Link Building Strategies

If you run an online eCommerce store, sell services online, or have a website for brand awareness, you need to utilize link building to widen your online presence and improve your authority. Websites that don’t use link building as part of their search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns will miss out on more traffic potential, a boost in online visibility, domain authority (DA), and page authority (PA), and an increase in revenue. However, what many website owners seek the most from link building is an improvement in rankings, and this could be one of the biggest blows to those that choose to ignore link building – competitors will soar, leaving behind all those not investing in link building.

There are too many benefits from link building campaigns that it would be foolish not to look into this more, particularly the strategies that come with it. Link building strategies come in various forms, and what suits 1 brand may not suit another. This is why you must prepare yourself by looking into all the possible options open to you. With a quick search online, you will find yourself facing thousands of guides about this, but what are considered to be the best link building strategies out there?

Link building is an SEO process that involves getting high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites that will build up their trust and credibility. Therefore, a link building strategy is a plan for how a website can get links from another. Website owners embark on this so they can build up their backlink profile organically and do so according to Google’s guidelines, often enlisting the help of SEO and link building experts to guarantee this.

A link building strategy is not to be confused with a tactic. A strategy is about making a plan for achieving long-term goals, whereas a tactic is about the steps involved in this plan that dictate the specific actions you will take to reach the end. These tactics often help you meet shorter and smaller goals. A strategy will include many tactics within it so that you are always making progress with it and visibly seeing how your investment is paying off.

The purpose of a link building strategy is to help you stay on track to reaching your goal, help you optimize the process and the links to bring the best results, and enable you to track how well it is going. When you have a winning strategy that is tailored to your specific needs, you should start benefitting from more traffic, sales, and positive exposure.

There is no 1 set strategy to link building. There are lots of strategies you can try – some are very popular amongst SEO marketers because of the results they bring, but what they all have in common is quality. As Google is only interested in quality links, all link building strategies should be developed to the highest quality. A strategy that focuses on quantity over quality doesn’t work as well as a strategy that focuses on simply getting quality links.

You can get backlinks in many ways, with some involving you doing absolutely nothing other than having great content, products, or services. However, there is no guarantee that this will happen for you, even if you know you have great content, products, or services. The internet is vast, with many businesses and websites competing for users’ attention. Hoping to be spotted amongst the crowd without putting any effort in isn’t going to be what gets you more traffic, revenue, or credibility. What is? Carefully crafted link building strategies. An SEO link building strategy is so important if you want to succeed online today because it can help you keep an eye on the competition, signal to Google you are a reliable source, and put you in contact with authoritative sites in your industry. Eventually, this will turn into higher-ranking positions on the SERPs.

The better your strategy, and the more high-quality it is, the better quality links you will earn from authoritative sites, helping you earn more votes from Google that you are a website that they and their users should trust. The more authority you gain, the easier it is to earn even more links and keep growing.

Need more convincing that you need a good link building strategy? See the top 3 reasons below.

Backlink Profile

A backlink profile is an entire list of a website’s backlinks, detailing their quality, the anchors used, dofollow/nofollow links, naked URLs, and more. Google will assess everyone’s backlink profile regardless of whether you work on link building strategies or not. You want to regain some control of your backlink profile, as it directly relates to rankings. This is because there is every chance other bloggers and websites will have linked to your website without you asking them to do so, and not all of these will be from authoritative sources – some will appear as spammy links. While the occasional spammy link won’t cause much harm, if your backlink profile is made up of spammy backlinks, this does a disservice to you and can affect your rankings.

On the flip side, if, upon assessing you, Google decides that you have an organic profile of high-quality, relevant links from trusted sites, you can move up the rankings and enjoy numerous other benefits. A strategy helps you optimize and improve your backlink profile.

