Basic Link Building Strategies
Examine some of the basic link building strategies that can help you gather up some quality links pointing to your website.
We'll cover the following
Some link building tactics may be considered a violation of Google’s Webmasters Guidelines [53]. Avoiding those, there are still a number of respectable link building strategies that can drive some high-quality links to our website.
Here are the most basic ones all webmasters should know about:
Focus on content
Ideally, Google expects us to earn links rather than build them. Links are earned when people link to our pages without asking them to do so. People should want to link to our page. Even when we do ask webmasters and editors to link to our page, they should see something on our page that gives value to their audience.
Links earned naturally, also called editorial links, come through producing link-worthy content. Content that’s good enough to drive traffic is typically good enough to earn high-quality backlinks. As long as people see interesting content, chances are high that at least some of them will want to link to it.
Certain types of content are more linkable than others. The audience wants to see them and websites want to link to them. These are called linkable assets or link baits. Infographics, how-to guides, list posts, beginner guides, charts, maps, videos and whitepapers are some popular link baits.
Even with link baits, the key is to create original, awesome content. If there are already hundreds of blogs on the same topic and we’re only reproducing the same with no juicy, new, attractive bits of our own work, we’re doing it wrong. Create something that visitors consider a source of authority on the topics and we’ll automatically generate links over time.
Follow competitor’s backlinks
If we can find competitors that are ranking for our targeted keywords, we know that their link building strategy must be working since it has got them to the top of SERPs. The idea is to investigate where and how do competitors get their links from and then follow the same plan.
Step 1: Finding where competitors get links from
Semrush, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, and Moz all have their own tools to check competitor’s backlinks. If we don’t already know our competitor’s, we’ll first find the ranking websites for the keyword using our preferred SEO software (Semrush, Moz, Ahrefs, etc.).
Once we have the list of competitors, let’s pursue their backlinks. Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool generates a list of link sources with other important details, including page authority, anchor text, target URL, and date it was first and last indexed. We can download the data as a CSV. The analysis page looks like the following if we open the "Backlinks" tab:
Moz’s Link Explorer gives us a list of link sources, anchor text, PA and DA in the "Inbound Links" tab. Here’s what the analysis looks like:
We can download the backlinks data as CSV from one of our preferred programs and upload it to Google Sheets.
Step 2: Finding how competitors get their links
Once we have the competitors’ backlinks data in a spreadsheet, study it to understand how each link was acquired. Open each link source and check what kind of page it is.
If it’s a guest post, we’ll probably have luck pitching for the same. If the mentions are on a corporate website, sponsorships, advertisement, or email outreach must be working for them. For email outreach, add another column to the spreadsheet to include the email address of the backlinks for outreach.
Rearrange the blocks to place the steps to follow competitors' backlinks in the correct order.
Email outreach
Even if our awesome content exists on the web, people can’t link it if they don’t see it. If we’ve just started out with content generation, chances are that it’s not discoverable organically by people searching in the niche. This makes email outreach an effective link building technique, especially for new businesses. It helps us reach out to sources who are likely to link to us.
Step 1: Find who to outreach
The first step of email outreach is to explore linking opportunities. Look for sources that have the best potential to link to us. We can either do the heavy-lifting ourself, or let our competitors handle it for us. We already have a list of competitors’ backlinks if we followed the previous strategy.
Step 2: Find contact information
Pull out the contact information of the linkerati (people who can link to us). Hunter.io gives us the email address for any domain that we enter into their search box.
While Hunter.io gives us the address of the website, if we know the name of the editor or the author of a blog, VoilaNorbert might be a better option. It lets us pull out the email address of an individual by typing in their name and website.
This way, we can address the email to, for example, johndoe@example.com instead of support@example.com. There’s a better chance to earn a link if the person who can add the link to the page receives our email directly.
Include this contact information into the spreadsheet.
Step 3: Send emails
This is the step that webmasters and new SEO people often fail at. It’s also the step that can make or break our link building campaign. Spammy, generic emails sent out to thousands of linkerati won’t catch the attention of even a few. They’ll hardly read the email, let alone link to our content.
Since we want a response from them without being buried in their spam folder, take out the time to write a personalized email to each one that offers value to them.
Here are some tips to amplify the impact:
If we know, or can find out, address the receiver by their name.
Mention a recent content of the receiver that caught our interest.
Mention a resource on our site that aligns with the receiver’s niche.
Subtle suggestion that our resource can make a good addition to their page.
Drag and drop the blocks from the right to the left, placing them in order to create the list of steps for email outreach.
Build relations with customers and partners
Other than our competitor’s backlinks, there are other linkerati with strong potentials we don’t want to miss out on. Are there people we have been in business with for some time? The hard-earned relationship with our partners or customers can be an opportunity to earn a link on their site.
For example, if a happy customer reaches us out, we can ask them to share their thoughts about our business online. Not only will it give us an inbound link, but also improve our brand’s reputation.
If we have business partners, we can start by writing testimonials of their products. They’ll be more than willing to display these testimonials on their websites, linking back to us.
This is not all. There are other link building strategies, too, that can win us high-quality backlinks.
Test your knowledge
Choose the correct answer for each of the following questions.
What is the primary way to earn high-quality backlinks according to the lesson?
Buying links from reputable sources
Creating link exchanges with competitors
Producing link-worthy content
Submitting links to directories
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