So, you finally got a website for your business up and running. It’s been a few months, and isn’t performing as expected. In fact, it isn’t performing at all. Odds are, you don’t have any backlinks to your website. Building high-quality links isn’t easy, but it isn’t difficult either. After all, impossible says I’m possible. Here are some link building strategies that come with our Tested, OK seal.
Keyword Research
A good way that others (not just people from your target audience) could find your blog is to add keywords. Note that keywords need to be relevant to the blog, and they shouldn’t feel forced when someone is reading the content. Tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, and Uberuggest are quite handy to find popular keywords. Another tip is to add keywords to your anchor texts. The more relevant the content is, the higher it appears in the search engine. The higher it appears in the search engine results, the more people from your niche will want to link to it.
Find Your Mentions
Based on how big or useful your brand is, someone on the internet may be talking about it. The trick here is to find out the places where your brand has been mentioned and ask them to link your website. That sounds a bit too simple. Chances are, people have forgotten they mentioned your brand, so the response time to these requests may vary. Practice patience while waiting for a response, and don’t be pushy with the follow-ups.
Write To Your Strengths
Identify your niche and target audience and stick to them. Some research about your target audience could go a long way in identifying what’s currently trending. Writing content relevant to your target audience opens opportunities for relevant links to and from your website.
Create Testimonials
This is a rather simple strategy to build links. Just write positive testimonials on products and services that you use. You just have to create a list of the products/services you use and reach out to them,
stating your willingness to post a testimonial. You could also ask the brand to draft a testimonial on your behalf. (Some brands do that) The product/service will post your testimonial on their website along with your name and brand. Some websites post your testimonials and include a “Learn More” button that redirects the visitor to your website. Some brands also share testimonials on their social media handles.
Use The Tools
First things first. You need to know where you currently stand before you start talking about action. Fortunately, there are tools for that. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools like Ahrefs and MOZ offer information that’s more than just about your backlinks. You also get to see additional details, like
- Information on lost or broken backlinks
- Domains that are linking to your competitor
- The pages that are linked the most
- Quality of backlinks pointing to your website
- How your existing keywords are performing
- New keyword suggestions
Hopefully, with all this data, you’d get a clear picture of the areas of your website that need attention.
You don’t have to be worried about SEO getting outdated. The future of SEO is bright, with Google updating its guidelines regularly to keep up with the ever-changing search trends.
Competitor Analysis
There’s no harm in checking out what your competitor is getting right and what you aren’t. Conduct a study on the types of posts your competitor has, their level of engagement, and other metrics to give you a general idea of what you must do. Also, don’t forget to run your competitors’ backlinks through SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to learn more about their strategy.
Guest Posting
Guest posting is among the most-used techniques for link building. It goes like this. You create a piece of content that is informative and has links to your website. You then publish this content on a website with high domain authority (DA). The posts can be anything, from simple how-to articles to interviews and explainers.
Internal Links
Internal linking is when one of your posts has a link to another post in the same domain. Meaning you are linking your webpages among the different webpages of your website. Is this effective? Of course, it is. Internal links are great at redirecting traffic and page authority to a particular page. Not just that, internal linking also helps Google discover new content and is a great tool to manipulate Google’s crawler.
Check for Broken Links
It helps to periodically check the backlinks that are pointing to your website. You may find one or two broken, either because the page was removed or due to other technical reasons. You can use a free Chrome extension called Check My Links to search for broken links.
Once you’ve found a broken link, the only thing left to do is to contact the page owner and inform them about the broken link. You can ask them to fix the original post or re-add a link to your website.
Crowdfunding & Organizing Events
People use crowdfunding when they have an idea but no money. You can use that to your advantage. Find people raising money for projects related to your niche and donate. You’ll be featured on their donors page with all your details, including a link to your website. Based on the donation amount, some projects may even publish details about your brand along with links to your website and social media handles. Another unique way to attract backlinks is to organize events related to your brand/niche. You can either host a sponsored event or sponsor an event in its entirety. Both options give you the opportunity to increase brand awareness.
Influencer Marketing
Irrespective of your opinion about influencers, using them as backlinking tools is a good strategy. All you have to do is mention an influencer, someone who discusses products or topics in your niche, in your article. They will be compelled to share the article with their followers even if you don’t contact them. It can be anything, from a simple mention saying that they were featured in an article to sharing the article link on their social media handles. This is a super-easy method to drive up website traffic and increase rankings.
Those were 11 of the easiest link building strategies you can follow with little to no knowledge of SEO. Some of the tools mentioned in the article are free to use as well. There are more link building strategies out there. Some ethical, some not so ethical. Remember that link building is more than just driving people to your website. You should always prioritize providing value to your readers/visitors and establishing trust with them.
