If you’ve been trying to increase your search engine rankings recently, you’re probably already aware of how important backlinks are these days. Aside from strong on-page SEO, they’re one of the biggest things Google and other search engines look at when trying to rank a site for a specific keyword or search term. In this article, we’re going to look a bit more closely at how to build a stunning backlinking strategy for your online venture.
Many small business owners have a lot on their plate. You probably do too. If you’ve recently been approached by an SEO agency, they might have convinced you that you need to hire them in order to boost your ranking on Google and other search engines.
These services can be expensive. But they aren’t always necessary. While good SEO agencies can do a great job, you can get great backlinks and boost your site’s ranking for free. We’re going to look at how.
Why Quality Beats Quantity With Backlinking
There are two important words when it comes to backlinking these days: relevance and quality. Back in the day, you used to be able to spam your way to the top of search engines by simply throwing up as many backlinks as you could. But those search engine algorithms are a lot more complex these days. Spamming simply isn’t an option.
When Google tries to work out how high your site should rank for a particular keyword, they want to know how relevant you are. That means links from sites in the same industry or a particular niche have a lot more weight. It also means higher quality links from sites with a lot of authority on particular subjects hold more weight than those from completely unrelated websites.
What does that mean for you? When trying to get links, you need to target relevant authorities and other quality sources. Yes, quantity is still somewhat important, but you can’t spam your way to the top anymore. Actually, that could even harm your rankings.
You know those Fiverr gigs that offer 10,000 backlinks overnight for only $5. They seem too good to be true, right? That’s because they are. They could even see your site penalized or even blacklisted from Google altogether. That’s why you need to grow your backlinks organically, and target quality.
Instead of getting 10,000 backlinks overnight from worthless sites with no relevancy, no readership and no authority try getting 10 a week from well-known sites with a lot of link juice, and a lot of actual readers.
And that’s the thing with great backlinks. Not only are you getting a ton of link juice (which is great for SEO), you should also get real people seeing your links. That means real clicks and residual clicks, bypassing search engines altogether.
Now you know a bit more about effective backlinking, let’s have a look at a few ways to get great links for free.
1. Guest Posting
Guest posting is probably the number one way to get great backlinks from relevant authorities. But what is it, and how does it work? Guest posting is where you write an article for another site or blog (normally in your industry or something close to it). You offer value to their readers in the form of an article, the site gets (hopefully) great content for free, and you get a link back to your site—either at the end of the article or in the article itself.
Below is a graphic done by the awesome guys at BloggerJet showing the average traffic rates from guest posts:
As you can probably guess by now—quality is important with backlinking. Really important. You’ll only get on the best sites with the most authority and relevancy if you produce great content that the best sites want to publish.
Again, some marketers have got a bit spammy with guest posting, farming out low-quality articles to sites without any readership. This is still better than buying links off Fiverr, but it isn’t how you really make guest posting work for your venture.
Start by reaching out to some relevant authorities in your niche. Offer them something interesting and then give them a great guest post. Full of useful info, value and stuff their readers will actually want to know. That way, you’ll get more link juice for SEO but you’ll also hopefully get some direct traffic from the article itself.
[Tip from Editor: If you want to be one of our valued guest authors please see our guest posting guidelines.]
2. Content Syndication With Relevant Authorities
This might sound a lot like guest posting. It’s similar, but it isn’t the same. With content syndication, you’re actually reposting content that’s already been posted on your site. The principle is the same, in that re-publishing sites get great content for free and you get a backlink, but the process is slightly different.
The sort of sites that accept syndicated content might not be as relevant and might not give as much link juice, but this type of marketing is slightly less work as you can let one article on your site do all the talking for you on syndicated sites. It doesn’t require as much writing or content creation in the first place, and can be a good way to supplement your other ranking efforts and let your own content do a bit more for your site.
3. Forum Posting
This one is easy. Simply sign up for a few relevant forums in your niche or industry and start posting. Don’t spam or trick people into visiting your site. Be up front about things. Include a link in your signature and start being helpful on the forum.
Get known, and offer value to the community. You can do this with just a couple of posts every day for a while. Maybe 10 minutes at a time. You’ll get link juice and hopefully more traffic.
4. Infographics
Infographics have become hugely popular in the last few years. They’re a great way to present data in an easy-to-understand way. They’re also a great way to get backlinks for free. Create your infographic, and then submit it to a number of different infographic sites.
5. Video Marketing
Just like infographics are a great way to get backlinks, so are videos. Make some entertaining content that people want to share, and they’ll do most of the marketing legwork for you by spreading it to their extended friend network. That’s more visibility for your brand, more backlinks and more traffic.
[Tip from Editor: Check out our Video Marketing articles.]
6. Site Mentions
One intuitive way to get backlinks for free is by searching for site mentions. When you find people that are already talking about your business, you can reach out to them and politely ask if they’d like to make that mention an anchor text to your URL Many of them might be more than happy to do so.
7. Testimonials
You probably already know how powerful testimonials can be to build trust in your business when posted on your own site. But they’re also a great way to get backlinks on other people’s sites. If you’ve recently used a service or done business with another website, you can offer them a glowing reference with a backlink back to your site at the bottom. That way you get a relevant link from a business that has something to do with yours. You can offer them the same in return if you want.
8. Social Media
Social media have become huge in recent years, and it’s no longer a marketing channel you can afford to ignore. Every time someone likes your content, they’ll be spreading your message to their extended friend network. They’ll also be giving you a backlink. While not all of these links are dofollow, some of them are.
Keep offering your followers value and they’ll help market your business for you with both links and more residual traffic.
Hopefully, you’ve now seen how important backlinking is these days, along with how to do it right. Which of these methods have worked for you?
[Recommended reading: 5 Essential Link Building Techniques Every Marketer Should Use]
[Images – Main Image by wsyperek from Pixabay; Graphic: BloggerJet; Chains: Alamy/Kris Olin; other images from their respective websites and/or social platforms]
Terry Smith has got years of experience writing about marketing and SEO issues. He enjoys sharing his knowledge with those new to the industry, along with those trying to promote their businesses on a budget. He also works for Online Marketing Gurus, a digital marketing agency based in Hong Kong and Singapore.