A good portion of success in SEO and digital marketing lies in your backlinks. But as important as links are, the fact is there’s no shortcut for anyone in obtaining high-quality links.
If you think you can spam people with requests to give your website a mention––well, forget it. Don’t waste your time there, and focus on manual strategies that genuinely work. We’ll name the five best strategies below.
Table of contents
- Manual link building strategies
- How to build links that actually work
- How to plan your SEO link building strategy
- How does building links improve your site’s rankings?
- Which link building techniques should you use?
- What does link profile mean and why does it matter?
Manual link building strategies
1. Reach out to online publications
This is the one strategy most of us know pretty well. It’s not really scalable. It’s time-consuming. But nevertheless, it’s one of the few link building strategies that’s certainly here to stay.
When it comes to manual outreach, there are 2 things anyone trying to boost their website’s visibility should bear in mind:
- First, every email you send to reach out to an online publication or platform has to be respectful. It’s a human being on the receiving end, not a robot. So keep your message short and sweet, and show how much you appreciate their time and consideration. If you can, make up a formula for greater chances of success in this strategy.
- Second, don’t ignore social media. Why? Because it’s where you can find potential contacts for link building, including their interests, and tone of voice––small but crucial details that help in writing more personalized emails that work in your favor.
Want proof that social media works?
Take it from Samuel Quincy Edwards, the Chief Marketing Officer of SEO.co, who mentions how manual outreach has enabled him to build thousands of links for clients’ sites.
“We scour Linkedin, Twitter, and other social media platforms to do our research on the contacts,” he says.
Once they’ve learned a fair bit about the publications they want to reach out to, it’s about sending “manually curated emails to the contacts at the publications” containing a proper introduction about the company, the client, and how linking to that particular site benefits the publication.
Before we dive into the next strategy, here’s a bonus read on how to get traffic to your website WITHOUT Google.
2. Publish guest posts with good content
Another familiar strategy in the world of SEO. Guest posting or guest blogging is pretty much self-explanatory. Essentially, guest blogging is writing content such as a blog post for another website.
The key to writing a guest post or blog post is to write for blogs or websites similar to your niche.
Platforms like Medium.com have made it more accessible for agencies and small businesses to publish guest posts and start generating buzz for a website that’s new to the scene.
However, that’s not to say that anything goes in terms of what to publish and where to publish it.
Some tips and rules about guest posting
For starters, the golden rule is to only choose relevant websites with a high domain authority (DA)––which, by the way, is not synonymous with site traffic––for guest posting.
Ignoring this rule means you run the risk of hurting the SEO rankings of your own website (or client’s website), effectively nullifying the progress already made through other methods such as well-written existing web pages.
Furthermore, Irina Kvashali of amoCRM offers another tip for guest posting: try inserting not just hyperlinks to your website, but also links to other high-DA (domain authority) sites RELEVANT to the content.
Through this technique, she explains, “you can obtain many dofollow backlinks for free.” It’s a safer bet, in fact, to aim for free backlinks as opposed to paid links.
Why? Because Google may classify paid links as “black-hat tactics” that end up penalizing you “by damaging your website’s domain authority.”
Where does content for guest posting and blog posts come in?
Guest posting requires some effort in generating quality content if you want quality results in return. But what exactly is quality content that stands out? How do you know your blog posts perform well?
Here are a do’s and dont’s to help you get started:
- Don’t write a dozen or so other articles that discuss the same topic. Content isn’t a numbers game anymore. Google algorithms have changed significantly over the last 5 years. Quality over quantity.
- Do make it informative and written with a unique angle. If your content doesn’t solve a reader’s problem, expect higher traffic bounce rates and lower click conversions.
- Don’t write blog posts or content with multiple blocks of text. Multiple blocks of text are only good for one thing: creating a wall that separates you and your reader. Would you engage with a wall? No, you wouldn’t, so add a whitespace to improve readability.
- Do add relevant images, screenshots, and embedded videos to keep your readers’ attention for longer periods of time.
The main objective is to make your guest post or blog posts engaging enough to compel anyone coming across it to click “share” on different social media channels.
3. Produce content with curated industry stats
That’s right. Numbers matter a lot for your content, not just words. We’re not talking about content numbers, but statistical numbers.
Don’t underestimate the number of internet surfers, researchers, and content creators alike who constantly look for statistics online. How do you produce content with curated industry stats?
By creating a blog post from your website that serves as a hub for relevant stats in your niche or industry. You end up saving time for your audience.
