Credibility is important in marketing. It’s better for someone else to confirm your credibility rather than you confirming it yourself. Backlinks that point from one site to another are ranking factors in many search engine algorithms. These backlinks act as a vote of confidence: another website owner confirms that your page provides value and that your domain has authority on the topic of the article.
The Importance of Backlinks in Search Engine Optimization
Knowing how to acquire backlinks is an essential part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as it helps you rank your site higher in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) and provides a steady stream of traffic. Realistically, there are likely hundreds – if not millions – of sites very similar to yours. How do search engines choose which site to display on the first page?
15 Proven Ways to Gain Backlinks
Now that you understand the importance of backlinks, how can you obtain them?
1. Be a Source for Journalists
Journalists are always looking for sources to include in their stories. Look for journalists writing about topics that overlap with your site. If they are writing a piece relevant to your areas of expertise, there’s a strong chance you’ll be featured and gain a backlink in the process. For example, online beauty business owners want to reach out to journalists writing for publications their audience reads, such as Grazia or Cosmopolitan. Look for the “About Us” page for each publication and find the journalist most likely to need your expertise.
2. Use HARO or Hire a HARO Agency
Services like Help a Reporter Out (HARO) make it easy for website owners to connect with journalists writing for high-authority sites. Sign up as a source and receive emails when journalists are looking for contributions that match your expertise. HARO is the most popular platform of its kind. As a result, journalists may be overwhelmed with responses, making it harder for your outreach email to stand out. Diversify your backlink-building strategy with less crowded similar platforms such as: Help a B2B Writer SourceBottle Terkel Qwoted. Using this backlink-building strategy, SEO consultant Blake Smith saw a 327% increase in organic search traffic by responding to journalists’ requests.
3. Publish Research or Original Data
It’s nearly impossible to acquire backlinks if your site doesn’t have content worth linking to. This is why 40.7% of SEO professionals say that content marketing provides the best results for passive link building. Traditional content marketing programs will create blog posts, case studies, and white papers. Use your content program to produce research reports using your own data. Since journalists won’t find the research your brand produces anywhere else, it will give you more backlinks.
4. Create Statistics Aggregation Pages
Speaking of statistics, you don’t have to invest resources in producing data. Collect existing data from other sources and compile it into a statistics aggregation page. Writers and journalists often look for data to support their stories. Make their work easier with an aggregation page that includes external data from third-party sources. There’s a strong chance that the writer will link to your aggregation page instead of the original source.
5. Publish Free Tools
The stronger the reason to link to your site, the easier it is to gain backlinks. Free tools are among the strongest reasons. By linking to your tools, other website owners achieve their goals: providing value to their readers … even if that means directing them elsewhere. This includes: templates, calculators, maps, and checklists.
6.
Searching for Unlinked Mentions and Requesting Backlinks
If your site has been around for a while, there’s a good chance that people are already talking about your brand. Reach out to them and ask the website owner to convert that mention into a backlink. To find unlinked brand mentions: create a Google Alert for your brand name, search for your brand name in Google News (using quotes if it’s longer than one word), use a premium tool for unlinked mentions like Mention or BrandWatch.
7. Fixing Broken Links
Pages get deleted, links become outdated, and content gets replaced. There are many reasons why a backlink that once worked perfectly may have ended up broken. Don’t let your previous link-building efforts go to waste. Use an SEO tool like Ahrefs to discover broken links pointing to your site. For each one: redirect the broken link to the best functioning page next. If /category/tees is no longer available and you have 100 backlinks pointing to it, redirect the broken link to /category/t-shirts to avoid sending people to a 404 error page. Ask the website owner to edit the link. Explain how it will benefit their readers. Sending people to a broken website is not good for user experience.
8. Seeing Who Links to Your Competitors
Looking for new opportunities to get backlinks? Look no further than your competitors; many of them have already done the hard work for you. 72% of SEO professionals say links from websites that are particularly relevant to your field are likely to have a positive impact on organic rankings. Creating something better than what your competitors have – whether it’s a higher-quality product, a free tool, or a piece of content – can motivate the website owner to replace their competitor’s link with yours.
9. Leveraging Your Business Network
Examine your business network and check if there are reasonable ways your connections can link to your site. After all, links are relationships. Pay special attention to people in your network who: are influencers with large social media followings, write for reputable and well-known sites in your field, work at educational institutions (and can secure that coveted .edu link)
10. Analyzing Current Referral Traffic
Backlinks obviously provide domain authority, but not just SEO benefits arise when building links to your site. You can attract high-quality traffic – people who have a genuine interest in your content or those likely to convert – through backlinks. Discover these opportunities by analyzing your current referral traffic through Google Analytics. Do most visitors come from paid reviews, directories, or company news ads? Focus on what works best.
11. Requesting Inclusion in Resource Pages
Website owners publish resource pages to build topical links and enhance user experience. The reason is that it’s better to meet user intent with a resource page rather than completely missing a touchpoint. Take advantage of resource pages by pitching your products, services, or free tools. Explain why readers will find the resource useful to increase the chance of securing a backlink.
12. Reviewing Your Products
If you’re building links for an online store, you have one advantage over non-commercial sites: the ability to send products to writers. One of the most common ways to gain backlinks and drive high-quality traffic to your site is to reach out to bloggers and send a free sample of your product. These naturally written testimonials will get a return link to your site, especially if coupled with an added incentive (like partnership commissions).
13.
Joining Communities
Communities are secret havens for link builders because everyone inside has one thing in common: their interest. Look for communities in your field through Facebook groups, Slack channels, or Reddit forums. Be active in the community by starting conversations and responding to others. Brand awareness often comes with an increase in backlinks as more people become aware of your content.
14. Be a Guest on a Podcast
Podcasts have surged in popularity in recent years, with estimates suggesting there are 424.4 million listeners worldwide. Take advantage of these trends by appearing as a guest on someone else’s podcast. It is common practice to link to the guest’s website in the show notes. If you have more cash than time, consider the sponsorship route. Research indicates it costs $18 to reach 1,000 listeners with a 30-second podcast ad, or $25 for a 60-second mention. Make sure to include a link to your site as part of the deal.
15. Don’t Forget Internal Links
Backlinks from external sites aren’t the only type of links your site should build. Internal links pointing from one page on your site to another inform search engines about what the page is about and what it should rank for. You can also get new web pages ranking quickly. To find internal linking opportunities, search for your topic on your site. Look for a natural mention of that keyword and link it to your new content.
By using these strategies, you can build a strong backlink profile today. Link building is one of the most important elements of a long-term SEO strategy for any website. There is so much you can do to tell search engines that you have a great store with awesome content and products. You need affirmation from others. That’s exactly what backlinks do.
Frequently Asked Questions About Backlinks
What are backlinks?
Backlinks are links that connect your site to another site. They are also known as inbound links or incoming links, as they transfer traffic between two sites and influence search engine rankings.
Why are backlinks important?
Backlinks are important because they prove to search engines that your site is trustworthy and therefore should rank higher in search results. Quality is better than quantity when building links, as one site’s reputation passes to another when they are linked.
How can I get backlinks to my site?
The easiest ways to get backlinks to your site include: publishing original research, writing guest articles on popular sites, fixing broken links, turning mentions into links, and being a guest on a podcast.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/17989280-building-backlinks-the-backbone-of-your-ecommerce-business
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