Getting hyperlinks from other websites, for your website is called link-building. Just like when a person stands in the election and the votes decide how much people prefer the person; the same way, your trustworthiness and authority of the website depend on how many hyperlinks you can acquire.
These links signal the search engine to crawl to your website and find out how valuable the content is. Links are one of the most important factors to decide a page’s rank. More high-quality links to your website increase the chances of ranking higher in SERPs for certain keywords.
This leads to a boost in visibility and eventually, more leads, customers, and brand awareness. So, link building isn’t just about building the count of links but, building long-term relationships with other websites, excelling in your industry, and crafting content that is valuable, informative, and shareable.
Link building is an important part of a successful SEO Strategy.
The Importance Of Link Building
Link building helps in increasing ranks but, it isn’t just a tactic for making your website authoritative. It requires strategy, time, and patience to invest in your website’s success. But, why does it matter?
Higher Ranks On SERPs
We read in the starting, links help in ranking the website higher in SERPs. Google uses an algorithm consisting of many factors to determine the ranks of a website, links are one of them. Links act like referrals from a company’s trustworthy employee or partner. You get the website’s authority boosted, relevance increased, and better search ranks.
58.1% of SEO experts believe that backlinks help in improving the rank of a website on search engine result pages.
Increase In Organic Traffic
Now if we try to predict the consequences of high search results, we’ll find one more point, higher visibility. When the ranks of the website are higher, more people see the website and click on it. This eventually increases the visibility and we conclude, the increase in organic traffic.
This traffic comes to your website without paying a penny, but results in more conversion, turning your audience into potential customers.
Improved Brand Authority
Suppose you have a friend who’s a topper, famous in the whole school. One day, they decided to make it public and now, you’re the shining star, all because of them. Similarly, when other authoritative websites link to you, they pass the link juice, directing search engines towards you. And so, you’re considered a valuable and trustworthy resource for the web as well as the users.
Enhancement In User Experience
Informative and relevant content is what the audience wants. User experience should be a priority for every website. So, when the needs of your audiences are fulfilled, the user experience is enhanced. For this, links increase your reach and provide your audience with relevant sources of information.
Link building takes time but its long-term benefits can’t be compared to any other factor or strategy. The time and efforts you invest come back to you as higher ranks, organic traffic, brand authority, and enhanced user experience. Altogether, it leads to the successful phase of your website.
How To Find High-Quality Link Opportunities
There are many people to tell you what link building is and why it’s important. But, who covers the practical part – link-building opportunities? Not many. To be honest, link building isn’t about just links or the quantity of links but, where it comes from.
To be an authoritative website, it needs high-quality backlinks from other authoritative websites within the niche of your expertise. Some ways to find high-quality link opportunities are-
Competitor Analysis
You might be familiar with competitor analysis for keywords and content but have you ever done it for link-building opportunities? If not, you’ve been missing a lot of growth opportunities.
According to Search Logistics, the page that ranks 1st on Google has around 3.8x backlinks compared to the pages that rank 2 or lower.
You don’t need to think too much about it, it’s quite easy. See, when you see websites ranking in the same niches as yours, you should know that they’ve already built links with other websites, You just don’t know it.
Why not benefit from it? Let’s do it!
Firstly, just create a list of your competitors, more most relevant and direct one. If you’re aware of them, great! If not, search the keyword on the Google Search Bar, head towards the SERP, and list down the top-ranking websites.
But, due to a lack of information, this isn’t an effective way of finding your competitors. You might use an SEO tool instead, to find websites that are your actual competitors.
If you’re using an SEO tool to find your competitors, it’ll be easier to get the info on backlinks as well! Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can easily provide the competitors’ data about their backlinking websites. By approaching them, you can build quality backlinks as well.
Backlink Outreach
But, not all websites allow you to put links yourself on their website. You will need to reach out to the website owners to put your website’s URL on theirs. It is named backlink outreach.
As shown in the image above we can decide that this website will accept our content with backlinks (write for us).
Use either Email or Social Media to reach out to the website owners as they are the most direct and effective ways to do so.
What should you say, or how to write the messages to the owners?
- Greet them first and introduce yourself.
- Explain how you can bring value to their website and audience.
- Include links to your content that you want them to use and ask politely to backlink – also suggest where can they put this.
- Provide your email signature with the photo and contact information yours.
- Lastly, create a subject line that catches their attention and tells them about what you’re helping them with.
These are just the basic steps that you can follow to reach out. To make it effective, you can also include what you liked about their website and it makes a difference. Plus, why would you like them to link to you?
Unlinked Mentions Into Links
Turning mentions that aren’t linked to your website into links is an easy way to acquire backlinks. There are times when other brands, owners, and ever users mention your website as a resource but don’t give much attention to actually linking it. This might happen due to their unattentiveness or busy schedule.