The best part here is you don’t have to own the actual statistics and data.
All you need is to cite secondary sources, and posts that curate these stats will become resource pages highly referred to by content creators, searchers, as well as tech and news sites.
Want proof?
Consider how Steven Macdonald, founder of Kingspoint, was able to score “links from TechCrunch, Intercom, Forbes, Shopify, and Mailchimp” and accumulated over “6,000 backlinks over the course of 3-4 years.” Stats and numbers rule much of the internet, clearly.
4. Become a part of link building communities
Is link building solely about contacting strangers? Not at all!
Take comfort in knowing that link building communities do exist out there. You’ll find them on LinkedIn, Slack, or Facebook groups, and they consist of fellow content marketers and website owners trying to help each other out through link building opportunities.
You can read more about link building here.
This kind of strategy can go hand-in-hand with guest posting as well, given the extreme likelihood of encountering someone who runs a website belonging to the same industry, or a site covering topics and interests very similar to your site’s.
That was the case for Alladdine Djaidani at Hustler Ethos. With a combination of guest posting efforts and reaching out to communities, it took just three months to increase his website’s domain rating from 0 to 41.
Through those communities alone, he got a total of 102 links for his personal site, alongside about 210 links “for everybody involved in the process.” Join these groups and be ready to both help out and be helped by other members.
5. Contact journalists
Journalists have a lot of power in all forms of media, and the internet is no exception.
It’s not just because of what they know but who they know as well. As influencers, they may be willing to use their connections to have credible websites link back to your site.
Amit Raj of Amit Digital Marketing knows the true extent of that power. His agency once reached out to a blogger who “happened to be a journalist as well” and consequently, they were able to secure “links on the Associated Press and other regional US publications off the back of that one outreach correspondence.”
Building backlinks manually, while not necessarily fun for most people, is essential to SEO and marketing for the web.
It’s not going away anytime soon but also, it’s not getting any more complicated either. All the strategies above have existed and proven to work for some time.
However…
5 strategies might leave you hanging for more. You might have even heard about the strategies we mentioned, so here’s a more in-depth list of link building techniques to buff up your strategy.
How to build links that actually work
When you develop a link-building strategy, you want to build links that fulfill your expectations. It’s not easy, but many have done it. We’ve compiled some of the best techniques to help you get started and start ranking on those search engines.
What is the link intersect technique and how does it work?
The Link Intersect Technique is a popular method even Neil Patel uses to this day.
If you email a site asking them for a link, your chances of success aren’t exactly 50/50. However, if you email a site that linked to three or four of your competitors, there’s a higher chance of success.
How is that possible? It’s because these sites already provide links pointing to your industry and competitors. They’re more open to linking back to your site too.
The key here is to find sites already linking to a minimum of three of your competitors.
There are Link Intersect tools that can help you find out who is linking to your competitors. With Ahrefs, for example, they have a Link Intersect feature.
Just add the competitor’s domain into the tool, and you’ll see a report of sites that link to your competition but not back to you. Once you’ve found a site you can reach out to, you can reach out to the site with a simple email message.
Here’s a sample email from monitorbacklinks.com
“Hello (website owner),
I was doing some research on (topic) and found the post (post title) on your blog.
In the article, I see that you linked to (other person’s resource). I like a lot of the methods that he mentioned and I’ve tried a few myself. Personally, I’ve found that this can work even better if you (unique point or perspective highlighted in your resource).
I actually wrote a guide on this called (title). It might be worth a mention on your blog. Here’s the link, in case you’re interested: (include link)
Either way, keep up the great work!”
Unlinked mentions link building technique
What if we told you there’s an easier way of earning a hundred or possibly thousands of backlinks? Enter Unlinked Mentions.
What is Unlinked Mentions? It’s when you find a website or online content that mentions your brand or anything related to your brand BUT does not link back to your site.
Let’s say your website is Hungry Hippos, and you stumble on a cooking blog that talks about a recipe and mentions your site. Rather than work tirelessly to build links, you can email the site or blog and ask them to link back to you!
How do you find unlinked mentions?
You can use Ahref’s Content Explorer tool to help you find what websites mention you without a link. You might need to do some legwork to see if the mentions are linked or not, but this is a good place to get started.
After, reach out through a friendly email to the site owner and ask if they would be willing to put a link with the mention. A few agreements on this, and you already have some great backlinks ready to go.
Here’s a sample email you can use:
“Hi [First Name],
I came across your cooking blog and loved this article you wrote about [Topic]!
