Also known as “incoming links” or “inbounding links,” backlinks are links from one page on a website to another. Your website’s link is referenced in the websites related to the niche of your unique website. For instance, the website of a food product(s) will get its backlink from a site whose niche is based on the recipes for that specific food.
Backlinks are essential links that serve as major ranking factors for search engines. They could be hard to get but not to worry; there are smart, ethical ways to build and earn unique backlinks for your website. This article will look at seven ways to go about it:
Monitor Your Competitors
Staying up to date with your major competitor’s moves is a terrific strategy for building backlinks. Not just that, but it is also mandatory. You can track your competitor’s content-marketing methods and link-building techniques through social media.
To be well informed about your competitors, you should consider following them on social media or subscribing to their email newsletters. Another nifty way is creating a Google alert for your competitors’ websites. Here’s the format: “site: yourcompetitor.com.” Hence, if your competitor offers college football odds, set a Google alert with the keyword: “site: collegefootballodds.com.” This way, you are alerted whenever your competitors publish fresh content on their websites.
Also, thoroughly review your competitors’ websites for the backlinks they earn or build. It helps you understand the methods and strategies they use to promote their websites. If they achieve their backlinks through guest blogging, push to be a guest author on those exact websites and if it’s through blog reviews, contact the bloggers and allow them to test your content.
Build Broken Links
Building broken links is an excellent avenue to source high-quality backlinks. A broken link points users to an empty page or a non-existent external webpage. It directs users to a page that has been moved to another or deleted. Typically, when you click on a broken link, a (404) error message displays.
You can achieve this by searching for broken links on relevant sites in the niche through which you want to earn a backlink. You can get started by using these search formulas through Google:
- your keyword + links
- your keywords + resources
- keywords in URL + links
If you own a cooking website, search for “cooking + links.” After you find a broken link(s), email the site(s) owner through which you want to generate your backlinks. Tell them they are linking to resources that are no longer available, then ask them if you can share a relevant context from your website to which they can connect.
If your content is worth linking to, you are guaranteed earnings of backlinks. However, be careful not to send a generic email. You might not get your desired result. Reach out by sending a personalized email instead. Make sure you are helpful, do not come across as greedy to get a backlink, be friendly, introduce yourself and, as earlier stated, explain your reason for reaching out.
Build Internal Links
Getting backlinks for your website is made more accessible through internal links. Internal links are necessary for running your websites and can be used through anchor texts.
Internal linking helps your users navigate your website quickly if it is well structured. This even boosts the overall user experience. Although there are tools that automatically create internal links on your website (like WordPress), make an internal link manually.
Follow Trends
Building your content on trending topics and news is a veritable way to generate quality backlinks. Although evergreen content is great for getting backlinks and developing traffic all year long, publishing time-sensitive and news-based content solely serve as a magnet for quality backlinks.
Note that, in this case, the value of these backlinks might not be durable, but you will earn quality backlinks in a short amount of time. These backlinks could come from blogs, media houses, etc.
Publish Skyscraper Contents
Skyscraping is a concept that Backlinko’s Brian Dean popularized. Skyscraping content involves searching for the best, engaging content in your niche and creating even better content.
You can go about it by Googling for your keyword targets and going through the first page results thoroughly. Then ensure you search until you find the piece of content with the highest backlinks. Peruse the content to see how you can use it for your website.
Here’s how: look for holes, gaps, and whatnot. Check where that website is lacking. Then, what you want to do next is create similar content that fills those gaps; that answers everything that particular content did not answer.
The idea behind this method is to create content that substantially covers the topic down to its minute details. It’s a strategy you can use to overshadow that site and attract several other sites to link to your website and generate tons of backlinks.
Create Competitive and Interactive Content
If your content is not worth linking to, no one will link to you. It is no news that interactive contents attract tons of engagement. It creates buzz on the internet. Creating interactive content generates traffic and earns you legit backlinks.
For instance, “Which city you should live in” is creative content from Buzzfeed, which attracted over 1500 backlinks from sites like Techcrunch. Content such as polls, games, quizzes, etc., are highly interactive and should be considered.
Write Testimonials
Writing Testimonials is a stress-free way to get quality backlinks. Why? All businesses love to showcase their customers’ testimonials. Many brands use testimonials as social proof in terms of the usage of their quality products. Most often than not, they display them on their homepage.
So, if you’re a regular user of a service, you should write a testimonial in exchange for a backlink. As long as you’re a customer of some products, write testimonials and send them to your favourite brands so they can publish them on their homepage or in the testimonial section. After that, you’ll surely get backlinks to your site. However, it’s advisable to submit testimonials to companies relevant to your industry.
The Bottom Line
Earning quality backlinks is sometimes challenging and strenuous, but it is easy to achieve. When creating backlinks, ensure you focus on natural links from excellent content and blogger outreach. Keep in mind that the links you get are not from low-quality content. To generate backlinks, be very alert so you won’t prey on spammy paid links.
