Get Backlinks the Smart Way

Sure, you’re generating incredible content, week after week. However, there’s a problem. You’re not seeing organic traffic. The issue may be a lack of quality sites linking to you (also known as backlinks). Even though SEO is in constant motion, backlinks remain one of the most essential ranking factors.

In essence, it means that you must try every trick in the book to get websites to link to you. And, this doesn’t imply getting involved in shady link schemes. What follows is a rundown of tried and tested ways to earn quality backlinks without putting your site at a risk.

Guest Posts

Guest posting, as the name suggests involves contributing content to another site in exchange for a link back your website. You can place the backlink in the author section or somewhere in the article’s body. That way, one party gets content to share with their audience, while the other gains a high-quality link.

Sounds super easy, right? It sure does – until you try to reach out to potential sites that’ll accept your guest post request. See, not everyone is willing to allow people to upload content on their site. So, you’ll have to develop a clever strategy to ensure that you’re successful with your campaign.

So, how do use this tactic correctly?

Well, one of the easiest ways to do so is to get a third party service such as SerpTrust to reach out to relevant sites on your behalf. That way, you can be sure to get curated content and most importantly quality links that’ll complement your outreach efforts. Think of it as a way of hiring experts to run your guest post outreach campaign.

On that note, SerpTrust.io – spreads fear among competitors with its super vetted database of solid websites with organic traffic. And the beauty of it is that you get to choose from a wide range of sites irrespective of your niche.

Public Relations

Public relations might sound a little bit more “traditional” to digital marketers.

But, when it comes to building links, the phrase implies using the same strategy to get backlinks as you would with the press. The difference, however, is that you get mention as a source in a news write-up.

You can do this by hiring a publicist with connections to major publications. Or, you can sign up for a service such as HARO that allows you, journalists, to looks for sources within their every day or weekly newsletter.

Keep in mind that journalists and bloggers are constantly looking for fresh info. So, whenever your business achieves a significant milestone, be sure to make the announcement and details discoverable.

Broken Link building

Here’s the thing – almost every website (even reputable and well-maintained sites) have broken links.

See, every link on a website connects to another page. But since sites shuffle their content once in a while, some links with “break” with time or connect to pages that don’t exist. The ripple effect is that you’ll get a 404 error alerting you know that the page isn’t available.

By extension, this means a not so pleasant experience. It also implies that search engines cannot crawl and index the website. Broken link building offers an excellent solution to resolve this while providing you a great way to acquire valuable links.

How do you go about it?

Well, you’ll start by finding the broken links (obviously) and identify the content the site was originally referring to. You’ll then offer the website an opportunity to swap their broken link with a valid one and relevant content on your website.

Now, that’s a win-win situation for everyone right there! The website owner will reduce the number of broken links and you’ll end up with a high-quality backlink for your effort. Think of this strategy as the same as guest posting but with less effort.

The Bottom Line

You have to perfect the art of getting backlinks if you want your content to attract love from search engines. As stated, make sure that you only go for valuable links. Other methods of acquiring links include using scrapper content and “stealing” competitor’s backlinks.

Yes, if a site is a direct rival, they’re likely to link back to you. You’ll have to create a list of your competitors though!

Melissa Thompson writes about a wide range of topics, revealing interesting things we didn’t know before. She is a freelance USA Today producer, and a Technorati contributor.