Thank you for mentioning [Your Brand] in your article about [Topic]
[insert the URL of the article or blog that mentions your brand]
I wanted to let you know I shared your article on Facebook to show my appreciation.
On a side note, I would appreciate it if you adjusted the mention of [Your Brand] and turn it into a link that points to [Your Site]
Keep up the great work!”
Grab links from mediocre web pages and link them to your site
What’s worse than mediocre content? Mediocre content with 3x as many backlinks as your site is what. Tch. Content these days, right?
Now, let’s say this mediocre piece of content is a 300-word guide about a Beginner’s Guide to Vegan Living, but you have a superior 4000-word Beginner’s Guide to Vegan Living on your site.
So you’d probably ask yourself: How does a site like that have more links than yours? Why would a site link to their guide but not yours?
The answer? It’s probably because that site DOESN’T know a better, more in-depth guide like yours exists! What you can do is send that site an email, introduce them to your content, and ask them to link back to you.
Now, you’ll be able to gain more links to your site just by finding inferior or mediocre content and “stealing” links. But how do you find inferior pieces of content?
You can search for this using the Content Explorer tool on Ahrefs. You can then check the links and look for links that are worth stealing – ones where your content would provide more value. Simply rinse and repeat by sending out emails to those sites and you’re set!
This is one link building tactic worth spending considerable time on. Of course, be sure to beef up the content on your blog too.
How to plan your SEO link building strategy
You’ve probably heard of these common link building strategies, right? Content marketing, email outreach, broken link building, and public relations.
But here’s what you need to understand about effectively planning your SEO Link Building Strategy. It can take as short as 6 months to 2 years for a successful strategy and see results.
That being said, here’s a general 6-step plan you can use as a guide.
- Plan ahead. Plan the types of links you want to build, quality of links, and keywords you want to target in your anchor text.
- Audit your content. Is your website performing as you expect it to? Where does it stand? Is there any content you can repurpose and add to your link building plan?
- Create a content pillar. Your content pillar is a comprehensive piece of content you can break down into smaller pieces of content like blog posts, emails, social media posts, etc. For example, you can write an Ultimate Guide about Brand Engagement or Everything You Need to Know About Brand Engagement. Take your time when planning what your content pillar will be about.
- Use social media. Social media has become a powerful resource to build links to your site, and it’s also a bottomless well for finding content ideas for the next step.
- Start blogging. Creating blogs with good content gives you more credibility and a higher chance to earn links.
- Start your outreach campaign. Email outreach, blogger outreach, social media outreach. It’s easier to reach out to influencers, companies, and bloggers now that you’ve successfully built a content pillar, great blog content, and a strong social media presence. You can also outsource this if you want.
If you do SEO link building the right way, your online presence in major search engines and platforms would skyrocket and as a result, increase organic traffic.
Below is a guide on some of the key elements, tools, and resources you need to improve your SEO link-building results and strategy.
What are the key elements of a link building strategy?
It’s not enough to just pick out a few links and hope it will make you more visible online. Instead, you need to be careful and choose the right links that match your content and provide some benefits.
Some of the principles you can consider with link building include:
1. Choose the link text well
Don’t just insert a link wherever you like. There needs to be SEO value, and by that, we mean the anchor text.
If you’re hyperlinking a text that says “great reviews” to an article like “Blogger Outreach Strategies”, would it compel readers to click on the link? Probably not.
Don’t add links for the sake of adding them in. Make sure the text is relevant to what you’re linking out to.
2. Study your competition
Take a look at some of your competition’s work. Then see if you can replicate their ideas.
We’re not saying copy word-for-word. You want unique content, but you can also find inspiration on how they do links, how often there are links, content structure, word count, and more.
3. Think about your offerings
What makes your offer unique? How does it stand out compared to your competitors? Not only do you want to link to your own site, but you also want to provide high-quality content that someone else will want to link to as well.
Remember the Beginner’s Guide to Vegan Living example? If your site produces higher-value content and provides richer info about a certain niche, use that to your advantage.
4. Reciprocal links
These are like link exchanges. Think: I link to you, and you link to me.
This can help you get more links by linking to those who are also willing to link back to you. While this seems like a good idea and can be, you need to be careful about which sites you link with. If you want to maintain your reputation, only link to the right people. If you ruin your reputation, who knows what will happen? You can ruin your website’s SEO, or worse, a client’s. You can lose clients because of this.
5. Deep linking
Consider linking to pages outside of your website’s home page. These can be unique and may get better results.
