Simple Link Building Tips
Although proper link building
is not an easy thing to do, there are still many white
hat SEO techniques you can start with even today,
without considerable efforts or expenses.
1. Ask for backlinks
This is a good way to start, especially if you are a
beginner in this job. Think about your friends,
relatives, colleagues, partners, clients that have a
blog or a site. All you have to do is ask for a
backlink. Ask for in-content links instead of links in
the sidebar or footer. But be careful and make sure that
the backlink comes from a website that is relevant to
your niche, otherwise it will not have too much of an
impact and may even be harmful.
2. Build Relationships
For good link building, you need to build good
relationships. There are plenty of opportunities to
build new contacts. You should start with niche-related
communities: forums, blogs or social groups. Make the
first step and start contributing with interesting and
relevant comments and posts, providing contextual value
to each discussion. By actively participating in these
online communities focused on your niche, you will not
only gain some good backlinks, but you will always have
access to the newest industry news and be able to
connect to some interesting people that share your
passions.
3. Give a testimonial
Testimonial link building is a win-win scenario. Many
businesses offer you the chance to say a few words about
your experience using their products. On the one hand,
this is a perfect way for them to build customer trust.
On the other hand, it’s a great opportunity for you to
get a backlink and potential traffic from that site and
it usually has a much higher approval rate than your
standard link request e-mails. The contact gets another
testimonial to place on their site, while you get a new
incoming link.
4. Start a blog
Don’t make a blog with one post and one backlink to your
site. If you do, you not only wasted your time, but
probably also just created another risky link for
yourself. If you want to have your own blog, you need to
keep it alive. Write posts on a regular basis. Focus on
your industry and on your client’s needs! In time, it
will most likely gain authority. Make sure that your
content is relevant, useful and well-structured. This is
the only way to ensure that the WORLD will want to link
to it again and again. That’s how you get great
backlinks, you earn them!
5. List your site in trustworthy directories
There are many directories that provide no real value to
the Internet users and Google has excluded them from its
search results. You don’t want your website to be on
such pages! But not all online directories are bad. A
directory that not only gives you the chance to post a
link to your website, but also provides useful
information for your potential customers is a directory
you would want to be listed on. The new PageRank is
RELEVANCY, therefore niche directories and directories
attached to informative websites for a specific industry
are a good choice. Having your business listed with such
directories makes it easier to get indexed with the
major search engines and helps people find you online.
You could start with a listing in the DMOZ – Open
Directory Project. This is the largest, most
comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is
constructed and maintained by a vast, global community
of volunteer editors.
6. Write a good guest post
There are many sites and blogs that will accept to
publish your article. Before you write an article
somewhere, make sure that: the website or blog is
relevant to your topic the article is NOT about how
great you are/ your company is you have a focus on
quality (well written, professional, and interesting)
you keep in mind that a poor article can bring bad
reputation It’s important that you build links that help
your website and not links that can negatively impact
your website’s ranking in search results. Build links
for your business, for your customers, make them
relevant, and associate them with great content. Your
users will be happy, Google will keep you in the search
results and your business will grow. Check out this
infographic that reinforces the tips above and gives you
a clear picture on how to build high-quality links and
how to stay away from building bad links. It’s all about
quality, relevancy and user focus.
7. Discover competitors' common backlinks
If you research your competitors, you will probably
notice that they have some backlinks in common which you
do not. Well, if they managed to get these backlinks,
why shouldn’t you too? All you have to do is to analyze
these backlinks and try to get them as well. The Common
Backlinks Tool (CBLT) is a tool especially made for
this. Enter up to 10 competitors and start your report.
8. Get an indirect backlink from your competitor
It is quite common that some of your competitors link to
the same sites. These sites are usually big authorities
in the industry. A link from such a place would be very
helpful as to the powerful link juice your website would
receive. But there is something else: if you manage to
get your backlink here, your competitors will indirectly
link to you.
9. Recover your dead backlinks
Sometimes you might find broken links to your website.
This may be the case if the location of your page
changes or if another webmaster misspelled your link. In
both cases, these backlinks will return a 404 error.
Such issues may also commonly occur after a site was
re-launched or migrated to another domain. You should
then redirect these backlinks to some other page.
10. Turn your mentions into backlinks
This is probably one of the easiest ways to gain some
new backlinks. Somebody already wrote something about
you. They mentioned your brand or product, but they have
not linked to your website. In situations like these, it
is usually enough to contact the webmaster and ask him
to convert that mention into a backlink.
