Link building is an SEO approach that boosts your rankings in search engines.
According to recent SEO statistics, the top 10 websites on the SERP (search engine result page) have 3.8 times more backlinks than the next-ranked websites.
This emphasizes the significance of increasing link-building efforts.
The benefits of link building are twofold. First, it increases your chances of ranking higher in search results.
Second, link building helps build brand credibility.
Since you create links to those sites that are also considered authoritative, search engines will see this as an indication that your site is savvy in its field.
Now, those are impressive benefits of link building, but how can you improve your link building strategy with the ever evolving search engine algorithms?
This guide will show you how to develop backlinks using six helpful techniques to improve your website’s exposure and ranking. You will also learn about five link building tools that will save you time in the process of building links.
Importance Of An Effective Link Building Strategy
Research shows that an incredible 91% of all webpages get no organic traffic. This is mostly because there are no backlinks to their content.
With a good link-building strategy, you can improve the number and quality of backlinks that point to your site.
The main goal of a link-building strategy is to increase the visibility of your website in search engine results pages for your target keywords by getting links from other high-quality websites.
Furthermore, if you begin receiving backlinks from reputable websites, your brand awareness may rise, and you will have a better chance of attracting new customers.
Even though most of the links you create will help your site, not every link may be beneficial. Some considerations for determining a link’s quality are as follows:
Page Authority
While determining the Page Authority, Google considers the number of high-quality backlinks referring to the page as well as the overall quality of the content.
If a link comes from a page that Google considers authoritative, it will likely boost your PageRank more than a link from a page that Google does not consider credible.
Domain Authority
In comparison to a brand-new, unknown website, websites that are regarded as authorities in your sector will transmit the greatest SEO power to your website. So, consider getting links from high authority websites.
Link Appearance
The link’s appearance in the right place matters a lot. Links in sliders, page footers, and other comparable page columns will provide you with little to no value.
Business Relevant Website
Try to acquire backlinks from sites that are closely related to your specific field. For instance, if you’re in the health and fitness industry, it would be preferable to receive links from other fitness-related websites rather than a sales blog.
Do-Follow And No-Follow Links
In terms of SEO (search engine optimization), a do-follow link is one that passes along some of the credibility and authority of the linking page to the page it leads to.
However, you can use a “no-follow” backlink if you don’t want to send good backlinks to the linked page or promote it.
Links that are both do-follow and no-follow are required to build a strong backlink profile.
6 Actionable Link-Building Strategies
Search engine rankings heavily consider external links as a quality indicator. While crawling a website, search engines like Google consider the number and quality of inbound backlinks.
The greater the quantity and quality of inbound links pointing to a certain webpage, the higher that webpage may rank.
Let’s jump in and examine some proven strategies for developing powerful link-building strategy for your business.
1. Create Link-Worthy Content
Link-worthy content refers to a web page that is made and published with the main goal of getting backlinks to your website.
In order to get links from other sites, you first need to create evergreen content so that people will want to reference it in their own writing.
It is important to note that webmasters will only link to articles that are of interest to their target readership. Try to add information on your page that is useful to other relevant sites, so they will link to it.
Invest substantial time into blogging if creating link-worthy content is a goal. You may see 55% more visitors, which is good news for your SERP standings.
Link-worthy content usually has the following characteristics:
- Interesting or captivating format
- Explanatory, with verifiable statistics
- One-of-a-kind and distinct from the competition
- Detailed overview of a subject
To make content worth linking to, look at what you already have and see where you can fill in the gaps in your content. Then, try to come up with updated and relevant content.
2. Employ Guest Posting Strategies
One of the best ways to gain quality backlinks from other sites is by guest posting.
In the past, it was easy to post articles on random websites that were not necessarily relevant to the niche of the primary website. However, today, you have to consider the relevance factor of both websites.
Now, search engine robots are able to identify whether or not a link comes from a related site. Therefore, you should formulate a well-thought-out plan for guest posting. You should only go after authoritative websites that relate to your niche.
Also, make sure that the guest posts you send to the authoritative websites are fresh and full of helpful information, including visuals and fresh case studies.
3. Grow Your Personal Brand
Branding makes you more visible online, which boosts your exposure to search engines and other influential people in your industry.
More people will link to your content if they know more about your brand and what it sells. Compared to purchased links, authentic links that are earned organically have greater SEO value.
Keep in mind that in today’s crowded online space, the quality of your content serves as a proxy for the quality of your brand.
As a result,more people will link to your site from other relevant websites if they are aware of your brand.
Blogging is key to growing your brand. According to statistics, there is a 97% increase in links for businesses that have a strong blogging strategy compared to those that do not.
Simply put, use your ingenuity to steadily enhance your brand. One reliable approach to doing this is to regularly publish material of exceptional value that caters to the interests of your target audience.
4. Broken Link Building
Did you know 42.5% of websites have broken links? If you have a busy schedule and don’t have much time to write new content for your blog or guest articles, a broken link-building strategy is a good idea.
This process entails finding a non-working webpage and requesting that linkers replace it with a page from your site that is up and running.
They’ll undoubtedly do this because they don’t want to direct visitors to a dead webpage.