6. Track the links
Keep track of how your links are doing each week. See which ones are performing the best and which ones may need to be replaced.
Keep reading: How to Perform a Backlink Audit in 7 Steps
What are some of the best link building tools to use?
To help you get the most out of your link-building strategy, it is time to pull in some of the best tools you can use.
There are several tools to help you build the links and track how they are doing. The trick is to find one or two that fit your needs. Some great options to consider are Hunter.io, HARO, SEO Toolbar, and URL Profiler.
How does building links improve your site’s rankings?
Think of building links the same way an influencer mentions or uses a brand’s product online.
Let’s say you run a site called Detoxify and sell a product called DetoxiBlend. If a popular influencer like Sarah Brunella promoted DetoxiBlend online, how many people do you think would start heading over to your site and buy your product?
A thousand? Hundred thousand? What if 3 popular influencers did the exact same thing as Sarah Bruunella? Your organic traffic and sales would explode! But the key lesson here is trust. More people would trust your product.
Link building works in a similar way. When a high DA (domain authority) site like Everyday Health links back to your smaller health niche site, you’d see a rise in organic traffic and your rankings because…
Search engines like Google see links as a sign of trust. The more links you build, the more trustworthy your site becomes. And the more trustworthy your site becomes, the higher your site’s rankings evolve.
Is building links difficult?
Building links can be hard. It seems like a simple enough process to get done, but expect some complexity down the line.
It takes considerable experience to make sure the links are high-quality, placed in the right areas, and the right anchor text is being used. This is not something that you spend one day on and hope it works out. That’s why some businesses just hire agencies to build links for them.
On that note, here’s a guide you can use while you’re getting started: How to Not Suck at Link Building.
Should you hire a link building service?
Most individuals and companies should consider hiring a link building service to do the work.
Since link building can be time-consuming, you may not have the time or the resources to do the work independently. It is also possible that website owners will ignore you, and link building can cost a lot of money. If you don’t feel confident creating high-quality content, this can hinder all of the hard work you do with link building as well.
Now it’s one thing to hire a link building service, it’s another to choose the right one.
With all of the different components that need to come into play for link building, it can save you a lot of time to hire a professional service. They can handle choosing the links, doing the outreach, and helping you create amazing copy to get onto the website.
Word of advice – at least know the basics of link building. You wouldn’t want an SEO company to overcharge you, or worse case, scam you.
What should you do first: link building or content creation?
Between the two, content creation.
Creating compelling, high-quality content is a must. You can add all of the high-quality links to your website, but if the content is mediocre or does not provide value, you’re missing out on link opportunities.
Create content that addresses your reader’s problem. Don’t write content for the sake of writing. If you’re posting content regularly on your site but you don’t have a goal for those content posts, your audience would feel lost and bounce from your site.
If you are not good at creating the high-quality content that is necessary, then it is time to hire someone who can. Consider what some of the things are that your customers would appreciate learning about, and then write good articles that help explain those things, teach something new, and more.
Which link building techniques should you use?
Now that we know a bit more about link building and the importance it has in growing your business, it is time to take a look at some of the link building techniques you should use.
3 simple link building techniques to start with
There are a lot of techniques you can use to help you create the links your website needs. The three main techniques you can use to help you get started include:
- Ask for backlinks: As a beginner, this is one of the best ways to get started. Think about friends or people you know and ask them for a backlink. Also, choose websites strictly relevant to your niche. Otherwise, it wouldn’t do any good if a food blog linked back to your tech website, right?
- Build relationships: To get the most out of link building, building relationships goes a long way. There are a ton of great opportunities to build new contacts, such as on a forum, social group, Quora, or even on Instagram! Contribute genuine value in these places with relevant posts and comments, and not with forced, insincere comments. Doing this will help you gain good backlinks and help you grow. It’s not the best technique out there, but it’s one of the best ways to get your feet wet in link building.
- List your site in trustworthy directories: There are online directories worth checking out. However, not all directories online are good options. You’ll have to do a little more research before reaching out to every single directory online.
3 types of SEO links
There are a few types of links you should be aware of for SEO purposes. The most common types include:
1. Backlinks (inbound links)
These are the incoming hyperlinks from another website back to yours. In other words, it’s when a website links back to your site.
While some SEO experts will try to get as many of these as possible to help boost their rank, this may not be the right approach.
It is best to have quality backlinks rather than quantity. When you create valuable content that generates a lot of interest, getting high-quality backlinks is far more worth the effort.