Page & Domain Authority

The PA and DA every website has is a score between 1 and 100, with the best websites holding a much higher score than lower quality websites. This doesn’t directly impact rankings but gives a good indication of how someone is likely to rank based on their backlink profile. The better your score, the more trustworthy you come across to other websites, helping them view you in an even better light, meaning they may be happier to have backlinks for you. They want to know that the websites they are sending their users to will provide a good experience or a solution to their problem when they click on your link. A higher PA and DA score can help you convince these websites this is the case. As PA and DA scores are calculated by looking at backlinks, you need a stellar strategy to ensure that your backlink profile is made up of the highest quality links.

Keyword Rankings

Link building holds many benefits, with the biggest revolving around SEO and rankings. Backlinks are up there as being one of the best ranking factors to hit. This stands to reason, if you want to get on page 1 of the search engine results pages (SERPs), link building strategies have to be part of your marketing budget. It’s not just Google that looks at how many quality links you have. Bing and Yahoo will also look into this. When you start to earn/build quality links, you will improve your authority status, resulting in Google ranking your website for keywords that demonstrate your area of expertise. When your competition is tough, and you are all fighting for some of the best keywords, the number of quality backlinks you have could mean the difference between you earning those higher rankings for keywords or your competitors doing so. A strategy will be the crucial element you need to make this come true.

You know the importance of using link building strategies, but what is the best link building strategy, and how many are there? Numerous options are available to you, and each one holds its benefits. The reality is that some are more effective than others. Therefore, many choose to invest in Link Building services. This way, they can get some advice on which strategies they should use that are most suitable for their business. However, going in with some sort of knowledge of what types of strategies you may use or come across can be just as beneficial.

The following 7 strategies are considered to be top-tier options for websites looking to get started on link building or up their link building game. These will organically earn you the highest quality links from relevant, authoritative websites, enabling you to enjoy all the benefits. You will need to do some groundwork before picking a link building strategy. This includes auditing your site and content, checking your backlink profile, doing keyword research, making your website mobile-friendly, and determining your target audience. Regardless of which strategy you choose, each one offers quality results, so take your time pouring over them and deliberating which sounds like your best strategy.

Outreach

In link building, outreach is a process of contacting the relevant websites you want to gain a link from – you will find that the rest of the link building strategies below often include some form of outreach. With this strategy, you ask for links via emails, often sending them articles with a pitch that explains why their website needs your content. On top of promoting your new content with a link, you can also ask them to replace their broken link with your link and fix unlinked mentions. Any outreach emails you send must be short (80 words or under) and personalized with an explanation about how your link or an article is good for them. Outreach services are often the preferred route for many because they have expertly trained professionals handling the entire process, including finding and communicating with the sites. You will find that they already have some solid relationships formed with a number of high-end sites.

Guest Posting

Guest posting is an excellent link building strategy when you want to reach new audiences and earn high-quality links from trusted sites. The strategy works in the following way. You produce a unique piece of content, taking note of any content guidelines sites have, such as the word count, content style, or topic angles, and insert your link within this guest post. This strategy is useful for link building but also for increasing your general traffic reach, social media following, and business opportunities. You will need to seek where there are guest blogging opportunities (e.g., the sites that accept guest posts) and send a pitch to them about the high-quality content you have ready, free from basic grammar and spelling issues. This is one of the strategies in this list that people often turn to experts for, as they can quickly and effortlessly produce guest posts for decent DA sites.

Broken Link Building 

There are billions of links online; unfortunately, not all of these will work as they should. Many will take you to a 404 page not found screen. Fortunately for you, though, this provides a fantastic link building opportunity: a broken link building strategy. The strategy is built around you finding backlinks that lead to these 404 pages and contacting those sites with a replacement link – your link! You can discover what page the broken link used to lead to using the Wayback Machine so you can find a similar page you have on your website that can replace the broken link or create one so long as it is suitable for your business. You want this to be better than the old content with updated information. You can discover these broken links by looking into your competitor’s links using a backlink analysis tool – it will display any that have a 404 error. Alternatively, you can look into the website you want a backlink from specifically and see if they have any broken links that are relevant to you.

