Link building in SEO is not as easy as some would have you believe. Those who claim it to be simple use many tactics to build their links which barely make an impact on their content. So instead of drowning you in jargon and a plethora of options, I’m giving you 5 simple and easy ways for you to start building better links. These are easy tactics that you can recreate for your site. With these strategies, not only will your links perform better but also drive great traffic to your website. It’s business after all, right? But before jumping into the strategies, let’s get our basics correct first.
Strategy VS. Tactic
Tactic is the means you use to gain an objective while Strategy is your overall plan for growth. The only strategy you require is creating something that is worthy of links. You don’t need to write ginormous blog posts or long guides for that cause. For many businesses, the product or service being offered is linkable itself. So your strategy is the driving force behind your efforts of link building in SEO. Tactics are the pistons that keep things moving. Now, let’s see how I can help you with your link building!
1. Link Building in SEO with Outreach
Outreach for link building means you reach out to your target audience and introduce your content to them. But by content, I don’t mean “content”. As mentioned above, its not always about blogs and such content. You can introduce your audience to the service/product/brand/personality that you have to offer. All of them can be link-worthy. For most of this discussion, I’ll refer to the popular site of Ahrefs and show how they have been building their links.
Ahrefs is an established name and other sites often try to include references to it their work.
So Medium had an article about tools that are useful for entrepreneurs or startups. There they mentioned Ahrefs. Now that is an opportunity for Ahrefs to work on their outreach. They have the information that indeed their tools are helpful to the specific demographic of entrepreneurs. So what the Ahrefs outreach team will do next is reach out to such entrepreneurs and startups that might find their tools useful. Then those people will refer to the site and include the links when they create content.
Outreach is best performed when accompanied with linkable assets. This implies you will have to reach out to people who are in your niche and tell them about your product/content and how it can be good for them. You can reach out to people who are using your target keys in their work and also to those people who are linking to similar articles on the topic.
2. Guest blogging for Link Building in SEO
Want to go old school and stick to tried and tested methods? Obviously, guest blogging is a great choice! Find another website that fits your type and write an article for them. They publish the article while you keep links to your site in the article.
This backlink can be a part of your author’s bio or just put inside the article itself. But how can you find good posting prospects? Google can be of help, as usual. Many site owners have “write for us” pages which you can uncover with this simple search
topic + intitle:”write for us”
One hiccup is that tons of people are already using this option. So how do you stand out? As contradictory as it sounds, it’s better not to look for sites that advertise that they want guest posts. Rather search for sites that are relevant for you and just pitch them. Even when sites don’t advertise about it, they might be willing to accept such guest posts. The logic is simple. You are providing them a well-written free article that will attract many new viewers to their site. So why would they say no! You can use Ahref or other guides to search for such sites and send in your ideas.
3. Broken link building
Rebuilding broken links can be done in 3 easy steps:
1. Find an appropriate broken link on a site
2. Create content similar to the broken source
3. Ask people who are linking to the dead link to link to your work instead.
Here’s a quick example. Quicksprout had this dead link.
This is how the page looked before the link broke
So if someone has a website that covers similar topics, they can easily write something based on that exact topic and then ask the ones who are still linking to the broken one to link to your article instead.
You can use the Best by links report that Ahrefs offers for link building in SEO. It will show you the broken links on your competitors’ sites.
Site Explorer > enter a competing domain > Best by links > add a “404 not found” filter
4. Paid promotion for “linkable assets”
You linkable assets are any pieces of content like in-depth blogs, tools, tutorials, or even calculators, anything that deserves links.
Take this infographic about infographics. If you want to get links to this type of content, you have to inform your audience that the content exists. When you reach out to people, you are in a way, minimizing your scope. You will reach out only to a specific demographic where you know the content will work.
But you can also use paid promotions to reach a wider target audience. It can be Facebook Ads or other PPC networks like Google AdWords.
Just spend $50-$100 and you’ll be set. If you can create the content your audience can relate with, some of them will definitely link back to you. They could be using their websites, forums, discussion boards, or even just a mention in a comment somewhere. Exposure is all you need. If you are not too keen on outreach, link building in SEO can be easily done with only paid promotions.
This is what Ahrefs does with one of their content pieces. They put their content out in the open and let the audience do the rest. Their article with the keyword “cannibalization” fetches 216 backlinks. They did not do any outreach for this particular content. Only Facebook ads and newsletter promotions. The right audience noticed the content and linked to it themselves.
5. Content repurposing & syndication for link building in SEO
You can have link building tactics that are not just outreach based. You can just submit your content to the right places and build from there. It could be video-sharing sites, infographic directories, or some place else. But make sure you have it in the right format.
To create the appropriate format, you can rely on repurposing.
Suppose you have an excellent infographic that your niche audience is already loving. But how can you reach a wider audience with that same content? You can repurpose the content into a video and share it on websites that share similar content.
Here is one static infographic that was turned into a fetching video:
Also, with a new format comes extra links. They might not be the best links but you can still use them.
Content repurposing is quite easy and you reach a huge audience base with basically the same content in a different format.
You can also rely on syndicating your content to third-party sites.
What is content syndication for link building in SEO?
This means you publish your content and other related sites post it with a link to the source. Some sites might publish your full content or just publish an extract with the source link that leads the audience to your site.
6. Community Link Building
There are many who are only focused on building high-quality links. While that is great, it does not add much to your backlink profile. A solid profile has more than just the editorial links from high domain rank sites.
Rely on different sources like Reddit, Quora, message boards, etc to promote your site and build some links too. It will add diversity to your profile. Even if some of these links end up being “nofollow”, that is good for your profile too.
Many sites also remove the “nofollow” attribute if the links are on popular threads.
Leaving quality comments on blogs is also a good way to build syndication for link building in SEO in community sites. Most such blogs also follow the “nofollow” rule. But you can put your content out there, for a wider audience. The more people view, the higher your chances of creating links.
Your comments will have to be insightful and intriguing to lead the readers to your site. Your comments will also be noticed by the blog owner, which might help you build a relationship. A good relationship can blossom into linking partnerships too.
7. What To Stay Away From?
While Google has clearly mentioned that buying links is absolutely against their guidelines, there’s no harm in knowing the deets! Google has mentioned how buying links or taking part in link schemes to manipulate page ranking is a violation of the Webmaster Guidelines of Google.
So, don’t think you can bypass the rules and buy links for ranking. If caught, the penalty will harm you more than the profit the links bring in. but out of curiosity, here’s what we found. The average cost of a single link is around $360! This is the average with a range that starts from $30 and goes up to thousands of dollars.
Private Blog Networks are popular too. PBNs are owned by a single person who creates multiple sites and is made to look like the same person is not behind them all. PBN owners work very hard to fool Google that all those are legit sites that keep linking to the same website. But Google knows this and they often target such sites.
So its always best to stick to legitimate methods as mentioned above. Build your links via outreach and other ways instead of relying on backhand methods like PBNs and buying links.
Link building in SEO is not exactly rocket science. All you need is patience. The tactics shared above are not restrictive for any websites. Irrespective of your niche, you can rely on them to grow your backlink profile. You can keep experimenting with these tactics and make your own strategy. Keep testing your audience and see what works best. What works for a video site might not be the best strategy for a blog owner. Once you know which tactics are bringing you positive results, you can put less effort yet scale your work. If you have any other tactics that have been working for you, mention them down in the comments section, and we might just include them in our next post!