11. Find the strongest competitors healthy
backlinks
Since Google launched the Penguin update in 2012, strong
links are not the only webmasters concern. If you do not
want to be penalized, links must be safe as well. How do
you find those strong, and yet not risky links? Use
Link Detox (DTOX) to explore some specific
competitors, or Competitive Link Detox (CDTOX) to
compare your site against 10 of your competitors. After
you get the report results, you can easily sort links by
Power*Trust and by very low DTOXRISK.
12. Find the most relevant link building
opportunities
There are many opportunities for link building on the
Internet. There are many forums, blogs or sites where
you could place your backlink, but usually it is not so
easy to find them. Whether you want to find a strong
relevant site or blog where you can place a guest
article or thematic forum with follow links – the SERP
Research Tool will help you. SERP is designed to help
you find the most relevant and strongest results. After
you get your results, you can sort them by strength,
theme or any other metric you want. The best thing about
SERP is that you know these links are relevant and high
authorities in your industry.
13. Be aware of your competitor's new links
Very often, in everyday life, a quick reaction can mean
the difference between success and failure. On the
Internet, it is pretty similar. It is extremely
important to be aware of your competitor's activities.
Link Alerts is a tool made to inform you about your
new backlinks, but, apart from that, you can also use it
to monitor your competitors. Not only will it help you
find some new backlink opportunities, but also discover
some new sources and techniques you could use in the
future. The best thing about Link Alerts is an e-mail
notification you get twice a week with fresh backlinks.
This will allow you to identify negative SEO attacks
right away. In case of new, unwanted links, you can
react immediately, and thus protect your site from being
hit by a Google Penalty.
14. Social media
So, you created a unique, quality and powerful article,
but it stayed unnoticed? Well, sometimes it happens.
Great content alone doesn’t get you ranked. In
situations like these, you will have to push your
content a little bit. The best way to do so is to use
social media. Good content on social networks doesn't
mean just new visitors, but also promotion to people who
can build new backlinks for you. Share your content more
than once to get more traffic and to reach visitors in
different time zones. Make sharing buttons clearly
visible around your content.
15. Infographics
Long or complex articles can be hard to digest. On the
other hand, a short one might not be very convincible.
With infographics you cannot go wrong. It is a
compelling way to use visual content to tell a rich
story at a glance. Infographics will attract attention
and potentially go viral. Depending on their quality,
influential people or companies will use them. Sometimes
someone might use your infographic, but without linking
to you. In such case, you could start a “Google reverse
image search”.
16. Lists
You know what? Lists Are Cool It’s psychological; our
brains love lists. If you create some cool list, there
is a big chance that people will actually click on it
and later share it. Just compare these two headlines:
"Green tea is good for your health" "7 incredible
reasons why you should drink green tea" Let's be honest,
even if you do not like green tea, you would click on
the second headline.
17. Research reports and case studies
Your personal opinion can be interesting and valuable,
especially if you have been in a specific field for a
long time. But, if you want to become an authority and
earn a lot of backlinks, you will have to show facts and
stats. That’s the reason why the most sharable contents
are: Research papers Case studies Reviews Comparisons
Try to be the first to write about a certain topic.
Fresh content is critical in any industry especially if
your niche changes quickly. In your research, include
all relevant data, test results, charts and always link
your sources.
18. Newsletter subscriptions
Usually, companies do not understand the importance of a
newsletter. If it is used properly, the benefits can be
great. Publishing a newsletter will increase attention
and awareness of your readers or clients. With quality
and interesting content, you increase the probability of
sharing it, thereby increasing traffic and the amount of
backlinks. Try to include some effective call-to action
button in your newsletter, for example offer them to
register for some webinar, download some whiter paper or
eBook. No matter how interesting and cool your content
is, you can always make it more valuable by adding some
extra material like: eBooks White papers Manuals Guides
This way, you will generate more leads and move them
further. Also you will show expertise and increase your
authority.
19. Learn from others
There is nothing as sad as people who spend days and
weeks writing about something and then… nothing. All
that passion and knowledge for nothing. Good, and yet
unnoticed articles are something that happens every day
and to everybody. The problems can be various. Usually,
people make a mistake with the choice of topic. It
doesn't matter how good your article is if nobody cares
for that topic. The opposite can happen too; cool topic,
but weak content! You can read hundreds of articles and
watch dozens of videos about good content, but there is
always one safe road: learn from others. For example,
you want to write about health, but don't know which
topics are the most popular? Well, let's start one
simple report with SSPT. We tested on
thehealthcareblog.com. Here is a list of the blog posts,
sorted by Power*Trust. |
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