That’s a golden chance. Seize it.
The first step is to add details about any broken links you discover on a spreadsheet. LinkMiner is a quick and easy way to find resource pages with broken links.
The next step is to contact the administrator (or webmaster) and inform them of the broken links. Provide them a link to a related article on your website that covers comparable ground or goes deeper than the original content.
The webmaster may approve of your link and you may be able to win a backlink to your site.
With the broken link building method, you may get more responses and links because you are also helping curators or webmasters fix technical problems on their websites.
5. Analyze Competitor Backlinks
The process of tracking your rival’s backlinking strategies is most important in link building.
By conducting a thorough analysis of your competitors’ backlinks, you may learn exactly what they are up to and where they are getting links from.
You will also learn about the terms for which Google and other search engines rank them higher than you.
The most effective tool for competitive study is Ubersuggest.
Go on Ubersuggest and enter the competitor’s URL into the search field.
Now click on the “back links” option from the menu. This tool will provide you with a comprehensive report of their backlinks within seconds.
Ubersuggest will show you the URL and page authority of the sites linking to them, as well as the websites from which they are receiving links.
You have already gained an advantage by having this knowledge. Get the ball rolling on link building by sending high-quality guest posts to these sites.
If you want to know what kind of content impresses the editors, take a look at their blog.
5 Powerful Backlink Analysis Tools
Link building is a time-consuming procedure. The first step is to create content that is published and searchable. The second is for the audience to discover it, appreciate it, and link to it.
Many SEO experts and content marketers believe it takes about 5-10 weeks to find a link and make it useful.
But if you use authentic link-building software, you can save a lot of time in the process of finding links.
And therefore, to help you ramp up your outreach efforts, we’ve compiled a list of five link-building tools you may employ.
1. Ahrefs
Recently, Ahrefs was introduced to the growing list of well-known free backlink analyzers. The top 100 backlinks to any site or webpage can be viewed using this tool.
By signing up for the service, you’ll have access to useful insights like the number of backlinks to a site and the anchor text used throughout.
When you use Ahrefs, you can examine the backlinks to your competitor’s domain or website in great depth.
If your site has suffered after the Penguin update, you may save yourself a lot of effort by using this tool. This is because it provides an overview of the percentage of anchor text connecting to your site.
While Ahrefs is a paid tool, you may still use their free plan to learn more about the types of backlinks that are pointing to your website.
2. SEMrush
SEMrush is a tool that helps with many types of advertising, and it gives customers a very useful tool for building backlinks. It can help you conduct a backlink analysis of your competitor’s website, empowering you with critical backlink information needed to build solid link building strategies.
In the paid version, you can view the websites that have mentioned you but not linked to you by going to the mentioned area and logging in.
When you find these references, you may reach out to the authors and request a link to your site (assuming the website is credible and has a high Domain Authority).
Another feature is to check out the backlink audit and determine which sites are already linking to yours.
Verify the site’s legitimacy and relevance, as well as whether the link is under the right SEO-rich term.
If it’s not a real site, you might want to contact the owner and ask them to remove the link, as it could affect your search engine rankings.
3. Pitchbox
Pitchbox is a tool for discovering news websites that might be interested in publishing an article about your company or providing a link to one of your web pages.
To begin generating backlinks, all you need to do is create a Pitchbox account, log in, paste the URL of the website or content you like to promote, and enter the keywords you wish to rank for.
Within a couple of minutes, Pitchbox will return a list of hundreds of potential websites to contact.
You can analyze each site that the tool recommends, choose the ones that can offer the most value and ignore the websites that may have low authority or seem irrelevant.
4. BuzzSumo
Buzz Sumo is a premium tool that offers extensive data about your competitors’ backlinks, the performance of their content in light of those links, and the most popular sites that are being linked.
In addition to finding link-building prospects, you can also learn what kinds of content receive the most links.
Finding new topics to write about, identifying top bloggers in your field, and measuring the success of content in search and social media are all a breeze using Buzzsumo’s range of research tools.
With the aid of BuzzSumo’s backlink analysis tool, you can identify potential backlink opportunities in the future as well.
5. Cognitive SEO
On the cognitive SEO platform, marketers and agencies have access to a variety of SEO-specific resources.
You can use their backlink analysis tool to see how your website’s backlink profile has changed over time and spot any potentially harmful links in your content.
Try out their backlink auditor to generate insights that highlight the present status of your backlink profile and link-building activities.
Thanks to the built-in email alerts for both earned and lost links, you can keep track of changes to your backlink profile without missing a beat.
You may find no-follow links and send out automatic delete requests with this link building tool. It’s an effective tool for reducing the number of destructive links in your backlink profile.
Conclusion
One of the most important things for search engine rankings is the backlink profile of your website. Keep in mind that Google is concerned with the number of inbound links to your pages as well as with the quality of the content you provide.
If you want to succeed at link building, whether through blogging, social media marketing, SEO, or any other method, you need to be as strategic as possible.
The difficulty lies not in building links but in gaining high-quality, trustworthy, organic links. Use the tried-and-true strategies for attracting backlinks, and you’ll soon have a search engine and a user-friendly blog.