Unlinked Mentions

Being named in another article on a different website is fantastic… so long as you get a link included as well. Often this is not the case, and it leaves many with unlinked mentions. However, these mentions don’t need to go to waste; with this strategy, you can gain links quite effortlessly. You simply seek out all the unlinked mentions your website has and reach out to relevant sites and ask for them to add a link to a page from your website. Note that not everyone will agree to do this, but there are plenty that will. You can find all unlinked mentions using specialized tools by entering your keywords. These keywords can be a version of your brand name, any members of the company that are most influential, and the main products/services you offer. This will pull up all the unmentioned links.

Although still having your name mentioned on another website is excellent for brand awareness, you want it to be doing more for you. You want to spread brand awareness and enjoy the benefits of a high-authority backlink.

Niche Edit 

Niche edits involve finding published content online and inserting your link into this rather than creating new content. It’s not as straightforward as just adding the link. You will likely have to add extra content to the current article for a more natural link insertion. This could be around 2 to 3 sentences. This strategy is so good because you are placing your link on a page that has already built up authority and is trusted by Google. Having a link here highly benefits you, as the authority from this site and specific page is passed onto you. Not all sites accept niche edits, but for those that do, you must prove to them that you will be helping them and why you are worth developing a relationship with. You should apply the same thought process for niche edits as you would for building normal links in that you must only pick relevant, authoritative sources. You do not want to cheat the system.

Digital PR

A digital PR strategy is all about creating an influential online presence that earns you links. With PR, you may be creating research reports, whitepapers, and news articles, and as content is a great way to earn links anyway, working on a digital PR strategy often makes a lot of sense for businesses. The content you produce is called linkable assets. You want to promote these linkable assets as much as possible, mainly to journalists but also to other publications, with words of encouragement that should persuade them to write about this and, most importantly, include a link to your website in it. Not every piece that you promote is going to result in content being written about you, and not everyone will link to you. However, it will provide a fantastic result if they do decide to do both, as this signals to Google you are a brand to trust, which is why it is worth investing in Digital PR services.

Listicles

Listicles are a popular type of content to write and work for all industries, no matter how niche. Users are more likely to read blog posts that are in listicle form and are perfect for both guest posts and content for your own site. This is because they are easy to understand, people can find the information they need quickly, and they can easily see how much they have to read, helping them determine whether this article is right for them. These benefits make it a desirable type of content that high-authoritative sites will likely accept if you approach them with a content idea or a finished piece. It works highly in your favor if you post listicles to your website. They are incredibly easy to keep updated and generally rank well. The result of this is that you potentially get more traffic, and other websites can clearly see how helpful your content is and include a link back to this page.

Strategies designed for link building offer perks for all industries that try them, but you may be wondering do these change in any way for different industries?

It is true you wouldn’t necessarily run the same campaign for the gaming industry as you would for the food or IT industries. Every industry will have a slightly different approach so that it works for their audience. Some may find it a lot easier to work on creating linkable assets in the form of research because of the demand their audience warrants. However, another may find that a different linkable asset, like a news article on their site, will get them a PR article and a link. Another industry may find that guest posting in-depth articles is the key, while a different business may be better focusing on listicle style. It all comes down to an individual case-by-case basis.

The good news for all industries is that there are no restrictions when it comes to link building, unlike paid marketing techniques like PPC for industries including iGaming, adult, CBD, and loans. Even for industries you think link building wouldn’t work because of the type of product sold (e.g., thinking your products wouldn’t be that interesting to write listicles about or other articles or earn press releases from), this is still a fantastic SEO campaign. There is a reason your business is doing well as it is, and that is because there is demand for what you offer. At the end of the day, you are serving other businesses or industries, and they will be interested in reading content relevant to what you offer. When you earn or acquire backlinks from authoritative sources, you are earning votes from Google and on your way to becoming a trusted website that they can confidently send up the rankings. The higher the rankings, the more traffic will come your way. Plus, if your potential new customers are coming across your website via links, they know that you can be a reliable and trusted business in the industry that can solve their problem or provide the ideal solution if a website they already trust has a link to your website.

All industries should embrace link building and find their unique spin that works for their audience. Experts can help with the entire process if needed.