Although it’s a vital component for establishing a site’s ranking ability, it can be the very same reason your site is sent back to the nether regions of Google’s search results. Link schemes could be costly if you’re not adhering to specific guidelines.
In order to help you build links effectively, we’ve laid out a list of established strategies and tactics to improve search visibility and ultimately increase the revenue from your site.
Broken Link Building
In a recent outreach effort, Brian Dean from Backlinko gave broken link building his full endorsement as the link building method with the highest conversion rate.
The quick summary of broken link building is:
- Identify broken links on relevant websites.
- Make sure you have content that is a better version of the missing page.
- Reach out the websites that are linked to the missing page and ask them to replace the broken link with a link to your content.
Guest Posting
In a SEMRush survey, guest blogging emerged as one of the top link building methods among 850 respondents (38.29% business owners, 22.44% SEOs, 30.24% in-house specialists and 9.02% agency specialists).
This is more likely due to the fact that editorial links are the most valuable-especially from relevant, high authority websites.
Build a strong backlink profile by choosing the most relevant site with good metrics. There are thousands of websites that need content and have published pages to encourage writers to submit pitches and articles.
Tip for Quality Guest Posting
Always vet your websites before pitching or submitting articles. Websites that have high authority are effective-but only when they meet specific criteria. The linking site needs to be topically relevant with a decent flow of traffic, a high number of referring domains.
Resource Page Link Building
This form of link building is simply finding websites that have published a resource page that links to content that would help their audience. Once you’ve found a good match for your content you would simply request that your link be added.
You can identify link prospects by using command operatives on Google to generate a list of websites using the keywords “resource” or “links” in their title or URL.
For example, if you wanted to acquire links from a software website you would enter the following command into Google:
software + inurl:links
The search results would consist of software-related companies that have the word links in the URL, which in most cases will be a resource page.
Unlinked Brand Mentions
This method of link building is especially useful if your company is an established brand. By using listening tools, analytics tools or a Google search, you can find instances where people have mentioned your brand and ask them to link to your site.
This method tends to have a high conversion rate because if people are already mentioning your company in a positive light, there’s a good chance they won’t mind linking to your website.
Link Reclamation
It’s inevitable that your website will lose links over time. Site owners may delete pages, update pages or they may find better content than yours to replace your link.
Monitoring the links that drop off can save links that are lost due to mistakes or accidents as well as alert you to out-dated content on your site. This is Moz’s version of a lost backlink report that shows the links that were gained vs lost:
Most times it’s a simple request via email to ask for a link to be replaced that’s been forgotten in a site update or content update. If the site owner has already linked to your website, why wouldn’t they link to you again?
There is of course a situation where someone has created a better version of content than your own, in which the site owner has chosen to link to instead. In order to earn that link back, you’ll need to make some changes to your page by using the skyscraper method to outperform your competitor’s content.
Skyscraper Method
The concept behind this method is to publish content that is 10 times better than any other content competing for the same keywords. If your page is the best solution to the user’s intent, your site will rank highly for your target keywords.
There’s a direct correlation between pages that rank in top positions and the number of backlinks they acquire.
Backlinks and content are two of the three largest ranking factors. If your content alone doesn’t outrank the competition, you may need to jumpstart your ranking by acquiring your competitor’s links.
Stealing Your Competitor’s Links
Using an analytic tool of your choice, run a backlink report on the pages that rank for your keyword. Reach out to all of the websites that are linked to their content. Since your content is literally 10 times better they are likely to link to your content instead of the competition.
You don’t always need to steal your competitors’ links. The websites that have linked to them may choose to keep their link and link to your content as well. In both cases, you can still build up a good backlink profile by identifying the sites that have linked to the pages that rank in top positions.
Paid Links
It should be noted that paid links are against Google’s guidelines only if they are being used to pass authority metrics. There are many different situations where paid links are effectively being used to generate more traffic and revenue.
Paying an influencer to mention and recommend your brand on their blog is a way to generate traffic-even if the link is marked as nofollow. High-traffic websites like Forbes can boost the credibility of your brand and send referral traffic that converts to clients-even if your links don’t pass on the high-authority metrics (Forbes no-follows most of their links)
Image Reversal
Search for images that you’ve created (or own the rights) to identify other websites that have decided to use them on their sites. By searching by image through Google, you can quickly identify where your images are being used and ask for proper attribution to be added.
Popular Forums and Niche-related Discussion Groups
Quora receives over 380 million users a month asking and responding to commonly asked questions. Take advantage of the referral traffic on Quora or any niche-related forum that receives a respectable flow of traffic by providing the best answer to a popular question.
Filter the questions based on the number of people that are following the question. You can click on the drop-down menu and select to view stats and log.
Answer questions with more than 15 people following in order to get the best results. As you can see this question with 20 followers has received over 8600 views.
The link you receive from Quora is no-followed, however, the referral traffic will improve your brand, search visibility and overall traffic to your site.
Build Links Using the Most Current Proven Methods
Link building is an art that must be practiced and gets better with experience. Identifying link prospects, assessing metrics and choosing the right anchors and link targets are all part and parcel of a successful link building campaign.
Above all, build links with the intention of driving traffic from topically relevant websites. This perspective forces you to qualify external websites as relevant sources of traffic. Not only does this lead to quality referral traffic, but results in building links with the most impact in authority.
Link building isn’t only about metrics, but about building multiple entry points to your website from places your prospective clients frequent. Choose the link building methods that suit your business the most to experience the rewards of increased revenue from improved traffic generation.
Image Credit: Relevance
Christian Carere is an SEO Consultant and the founder of Digital Ducats Inc. Christian is a regular contributor in the digital marketing community, offering SEO advice to SMBs, startups and entrepreneurs.