Backlinks are a important part of SEO, helping websites rank higher on search engines. Effective backlink building strategies can improve your site’s authority, drive organic traffic, and boost rankings. From guest posting to contextual links, using the right techniques ensures sustainable SEO success. Explore the best backlink building strategies to help you grow your website’s visibility and credibility.
Backlinking strategies are collections of various methods to acquire links from other websites, either naturally, or with the involvement of the person implementing the backlink strategy. These strategies give you a toolbox to choose from based on your business, resources, and preferences.
Using different strategies to build high-quality backlinks is important because every strategy has its advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it is important to choose a few different strategies to implement rather than just one, so you can ensure a natural and diverse backlink profile is built over time for your website.
Not every backlink strategy will suit everyone, but it’s equally important to test as many as possible to see which one works best for your specific needs. Strategies give you a blueprint as to how best to plan actions to achieve a specific outcome, in this case getting high-quality, high authority (check out PA & DA), trustworthy backlinks.
Below you will find a wide selection of backlinking strategies that can be used to build high-quality, authoritative backlinks to your website.
Before you start building backlinks, there are a few things you need to be aware of that will help you get the most out of your off-page SEO efforts.
If you’re actively building backlinks that require your active involvement, then knowing which relevant websites to first approach to link from is the first step. This research can be done with competitor backlink research tools.
Hike has this tool built into its platform and it allows you to see which websites are linking to your search competitors. This allows you to compile a list of websites that you will be approaching when implementing various backlinking strategies.
Domain Authority (DA) is a logarithmic score from 0 to 100 developed by Moz that indicates how authoritative a website domain is. The higher the number, the more authoritative it is and more valuable to acquire a backlink from. That doesn’t mean that lower DA websites are not valuable, as it’s important to have a mix of backlinks from a variety of DA websites.
Acquiring multiple backlinks from a single website is good, but it’s more important to get backlinks from a variety of unique domains as this shows search engines that your website is also an authority because of how many unique domains are linking to it. In other words, a unique domain is like an individual casting a vote (a backlink is like a vote of confidence to that page or site), while the number of backlinks on that single domain is like multiple votes from that one person.
Ultimately, it’s important to have a higher number of unique individuals voting than a few of the same people voting multiple times. With this analogy, you can see the importance of acquiring backlinks from unique domains.
This strategy involves discovering broken links (404 not found) on relevant websites that can be replaced with a link back to useful and relevant content on your website.
Because the internet is constantly evolving, sometimes at such a fast pace, URLs often change, pages get deleted, and that’s where broken links are created. Because the webmaster is unaware of these changes, unless they are checking for these regularly on their website, they can often be missed, creating a negative user experience for those on their website.
That’s why by taking a proactive approach and discovering these broken links on others’ websites that are relevant to your website pages, you can inform the webmasters of these broken links and suggest a specific page of yours to link to instead that would be helpful to their audience.
That being said, just because you’ve informed them, it doesn’t mean that they will use your link to replace the broken one, but in many cases they will, which it’s a small reward for helping them improve their website and helping you build a natural backlink to your website, increasing its authority and rankings over time.
Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content that, according to Google, is primarily created to benefit people and not search engines, will not only succeed long-term in the search results but attract visitors to your website that will want to link to these pages of their own accord.
Some of the possible questions provided by Google to self-assess the quality of your content are as follows:
If you are providing your expertise on a specific subject, these questions from Google allow you to assess the quality of that expertise:
Finally, how the content is presented is also very important, and Google provides a few additional questions to assess that aspect:
If you follow the above guidelines, then creating quality content that people love and want to link to will be simple. Otherwise, your content may not rank as well in the search results or attract and keep the attention of users who wouldn’t consider linking to it.
People love finding interesting & original facts and statistics that they can use for their content reference. Therefore, if you can come up with some original data that can provide insight into a specific topic, users are likely to link back to your content to reference that data, which gives you a backlink in exchange.
What type of data exactly? It doesn’t necessarily have to be an in-depth research project or scientific study – in fact, it could be as simple as sending a poll or survey to your audience and compiling the results. Or if you are in a specific industry, it could be related to your day-to-day operations, production, sales, or marketing. Whatever information you feel would be valuable to measure and analyze, others would most likely also be interested in.
According to Brian Dean on the Backlinko blog, after analyzing 912 million blog posts to understand content marketing better, it was discovered that “long-form content gets 77% more links than shorter posts”, which means it’s better suited to be ideal for backlink acquisition than shorter content.
Google’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) is an important factor that the search engine uses to evaluate the quality of a website’s content. E-A-T has become even more important in recent years, as Google has made a greater effort to provide users with high-quality, trustworthy content.
When it comes to E-A-T, backlinks can be a valuable signal of a website’s authority and trustworthiness. If a high-quality, reputable website links to your site, it can help to boost your own website’s authority and credibility.
People are more likely to trust and link to content written by experts. If you already are a recognized expert in your field, that’s perfectly fine, however, if not, then it might be worth considering hiring experts who already have a following and authority.
It’s important to note that Google doesn’t use authorship in their algorithms anymore, but they do have methods of identifying authors, so content written by experts could be ranked higher.