2. Outbound links
Backlinks are often the most important type of link to focus on, but outbound links, which are links from your own website to another site, can also help to improve your rankings. It’s the exact opposite.
A common question we hear a lot is: Why would I link to their site when there are links landing on my site already?
Great question. Here’s our answer: Search engines crawl through links and count inbound links AND outbound links. The more links you have on your site – inbound or outbound – the higher your chances of ranking!
Take note of these 2 important reminders when it comes to outbound links:
- Look over the content on your website and find relevant texts or sections where you can add an outbound link and provide more value to your customers. Even if you’re linking out to another site, it should still and always be relevant.
- Make sure they link to legitimate sites. Imagine if a reader clicked on a link and it took them to several 403 forbidden or spammy sites? That’s one mistake you want to avoid.
3. Internal links
So if inbound links are links pointing to your site while outbound links are links going out of your site, what are internal links then?
Well…internal links are links from your site that link to different pages on your site. Here’s an example:
On your website’s homepage, someone could link a link on your homepage and it would take them to your website’s blog or store location. Boom. And just like that, you have 2 internal links. One that links to your blog, and another that links to your store location.
And again, just like outbound and inbound links, the more links you have on your site including internal links, the higher your chances of ranking.
Internal links are also useful for improving your site’s user retention rate. A higher retention rate means stronger prominence on Google and higher credibility as a site. These are good for helping search engines understand the architecture of your site a bit better, which makes it easier to pull this information out later.
Tip: You don’t want to overdo this, though but it can help your ranking when done appropriately.
Also worth considering: Niche Edits Links
What does link profile mean and why does it matter?
A link profile is simply the makeup of all the links that direct back to your site. Search engines like Google prefer to see a variety of sites linking back to you, especially if these sites are high-authority along the way.
When you have a high-quality link profile, you get the following benefits:
- Growing traffic
- The indexing of your page is faster
- Get closer to ranking at the top on search engines
- Increased brand or site awareness
What does this tell us? It means that while building links is important, you don’t want to rush the process JUST to have links. Link profile is a reminder for us that quality significantly matters to Google.
What is an example of a good link profile?
The best link profiles have two crucial elements: High-quality and diversity.
When it comes to diversity, there must be a variety of links from different sources. If all of the links come from one or two websites, the link profile isn’t as high compared to a website with links from 10 different high DA sites.
The quality of the links and the website your links end up in can be a major factor here too. The more quality your links have, the easier it is to have a great link profile. What’s the difference between a low-quality link and a high-quality link? This article should help.
Creating good content that is valuable to your user will help with this the most. If you start to see that your link profile is going down because you have a lot of bad links going back to you, then it is time to make some changes.
How to check your link profile
There are a few options you can use to see what your link profile is at any time:
- Moz Open Site Explorer
- Majestic SEO
- Raven
- Ahrefs
When you visit these sites, type in the URL that you want to check, and the site will generate the link profile. (Note: Some might require premium a subscription).
Link profile reminders
- Remember that the number of links will not be the most important number. It’s more about the quality of the inbound links that will matter the most.
- Make sure you have a good ratio of linking domains to total links. For example, if you have 3000 total inbound links, but they only link back to two domains, that is not a good sign, and you will not get the good ranking you want.
Key elements of a link profile
You have to be extra careful about the links you use when it comes to your link profile. It is not enough to just have links, though that might seem like it’s the most important when you first start out.
There are considerations with the quality of the backlinks you choose to use. Some of the key elements you need to look for include:
- Link relevance: It’s not enough to paste a link on your website or have someone link out to you. There has to be some relevance in place to make this work.
- The anchor text: Even the text you use to support the link must be high-quality. Part of the SEO you do will help you figure out the right anchor text to use.
- Domain ranking or the page the link is coming from: If you get a good link to a highly ranked domain, this does a lot more for your website than linking to one that is ranked lower.
- Link placement: Even the location of the links on the page matter. To get a higher ranking, check if you can easily spot the links throughout your content. If it’s poorly placed, your readers probably won’t notice it.
When you get all of these components to come together, you’ll see a higher link profile over time.
Final words
So there you have it.
Here are strategies you can use to build links and a definitive guide on how to build links effectively. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with all you have to do, you can simply start with guest posting. Writing a guest post doesn’t have to be just about links.
Committing your strategy to how you provide value builds trust, which is essential to getting organic traffic.
For search engines like Google, links are all about the trustworthiness your site brings. Keep that in mind as you’re searching for any type of content online.
