Receiving backlinks to your site is vital for top Google rankings and SEO scores. Ensuring that you claim links from websites with high domain authority is equally essential. It generates trust in your content, increasing the value of your business and online articles.
The main problem is that proper link building isn’t as easy as asking for backlinks. If you want to increase traffic with links from high ranking sites, you need to put in the extra effort. There are some smart methods you can use to get them, though.
Here are our top 10 tips on how to get backlinks:
- Broken Links And Unlinked Mentions
- Existing Relationships
- Guest Blogs
- Top Listings
- Watch The Competition For Quality Backlinks
- Community Forums
- Stealing Links with Better Content
- Top Performing Post Formats
- Images And Videos
- Content Promotion
Broken Links And Unlinked Mentions
Linking to broken or unavailable pages lowers a site’s SEO ranking. Search engines prefer if you only link to content that’s available. Fortunately, you can make use of broken links to receive quality backlinks.
The steps are as follows:
- Research keywords for your industry and find high domain authority sites that list resources with links on their pages.
- Go through their sources with an online plugin or tool to find any broken links.
- Contact the webmaster or site owner and inform them of the problem and what it means for their SEO ranking.
- Provide alternative links, which will include some of yours.
You’re performing a favor while also scoring a valuable backlink. It’s best that you don’t come across as greedy. Instead, present a friendly tone that indicates you’re offering help.
You can use the same approach for unlinked mentions. Use search engines to find high ranking sites mentioning your business or articles where links are absent. In the same friendly manner, send them an email thanking them for the mention and asking if they could add a link to your content.
Ensure that you avoid getting backlinks from sites with low domain authorities. It’s better to have unlinked mentions on those pages than receiving links from them.
Existing Relationships
There’s no shame in asking your business partners with high ranking sites to backlink to your content. It can be mutually beneficial, each of you linking to the other. You can also offer other services for free in return for a quality backlink.
One example is a review of their products. If you produce an article that speaks highly of its features, they’re sure to share it with their clients with a link to your review. You can also create a guide for how to use the product.
Another excellent method is asking if you can present a testimonial for your partners site. While this option creates trust in its clients, you can add a link to your business in the testimonial signature under your name. However, don’t fake a testimonial merely to receive a backlink, as it’s considered unethical and shady.
Guest Blogs
Sometimes the best way to receive backlinks is by reaching a new audience differently. Guest blogging helps you accomplish this feat, which also grows your reputation as a subject matter expert. In the meantime, you can slip in a backlink or two with the approval of the site owner.
There are three ways in which you can find top ranking sites that accept guest blogs.
Search Engines
The most obvious method is using a search engine to find the best results. Look for your keywords and insert additional terms such as the following:
- Write for our blog
- Guest bloggers welcome
- Become a contributing blogger
- Contribute
- Become a guest blog author
- Guests posts by authors
The above search terms are only a few examples. Feel free to experiment with other alternatives.
Influencers
Keep an eye out on influencers that write guest posts on popular sites that rank well on Google searches. You can sometimes click on their profiles to see on which blogs they produce content.
If you’re brave enough, contact the blog owners and find out if you can also write articles for them. Don’t ask if you can include backlinks at the start. It would be best if you waited until you establish yourself before you approach them about links.
Social Media
Social media is another excellent place to find sources for guest blogs. Search for tags regarding guest authors, posts, or blogs. If you want to create alerts for these keywords, you can use tools like Topsy or Tweetdeck.
Once you land a guest blog, remember to also post to your social media feed. It’s a fantastic way for readers to see your content’s quality and follow your site for further reading.
Top Listings
Articles that list the best businesses or products in an industry always do well on searches. It’s one of the elements that gives posts high scores, as search engines consider them valuable bits of information. If you want quality backlinks, you should find a way to land your site or brand on a listing.
Let’s make a practical example. We’re going to pretend that we run an SEO business that provides advice for search engine optimization. It’s not a far stretch, considering that we’re writing a post on how to get backlinks.
So, we’d search for something like ‘the top 10 sites for SEO’, which we could narrow down to a country like the United States or the United Kingdom. After finding the best results from high ranking sites, we’d contact the owners and ask if they could feature us on their list with a backlink. We could also ask if there are any criteria for placement.
Applications like the above occur regularly, with the top businesses receiving requests daily. The difference between acceptance and rejection is how you present your posts and the content value.
Watch The Competition For Quality Backlinks
There’s nothing wrong with spying on your opponents. We encourage it, as their marketing plans may give clues as to how they’re getting backlinks. Remember, they may be watching your site too to see what content strategy you’re using.
