For anyone who builds a website, whether it is for selling a product or service, disseminating information, or even for self-expression, one of the major goals is to reach as many people as possible. This is crucial for generating sales, expanding your audience, or building your online reputation. To do this, you need to have a strong SEO strategy.
For most people, SEO is synonymous with the strategic use of keywords in the content, headings, Meta tags, URLs, and so on. But there is another aspect of SEO that is just as important, and that is backlinking.
What Are Backlinks and Why Are They Important?
Backlinks are links located on sites other than your own but point to any of your pages. These highly effective content marketing tools are also known as inbound links or incoming links. The more backlinks your website has, the greater its exposure to potential visitors. More importantly, backlinks make you rank higher in search engine results.
All backlinks help in bringing up your rank and drawing more visitors to your business, but those that come from reputable websites certainly have a greater impact. Hence, the goal is to have as many of these high-quality backlinks as possible. Fortunately, there are several effective ways that you can do this and today, we are going to talk about the 10 best strategies to use.
10 Strategies to Increase Backlink Count
Backlinks come in many different types, depending on how they are acquired, where they originate, who created them, whether they are paid or not, and so on. As mentioned, all these backlinks contribute to the performance of your website in search engine results. By following the strategies below, you will soon see an increase in the quantity and quality of backlinks to your website.
1. Create Quality Original Content
This is one of the most fundamental strategies that any content creator can employ. After all, when you think about it, who would even want to link back to your site if the content is mediocre at best? Thus, you have to make a real effort to produce content that would be of interest to people. It has to be engaging, informative, entertaining, and original.
Of course, a large part of creating quality content is making sure that it is well-written and free of grammatical or spelling errors. For most target audiences, it helps if the text is friendly and conversational, while maintaining an authoritative tone at the same time. If you are not a very prolific writer, you can always pay someone to write the content for you. Just make sure that you check everything for quality and plagiarism before you publish it on your website. In any case, this strategy is a lot simpler than most of the other backlink building services.
2. Write Guest Posts on Respected Blogs
Find some reputable blogs that are in the same niche as yours. Preferably, you want to target those that have a broad audience and a good domain authority. Approach the blog owner and make an offer to write a few guest posts. This would actually be a very welcome prospect for website owners who are always looking for fresh content.
Do make sure that you share relevant information that fits with the theme of their blog, and that you include natural backlinks within the content. The better your post, the more likely they will invite you to be a regular guest blogger on their site, which would translate to a regular supply of quality backlinks.
3. Rebuild Broken Links
Broken links are links that point to a page that no longer exists. The online landscape is always changing, and pages expire or disappear for various reasons over time. Hunt down broken links that supposedly point to pages that deal with similar topics as yours. Let the webmaster know that the link is broken, and present your own content as a substitute. This is one of several types of backlink outreach strategies that are mutually beneficial to both parties. You get a quick backlink, and the website owner fixes a broken link.
4. Offer Visual Content to Relevant Websites
Traditionally, SEO centers mostly on text content. However, assets like videos, charts, and infographics now also have a very significant role in obtaining backlinks. For one thing, they can grab a reader’s attention much more easily. If they are interesting enough, people would be very likely to click.
However, you can’t just offer any kind of graphic. As with text content, it has to be original, interesting, accurate, and relevant. Then, you can offer these visual materials to other websites as part of your backlink outreach strategy. It is very important to make sure they include a link to your site when they share it on their site.
5. Join HARO
If you have never heard of HARO, it’s about time you look into it. HARO stands for Help a Reporter Out, and is an online venue for journalists looking for expert information on various niches. Some of the most sought-after information are quotes, statistics, expert commentaries, or hard facts. If you are in a position to provide the info they are looking for, you can submit a response on the platform. If your response gets chosen and the reporter includes it in their article, they will cite you as an expert source and link back to your website.
6. Establish Authority through Thought Leadership Content
Another very effective strategy to acquire more backlinks is to establish yourself as an authority in your niche. Obviously, this will not happen overnight. It is going to be a process that might begin with posting thought leadership articles and insightful content on your own website. Then, you can appear as a guest speaker in notable podcasts, webinars, or other events in your industry. When the organizers and participants of these events post their narrative of the event, there’s a good chance that they will link to your profile or website.
7. Implement the Skyscraper Technique
This strategy is quite simple and although some might consider it to be rather sneaky, it’s perfectly valid and highly effective. The idea is to locate websites that rank in the top positions in your niche, or for keywords that you are targeting. Study these websites carefully and create one that surpasses it in terms of content, scope, and quality. In other words, create a better version of the website, then replicate their backlinks by asking the publishers to link to your website instead. It is actually nothing more than a very straightforward backlink outreach strategy.
Using the skyscraper technique to outrank top-performing sites might sound like a far-fetched idea at first, but many have used it with excellent results. Compared to other backlink building services, this strategy guarantees that there is already a high demand for your content. You just need to convince the blog owners that your site is better, more updated perhaps, and that giving you backlinks would be a win-win situation for both parties.
8. Reach out to Resource Pages
There are many websites out there that publish lists of credible resources on various topics. Find such sites that round up links that are relevant to your niche and submit your content for inclusion in their list. If your material is of high quality, then it’s a shoo-in to be accepted. After all, the primary purpose of these kinds of websites is to share resources. As long as you have something good to offer, they will be more than happy to add your website to the list, along with a backlink that will definitely help improve your SEO.
The key to successful outreach is targeting well-established resource pages with a substantial following. These websites consistently attract visitors because people are always searching for credible and authoritative information. By reaching out to these resource pages, you increase the visibility of your site among a wider audience. Additionally, when others refer to your website as a reliable source, there's a strong chance they will include backlinks to your content, further boosting your site's credibility and search engine rankings. This strategy enhances both traffic and authority.
9. Collaborate with Influencers in Your Industry or Related Fields
Influencers play a major role in business or website promotion, especially if they have a massive following. By reaching out to them, you can boost your backlink count with very little effort. For example, with just a single positive comment, post or retweet that includes a link to your content, these influencers can drive a huge volume of traffic to your website. It might start with just one backlink but if they carry high credibility, their followers won't think twice about checking out their recommendations, or perhaps even sharing these on their own social accounts. One backlink can easily multiply into hundreds of others.
There are many ways to reach out to influencers for a collaboration. You can start by showing appreciation for their content and explaining what your brand can do for them. After all, it's not just you asking for a favor but rather it has to be a mutually beneficial arrangement for both. The more congenial your approach, the more easily you can get those backlinks coming.
10. Sponsor a Relevant Event or Cause
Sponsoring events or charitable causes related to your industry might be one of the more expensive strategies for acquiring backlinks, but it often yields great results. By investing in sponsorships, you can enhance your brand's visibility and establish valuable connections with event organizers, participants, and audiences. This strategy works best when the event aligns well with your content or when attendees are part of your target market. Not only will your brand gain exposure, but the likelihood of receiving backlinks from event promotions and media coverage also increases significantly.
You don’t even have to be a major sponsor and spend thousands of dollars in the process. Just having your name as part of the event will surely get quality backlinks from the organizer and even the participants. Just to be sure, though, check that your sponsorship package specifically includes a link to your site from a prominent page of the event.
Conclusion
In addition to these tried and tested strategies, there are numerous backlink building services that a content creator can look into. Most of these services come with a fee so that’s something to take into consideration. Whether you decide to avail a paid service or stick to free content marketing tools is up to you. The important thing is to maintain a steady flow of backlink acquisition and always keep track of the backlinks that you have, as these play a major role in your website’s SEO performance.
