Employing the right link-building strategies can help you reach the top of the search engine rankings. But for some businesses, building links is a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy that’s difficult to plan and apply.
You may wonder if it’s worth the effort.
This article will discuss what link-building is and why it’s essential. Then, we’ll give you actionable link-building tactics. So you’ll be able to choose the most effective link-building strategy for your business and avoid costly mistakes.
Let’s dive in!
What is link-building, and why is it important?
Link-building is an SEO strategy that involves getting other websites to link back to content or pages on your website. You can accomplish it through various efforts, such as guest blogging or link reclamation. Don’t worry, we’ll explain what link reclamation is in just a bit.
Link-building helps boost your website’s search visibility and drive more traffic. Plus, by building quality links, you can increase your website’s Domain Authority, thus, improving your rankings in SERPs.
Moreover, it can help you get more organic traffic and conversions and build relationships with other websites and leaders in your industry. However, it’s more than just the number of links pointing to your site. It’s also about their quality.
You need to make sure the links are relevant. Google and other search engines want to ensure the best pieces appear in search results. So, if you want your website to rank in SERPs, the key to success is to get high-quality links from high-authority sites.
The 10 link-building tactics to boost your SEO
Link-building tactics vary significantly, which is great for companies since their SEO strategies also vary widely. You’ll need to understand each tactic to decide on the right option for your business. So let’s take a look.
1. Outreach
Outreach is an effective link-building strategy, but it’s important to remember that it isn’t just about getting links — it’s about building relationships. Additionally, the outreach process can be daunting, especially if you haven’t done much of it before.
But don’t worry! We’ve got expert advice on how to make the most of your outreach efforts:
- Keep it short: This is especially important if you send cold email outreach to a prominent website. Those behind it are busy people. So, keep it short, but ensure you include how you can provide value.
- Personalize: Before contacting them, find out whatever you can about the website and its owner. Generic outreach emails or email templates won’t get you anywhere (most of the time).
Use the relationships you develop to request links to your site in blog posts or social shares.
2. Strategic guest posting
Guest post outreach involves writing and publishing blog posts on other websites that are relevant to your own. It’s a great way to increase your website’s visibility and reach a wider audience. Plus, it has the added benefit of helping you build relationships with people doing similar work.
When you do guest posts, you can reach new people. It can also help you establish yourself as an expert in your field.
However, you need to remember the following when guest blogging:
- Only post on relevant sites: You must find blogs relevant to your business and know what they’re looking for, so they’ll be more likely to publish your article. Make sure it also appeals to your target audience. There are numerous free guest posting sites where you can contribute your articles and reach a wider audience, allowing you to establish your expertise and gain valuable exposure for your website.
- No duplicate posts: In guest post outreach, one goal is to provide readers value. Make sure your pitch or post doesn’t exist on the site. Check guidelines, only post original content, and, of course, no plagiarism ever.
- Read and follow guidelines: Most sites that accept guest posts have formal guidelines for writers. Be sure to read these carefully and follow them. Doing so shows respect and wins the favor of the content team on the site, which means they’ll be more likely to want to work with you in the future.
3. Social media
Social media is among the most powerful tools for building backlinks. With social media, you can create content that’ll attract link opportunities from other websites and blogs and get more shares on social networks.
Social media platforms are also great for building relationships with experts, bloggers, and other industry peers interested in linking to your content. There are around 4.8 billion users on these platforms. That’s a ton of potential networking opportunities.
You can use hashtags relevant to your target market and topic to make your posts more accessible. Also, you can use social media channels to interact with other professionals in your niche.
For instance, many brands promote their blog content on social media. So you can comment on how much you enjoyed their latest post.
Videos are another way to increase your social media mentions. So whether you’re doing short-form video marketing or long-form webinars, video marketing is another strategy businesses can’t overlook.
92% of marketers say they see a positive ROI from their video marketing efforts.
If you’re looking for a way to boost your social shares and brand awareness, video is a great way to go.
4. Create high-quality content
Besides being a ranking factor, creating valuable content is essential for any successful link-building campaign. When you create well-researched, high-quality content, you’re building trust with your readers and Google.
When people trust your content, they’re more likely to share it. And when they share it, they’ll often link back to the original post.
As we’ve said, developing high-quality content offers many benefits, including attracting other industry leaders to establish relationships, build backlinks, and create a loyal following of interested readers.
When you need new content ideas, use Google Trends.
Type a keyword or topic into the search bar, and you’ll get an analysis of the public’s interest in that term or topic over time (you choose the time frame) according to Google Search. You can also calibrate the analysis for different regions worldwide, categories, and search types.
5. Broken link building
This strategy builds high-quality backlinks to your website, helping to improve your website’s search rankings and visibility.
The process of broken link-building requires you to look for relevant websites with broken links and analyze their content to determine if your content would be a suitable replacement. If so, inform the website owner about the broken link and ask them to replace it with your content.
You may already have a list of content articles from your website to replace dead links you find. But if not, you can create a blog post before you email the website owner.
The research for this can be time-consuming. However, Ahrefs’ Site Explorer will save you those hours of research and a ton of headaches.