Few more insights from the same Backlinko article reveal some interesting things that could help get more backlinks:
Longer Headlines – “Headlines that are 14-17 words in length generate 76.7% more social shares than short headlines”.
List Posts – “List posts get an average of 218% more shares than “how to” posts and 203% more shares than infographics.”
Why & What – “‘Why Posts’, ‘What Posts’ and infographics received 25.8% more links compared to videos and ‘How-to’ posts”.
If you have newsworthy content that would be interesting and relevant to a larger audience in your industry, it’s worth approaching newspapers, and press companies who are always on the lookout for these stories. Writing a press release and sending it for review to various PR companies could lead to securing exposure in, and possibly a high authority backlink, in a major press publication.
Even if it’s just on smaller publications or local news sites, it still is valuable to build quality backlinks that add authority to your website. Try using local keywords for more context.
While approaching contacts within these organizations or departments may prove to be challenging, it’s still worth the effort. Just be sure to pitch your story well and in a way that is intriguing and shows how relevant and valuable it would be to the audience.
Being invited to write blog articles on someone else’s blog or having your article published on a website with you as the author is called guest posting. It’s a fantastic strategy to acquire backlinks and build up your profile as an authority & expert in your industry or niche.
Many websites have guest blogging opportunities where you can submit your articles to be reviewed and if approved, published on the website. If within the policies of that website, one or two backlinks might be allowed as well, providing opportunities to build authority on your website.
Blogging platforms like Medium.com have publications across many different industries that are always looking for unique and valuable content to share with their existing readers. Each publication has its requirements, so do review them before submitting your work.
Before deciding whether a guest post opportunity would be worthwhile, always check the Domain Authority of the domain and how well the website is ranking for industry and topic keywords that relate to your website.
Doing a topic gap analysis, which means looking at which topics that website has or hasn’t covered yet in their content, will allow you to strategically approach them with content that they would find valuable and would help them improve their search engine rankings as well.
When you approach these guest post opportunities with a data-focused approach, presenting relevant topics that haven’t been published yet and targeting keywords with a decent search volume, then there is a high chance that you’ll be featured and can gain quality backlinks from that site.
Networking with bloggers, journalists, and influencers can lead to organic backlinks. Strategies include:
Popularized by Brian Dean, this method involves:
Sometimes, sites link to you but the link breaks or gets removed. To reclaim them:
HARO connects journalists with sources. By providing expert insights:
Resource pages curate helpful links for specific topics. To get listed:
Round-up posts feature insights from multiple experts. To participate:
Turn your brand into a story worth linking to:
Stay clear of manipulative strategies like:
Building backlinks is a long-term game that rewards patience and quality. Focus on earning links from authoritative, relevant sites, and always prioritize user value over shortcuts. Track your progress with tools like Google Analytics or Ahrefs, and adjust your strategy as needed. Start with one or two tactics above, scale up, and watch your SEO soar.
The best backlink-building techniques include guest posting, broken link building, niche edits, HARO (Help A Reporter Out), skyscraper techniques, and leveraging business directories.
To build backlinks for SEO, focus on creating high-quality, shareable content, reaching out for guest posts, participating in forums, and submitting your site to business directories.
High-quality backlinks come from authoritative sites. Strategies include earning backlinks from government and educational websites, publishing research-backed content, and leveraging digital PR.
Effective tactics include internal linking, blogger outreach, content repurposing, press releases, and link insertions in high-authority blogs.
White hat strategies focus on ethical link-building practices like guest blogging, building relationships with influencers, and getting featured on industry-specific websites.
Effective methods include creating infographics, using social media to promote content, leveraging influencer marketing, and participating in expert roundups.
To get backlinks quickly, use profile linking, web 2.0 submissions, directory submissions, and HARO responses.
Free backlink-building sites include Quora, Medium, Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and high-authority web directories.
Dofollow backlinks can be obtained through guest posting, niche edits, sponsorships, and commenting on high DA blogs that allow dofollow links.
Advanced techniques include broken link building, content syndication, using AI for link prospecting, and acquiring resource page backlinks.
Guest posting allows you to get high-quality backlinks by contributing valuable content to authoritative blogs in your niche.
You can get high DA backlinks from platforms like Wikipedia (if accepted), business directories, and educational forums.
Key tips include diversifying your link sources, focusing on niche relevance, checking competitor backlinks, and avoiding spammy links.
Organic backlink building refers to earning links naturally through high-quality content, social shares, and brand mentions without paid promotions.
A natural strategy includes creating authoritative content, engaging with influencers, and leveraging brand partnerships.
Manual techniques involve personally reaching out to website owners, submitting sites to directories, and engaging in blogger outreach.
Backlinks boost rankings by signaling to search engines that your site is credible and valuable, improving domain authority.
Look for reputed SEO agencies, freelancer marketplaces like Upwork, and digital PR firms specializing in ethical link-building.
Best practices include maintaining link diversity, avoiding black-hat techniques, ensuring link relevance, and monitoring backlink health.
Contextual backlinks are embedded naturally within content, making them more valuable and relevant for SEO.
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