Social media comes into play again with this step. Keep tabs on what they’re posting on their feeds, as they may retweet or share backlinks from pages with high authority. You can create notifications for when they post to stay on your feet. Google Alerts serves the same purpose.
If you want more tools to aid you, you can sign up for a service like Monitor Backlinks. You can insert four of your top opponents’ sites and receive notifications when they receive backlinks. Once you have a handle on how they’re claiming links, contact the sources and follow the same route.
Community Forums
You’d be surprised how many site forums have high domain rankings. The beauty of community forums is that you can comment on a thread and backlink to your posts. However, this approach has a few downfalls.
For one, it doesn’t help backlinking in a forum that has low traffic. Yes, the domain authority might have a good score, but it won’t convert readers into page views. You’ll want a forum that has constant discussions that are relevant to your industry.
Another issue is that most forums have links set up with the ‘nofollow’ function. It means that search engines won’t rank the backlink in their algorithms. While you can still use these forums for clicks and page views, they won’t be as valuable as ‘dofollow’ forum backlinks.
There’s a trick you can use to find the best forums for this purpose. Ahref has a Site Explorer tool where you can search message boards with ‘dofollow’ backlinks that feature your competitors. If they’re posting on the threads and linking back to their posts, then so can you.
Stealing Links with Better Content
This step has two different approaches. The premise is that you’ll provide content for backlinking that’s better than the original article receiving links. If you succeed, the site owners will swap the old link for yours.
The first method consists of finding articles in your industry that have loads of quality backlinks. You can use any of the tools mentioned above in this guide. If you feel that you can create better content with a higher SEO ranking, you should write and publish it.
Once it’s available and receiving views, reach out to the sources of the competing post’s backlinks. Inform them of the downfalls of that post and indicate that your article is more informative. An example includes providing a higher product review score.
This approach takes time, as you’ll need to do extensive research and take the time to write the posts. The second method involves taking an article that’s already doing well and use that in your pitch. We recommend updating it to improve your SERP ranking, but there’s no reason to create something new if an existing article meets your needs.
Top Performing Post Formats
When all else fails, fall back on reliable strategies. There are specific post formats that readers and popular brands enjoy, and you’ll receive quality backlinks if you have the content to go with it. We’ve already mentioned a few of them, but we’ll briefly list them here below.
- List articles.
- ‘Why’ articles.
- Quizzes and polls.
- ‘How-to’ articles.
- Images, videos, and infographics.
If you’re an astute reader, you may have realized that we combined three of these elements in this article. We created a ‘how-to’ article in a list format, with a few images to break the text. There’s no reason why you can’t combine them to create the best post for your subject matter.
It all comes back to quality content, though. There’s no point in creating impressive lists with inferior reading material. You still need to follow the best SEO practices to showcase why you deserve a backlink.
Images And Videos
Businesses and influencers love infographics. It presents stats that they can easily digest. In most cases, they re-use the image with a backlink to the source of information.
Videos are just as easy on the eyes and ears. They hold plenty of data in one small package. You can also present any written information in video format, with a backlink to your online article. It helps to embed the video in your post at some stage so that the reader can watch it instead of going through long lines of text.
If you’re good at designing new images, we recommend that approach rather than using free, open-source pictures. Businesses would rather use the original images than link back to ones you’ve claimed from a free-license site. When you become the owner of unique content, you’ll find a steady stream of backlinks to your pages.
Remember to use your keywords in the alt-text section of the images and infographics. It helps search engines find and list them for queries. When a reader searches for specific stats and pictures that link back to your articles, you may see them visiting your site more often.
Content Promotion
Nothing beats good old-fashioned marketing. Every step you’ve followed thus far in this post holds some form of promotion, whether you’re reaching out to an affiliate or stealing backlinks. You’re advertising that your content is worth linking to more than any others available online.
By marketing your material through free or paid methods, you’re bound to find someone backlinking to your site. Ensure that you insert hashtags that are relevant to the main keywords. Make people aware the articles are available, whether via social media or email campaigns.
Another sneaky strategy is tagging influencers or top-ranking brands, especially when you mention them in your posts. They may enjoy what you have to say about them, which means you may find a surprise backlink in your pocket. Ego plays a significant role, and everyone loves the spotlight.
One last factor to mention that forms part of marketing is the inclusion of internal links. Besides the fact that it’s an excellent SEO practice, you’re promoting additional content on your site once you land viewers. Use this to your advantage for more backlinks.