With it, you can simply scan for broken links, check to see if your content would be an appropriate replacement, and, if so, contact the website owner.
6. Competitor backlink analysis
Staying informed of your competitors’ high-quality links is also essential to link-building efforts. Knowing your competitors’ links can provide valuable insights into the best link-building strategies for your brand.
Checking their list of external links allows you to identify opportunities to build new relationships and create content to attract potential customers. You can also use this information to improve the quality of your existing backlinks and ensure they’re still relevant and valuable.
The most thorough way to do this is using a tool like Moz’s Link Intersect Tool. It’s designed to do precisely what you want – “Find out which sites link to your competitors – but not to you.”
While you need a subscription to access this fantastic tool, if you plan on taking link-building seriously, Moz and its tools are well worth the fees, starting at $99/month with a 30-day free trial.
But don’t despair if you’ve got a bootstrap budget.
You can also accomplish an analysis by checking out listicles or roundups of similar companies. It’s much more time-consuming and labor-intensive, but it won’t cost you a dime.
For example, if your business involves data integration, a great way to get an instant list of competitors is by reading g2’s review of Airbyte alternatives.
You can even find links to the different homepages of the companies on the list. G2 makes it easy for you to visit competitors’ websites and browse their content.
You can apply this process to any niche. For example, with Google Search, look for “your competitors’ name alternatives + listicle.”
7. Reclaim links through mentions
Link reclamation is finding published content that mentions your website but doesn’t credit it with a proper link. Of course, you want credit for your work as a content creator.
You can use Google Alerts to notify you when someone mentions your brand.
When you find a mention, you can look for the publisher’s email address, contact them, and ask them to give you proper credit by linking to your website or the specific page they used in their content. For some inspiration, take a look at the email template above.
Don’t assume the website intentionally left out your link. There’s no telling the reason, but don’t assume it’s personal. Just send a friendly email and ask for an appropriate link.
Who knows, your email could be the beginning of a beautiful partnership.
Link reclamation is important because it helps improve your SEO rankings and search visibility. It also allows you to build relationships with other websites and strengthen your brand presence online.
8. Link-building roundup
A link roundup lists links to websites, articles, and other online resources. This list can include anything from blog posts to podcasts and videos.
Creating your own roundup is a great way to get links and grow your audience. Or, you can try to include your company in a roundup by another creator you’ve partnered with.
People love lists. They’re easy to read and give you a sense of completion.
You can use this to your advantage by creating a roundup of your company’s best content (internal links). But, of course, you’ll also want to include external links, like other companies’ sites or articles on related topics.
Look at this roundup post about the best sites to hire dedicated web developers, hire a remote development team, or even an offshore development team. Aside from using internal links to encourage readers to visit other blog posts on their site, they also include external links throughout the blog post.
Why?
Because providing readers with links to other valuable resources enhances their experience by giving them extra information, it also signals to Google that your site is trustworthy and deserves to rank on SERPs.
As a bonus, you can sometimes earn a backlink from sites you link to for sharing their content.
9. Content pillar/evergreen content
Content pillars are essential to any content marketing strategy and increase organic traffic to your website. But how is pillar content creation an effective link-building strategy?
Well, it won’t get you many links right away, but it will help build up your brand’s authority.
Your content pillars should be evergreen content, meaning they live on your site forever. Their content isn’t time-sensitive like news or current events, and can be updated as needed. Essentially, they don’t have an expiration date.
Pillar content is highly-informative and usually solves a core problem or provides an answer to frequently asked questions for your audience.
Moz conducted a study that showed that pillar pages captured over 200x more backlinks than other blog posts.
With their hub and spoke model, the pillar page acts as the hub, while related internal blog posts are spokes that link back to the pillar page. These internal posts may also link to each other when appropriate, further strengthening your site’s link profile.
10. Boost your page speed
Page speed might not seem like a link-building strategy, but any marketing strategy will fail if your website isn’t fast.
Not only is everyone else on the planet vying for your readers’ attention, but why would any reputable peer in your industry link to your website if it loads like it’s still on dial-up?
Page speed is also a search engine ranking factor and can impact how much traffic your website gets.
SEO experts recommend you aim for a LCP (largest contentful paint) loading time of under 2.5 seconds. LCP is one of three factors that make up your Core Web Vitals or page speed metrics. The other two are First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
You can use Google Search Console to find your Core Web Vitals. Experts say you need to know all three of these metrics and understand how they work to optimize your website’s page speed.
Improving page speed is also essential for user experience. With short attention spans and a world wide web of options, users bounce fast from pages that take more than a second or two to load. Slow pages also don’t get shared.
If you want to win at marketing, speed is key.
Conclusion
Link-building is a complicated, time-consuming, and sometimes expensive endeavor. However, it’s essential to building your Domain Authority and rising through the ranks of search engines.
Hopefully, this guide has helped you narrow the possibilities to the strategies that best fit your brand. Now, you just have to commit and make the effort.
However, if you still find yourself struggling with the details, we can help guide you to make the right decisions and improve your SEO with high-authority backlinks.