But why lose the chance? Remind them, ask them, or request! You know, the content is already posted, and you are already referred to and mentioned as a source, you just need to add the main ingredient – the link, to turn it into a high-quality backlink.
One way to find places that mention your brand or website is to enter intext: “xyz.com” in the Google search bar.
Another way is to use an SEO tool like Ahrefs. Head to the content explorer, type the keywords in quotes, and choose “in content”. Apply the filter named “highlight unlinked” to get the pages that mentioned you but didn’t link. You can export this information to a CSV file. And reach out to the people to give backlinks.
After you’ve got the list, filter out the newest mentions as they’re easier to turn into backlinks. Target most relevant mentions. Find their email addresses and outreach!
Broken Link Building
This will be quite easy if you have great content available. Why? Websites with broken links are negatively affected and might face a lot of loss in ranking and visibility. But, if someone helps those websites and solves the issue, they’ll become an instant favorite.
Here, what you can do is find websites within your niche that have broken backlinks. If you have something that can replace it and provide value, take a step forward and offer it to the owner.
One advanced approach is to replace broken backlinks, especially on your competitors’ websites. They have high authority and a larger audience. A backlink from them can make your website gain more authority and an increased reach.
Only 5% of websites have backlinks that point to them. This means, there are more opportunities than you expect.
(Other than broken links, you can also replace outdated links!)
Guest Posting/Showcasing Expertise
The important question is, are you confident? – of your expertise, skills, and content. A direct approach to building backlinks is to provide value. How?
- Guest Posts
- Participating in Podcasts
- Giving Interviews
- Getting involved in events and projects.
These ways result in building links with a one hundred percent guarantee. The wide audience that you reach by doing so gets redirected to your website increasing its visibility and authority.
Quality Content On The Website
We discussed many ways to get backlinks which included competitor analysis, outreach, broken link building, guest posting, and turning unlinked mentions into links. But, do you know the ultimate way to get a backlink – the most natural one? Great Content.
Make your website a source of information that’s true, engaging, and factual. When people get attracted to a webpage or find helpful content, they share it automatically. They share it with their friends, family, social media, and even their websites as a source of information.
So, the first step towards a great backlink profile should be to make your website great enough to be shared and liked.
Lately, backlinks aren’t just about increasing the number of links to your website and keeping them forever. No, that’s the most harsh act you’ll do for your website. Link building is about building new, genuine, and high-quality backlinks, removing spammy or irrelevant backlinks, and retaining backlinks from authoritative resources.
Email Outreach For Building Powerful Links
We read a bit about outreach earlier in the blog. Let’s cover it in detail. Email outreach is mainly about reaching out to people where there are chances of building links – potential websites to get backlinks from. This might seem scary or hard at first, but it gives exceptional results in return.
Let’s see how you can create a perfect outreach email-
- Find the right person to contact. That could be an editor, manager, and even the owner of the website. Make sure that the website you’re targeting is worth your time and can provide you with what you expect.
- Start by greeting them – use their name. Remember, personalization is the key to grabbing attention. Introduce yourself and mention your research about them – something specific that you liked or some recent content that provides value.
- Then, tell them about what you’re offering and its value. Explain how it can provide value to their website as well as the audience. Don’t ask for a link directly, instead focus on what you’re offering them.
- You should understand that your recipients are busy. So, keep your email clear and short that directly delivers the main message to them.
- At the end, include a CTA that asks you to read your content, share it, or link to it.
- The most important step – if you haven’t got any response for some days, politely reproach them and ask them to check it once. Be patient about the process.
Through these steps, you can easily craft an outreach email to get backlinks and achieve what you aim for.
Other than this, focus on building relationships with your targets – offer them data and insights – the more good you do, the more chances are of collaboration in the future. Engage with their content regularly and give feedback on their blog posts and social media and be helpful by sharing it and giving them ideas.
But, is it that easy? There are some challenges faced by most people. They are high bounce rates, low response rates, and link rejection. But never get discouraged! Keep on improving. Find what you missed and cover up for it next time.
Additionally, don’t lag in using outreach tools, track results to improve with time, and lastly, keep patience.
The Dark Side: Black Hat Link Building
The tactics that are used to boost a website’s search rank artificially or manipulatively are termed black hat link building. These methods go against the rules and guidelines of search engines and can even result in many penalties when caught.
Some of the black hat link-building tactics are –
Buying Links
Buying backlinks is the most direct and perfect way of violating search engine guidelines. It’s a shortcut and negatively affects the natural link-building process. Want to get your website blocked or get a huge fine to fill? Go ahead for it.
