and flows like a proper article. You’ll be expected to link back to each of the experts.
Let them know when it gets published and get their help to promote the article. It’s in their best interest too, as they’re mentioned in the article. A proportion of them will probably link to you. And at the very least they’ll share it across social media – which only further increases its reach.
To get the creative juices flowing, here’s an example of one which was used in my own link-building niche.
The question posed to the experts was, “what was the best link you ever built?”
10. University Scholarships (If Applicable)
The thought of getting links from universities and colleges can be very appealing – high authority domains with strong link equity.
And this technique basically involves:
Creating a scholarship page for university or college students. Explaining why it exists and how a student can apply. Set a price for the amount you’ll pay students for your scholarship.
Generate a list of institutions to target. Either just use Wikipedia and create the list manually, or use Google search operators such as the following:
- Inurl:.edu + “outside scholarships.”
- url:.edu + “external scholarships”
- Inurl:.edu + “scholarships”
Reach out to universities (be it regionally or nationally) and explain your scholarship. Ask if they would be interested in linking to it from their scholarship page. (often if you can’t find a specific person who deals with scholarships, it’ll be the Finance/financial aid department). And mention how much a student receives in the scholarship towards their education.
Now, the problem with this method, is that some took advantage of this technique in recent years, with the end result being scholarship pages that looked really spammy (read more about it in this article). These were probably often the smaller institutions that were a bit laxer with the quality of the scholarships they were linking out to.
What you need to do is ensure that your scholarship and the institution you’re reaching out to look legitimate and that you’re getting links from pages that Google wouldn’t identify as “spammy.”
And one specific thing I would also suggest is that if your business is in a specific industry or area – that you offer scholarships specifically for students to do with that industry. For example, if you’re an accounting firm, offer a scholarship for students hoping to get into the accounting field.
11. Testimonial Links
Are there various tools, products, or services you use? Especially if they’re very relevant to your business, you could be looking at a potential source of a link.
A few things to note:
Don’t lie. Make sure these are tools you actually use.
Make sure they actually have a space for testimonials/success stories and actively give out links.
In the outreach process, specifically, mention how the tool or product helped you, and point out any specific results you had with it or how it helped your business.
The benefit goes two ways, of course, which is why this works. You get a bit of brand awareness and some link equity while they get a real testimonial of their product from an actual user.
Best Link Building Strategies – Final Summary
Now, this is by no means a comprehensive list of every single strategy you can use to build links. The reality is there are probably dozens more other than these.
The key take-home you should take from this is that most of these techniques have one core thing in common – leverage. If you have leverage, something that the other person at the end of the email recognizes, it gets them thinking and makes it more likely that they’ll give you a link.
SEO Link building is one of the best SEO strategies out there. With the right SEO tools and blogging strategies, you’ll be building Domain Authority in no time.
More from Smashitbuck: Do check out my article on how to start a podcast, online legal services, and Instagram story viewer apps to read this year.
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