Link Farms
Many low-quality websites form a group and create a network where they exchange their links to boost each other’s website is also a way of black hat link building. These websites are of less value and can be detected easily by search engines. So, if you don’t want to be fined, avoid that.
Additionally, submitting a lot of links to directories that aren’t authoritative and genuine is yet another tactic. It includes spamming with comments and content on various blogs and forums with links to your website.
Duplication And spinning
Suppose someone found very interesting content on a high-profile website. Now, they want to do the same. So, instead of creating their piece they either duplicate it or spin the content to avoid plagiarism. This harms the website’s reputation and even results in penalties.
Cloaking And Hiding
Overusing keywords, hiding content, or, showing different content to users and search engines is like deceiving them. This goes against the search engine guidelines and can force them to take strict action for your website.
We’ve discussed how people try to deceive the search engine but let’s not forget, they aren’t stupid. They know your website well before you can. And once someone is caught using these tactics, then it’s over for them.
They might be penalised which leads to lower rankings and even getting removed from the index. The trust is gone now, and the reputation gets damaged. This leads to the waste of your time, efforts, and resources.
A legal action can also be taken against you which involves going against copyright and practices of deceiving.
White Hat Link Building
Now that we know enough about black hat link building and its aftereffects, why not use that time to create organic white hat links? Focusing on high-quality, reliable links gets more success even if they’re in lower numbers.
The white hat link building includes outreach, relationship building, and providing value. It takes time and patience but the results are worth the wait.
Always remember that SEO exists to provide value and not to rob them or manipulate them. Prioritize user experience and high-quality content and you’ll see yourself close to long-term success.
Some advanced Link Building tactics include-
- Participating in online forums and communities to answer questions with a link to your website to help the readers and show yourself as an expert.
- Send relevant information and insights to journalists for media coverage and backlinks.
- Optimize your website for local SEO to get links from local businesses and directories.
Never forget that natural things take time and are more of an ongoing process rather than a one-time investment. You need patience, consistent efforts, and high-quality content to provide solutions to your audience.
All the strategies stated above can help your website get backlinks and authority and enable you to build a high-quality backlink profile to boost the ranking in SERPs.
Tools And Software for Link Building
Fascinated by link building and how it can help your website stand out but want to enhance your speed and quality of work? To make all your efforts not go to waste and to take cautious and informed steps ahead, many tools perform different functions and help you with them. Some of them are –
Overall Link Analsis And Competitor Research
Tools that offer extensive backlink analysis, competitor research, keyword research, content exploration, and assistance with SEO, PPC, and social media marketing to increase domain authority include Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz, and Majestic. They even focus on link metrics like citation and trust flow.
Outreach And Management
Outreach is a crucial part of link building. There are many tools to assist you with it. For example, BuzzStream helps with managing outreach campaigns, teaching prospects, and measuring the results. Pitchbox offers more features like email automation and lead management.
Respona helps you with email templates, personalization, and automated follow-up emails. And, Hunter excels in finding email addresses of the potential prospects to outreach for link building.
Prospects And Research
Outreach is important but will you reach out when you do not have any prospects? Tools like Buzzsumo, Google Alerts, and HARO help you with that. BuzzSumo finds content that is popular and influencers relevant to your niche.
Google Alerts helps you with monitoring your brand and keyword mentions online. HARO lets you take a step forward to connect with journalists who want expert sources and information.
Technical SEO And Link Management
Building links alone can’t get your website success. Solving the technical issues and broken links, getting insights about websites about backlinks and how to solve them, and, identifying harmful backlinks help your website succeed. For the same, Tools like Screaming Frog SEO spider, Google Search Console, and Google Disavow Tools help with it respectively.
Some additional tools for helping you out are –
- Check My Links: Helps in finding broken links
- Linkody: Monitors backlink profiles and suggests changes when required.
- Monitor Backlinks: Monitors backlink profiles, suggests changes, and helps with competitor analysis as well.
These tools are helpful, they make your tasks and research easy but relying solely on them is stupidity. Tools can provide ease but can’t replace the strategic thinking of a human and the high-quality content created by a human.
If you’re looking to enhance your efforts, use these tools but don’t depend on them. Additionally, tasks like relationship building and content creation should be in your hands, completely.
Link Building Success
There’s no doubt about the power of link-building and what it brings with it. It’s more than just likes – relations, content creation, and website establishment, Quantity can never rule quality. Quality stands first, quality stands higher. It includes genuine content creation and staying updated with Search Engine algorithms.
The process is ongoing. It needs regular efforts to build new links, remove old, outdated, or spammy links, and retain high-quality links. All these efforts resulted in improved website authority, increased organic traffic, and enhanced online presence.
So, ready to step towards success? Start with understanding your backlink profile and filtering it, finding out the target audience, and creating a robust content strategy that fulfills their needs. Every link acts as a step closer to success!