Some of you may prefer making the plan and determining the link building strategies before you start writing your content. Some of you end up writing the content first and then start looking for opportunities for backlinks. Maybe some of you may not even know what link building really means and why it’s important for your blog and SEO. And some of you are here because you’re searching for the best link building ideas for startups. Well, if you relate to any of the above, you’ve come to the right place.
In this article, I’ll first cover the link building basics and try to explain why it’s essential to have backlinks to your blog. Then I’ll help you with the process of creating your link building strategy with some helpful backlink examples, including link building best practices.
What Backlinks Are and Why Is Link Building Important?
If you have read some website optimization guides, you’re probably familiar with the terms on-page and off-page SEO. Well, backlinks, also known as inbound links, are a part of off-page SEO. So getting backlinks to your website (or link building as we call it) can help you improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). But backlinks or inbound links are separate from outbound links. So let’s take a look at the differences.
I’ll use an example to demonstrate the difference between inbound and outbound linking. For one of our previous articles, we earned a backlink from PikWizard, which you can see in the following article: ‘What Makes a Good Website | 18 Effective Tips for Your Business‘ in the section ‘Speed up Your Load Time’. That’s an example of an inbound link for us.
Fun Fact: Google, Facebook, and YouTube have the highest number of backlinks.
You may have noticed that I have mentioned the image’s source underneath the image and added a link to the Statista website. That way, I’ve built an outbound link from our website.
Hence, getting a link from another site to ours means that we’re getting a backlink, while linking from our site to another one is an example of an outbound link.
Note: Link building is super important because the more backlinks you earn, the higher your website will rank in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
That is especially true if the backlinks come from authoritative websites. Plus, the more websites that link to your site, the more traffic you will receive. But remember, quantity isn’t always the right option. Sometimes it’s better to skip some backlinks if they come from spammy sites because spammy links can hurt the website rankings.
Now we’ll get down to business; in the next part of this blog post, we’ll talk about nothing but link building ideas.
Link Building Ideas and Strategies
If you’ve been filling your blog with high-quality articles for some time now and you don’t have many backlinks, it’s time to take action to change that. It’s best to start with creating a link building plan. To do so, consider the following eight link-building strategies 👇
Start Guest Blogging
Since you’re creating content for your blog regularly, why not write something for another site as well, for which you can get extra points from Google and other search engines? That’s an excellent way of earning backlinks for your blog. The goal, however, is not to write a blog post on any topic and for any website. When you’re trying to get backlinks, some solid guides are good to follow, which I’ll go over next:
- First, you need to find a relevant website to help you attract the right audience.
- Then, you have to create a unique piece of content, like when you’re writing for your own blog.
- When you finish the article, contact the blog owner and tell him that you’ve created a piece of content that is great for their blog, or
- First, before you do anything, you can get in touch with the blog owner and ask him what topic you should write the article about.
When you’re done, if they like and publish the article on their website, you’ll get a backlink. That’s a great deal 🤝
Great Content Attracts the Most Backlinks
Create high-quality content that will be worth linking to. High-quality content will not only increase the chance of getting backlinks back to your blog articles but will also help with SEO and better SERPs. Create compelling content for your target audience, and keep your customers in mind at all times! Hey, I can’t stress enough the importance of this part!
Pro Tip: You can write evergreen content that will bring more traffic to your blog and more backlinks.
Also, if you want to create more unique content, you can make an in-depth study or conduct your own original research in your niche. That will give you some noteworthy results, which you can include in your blog in engaging content such as images, graphics, videos, or infographics and earn many backlinks.
Find Broken Links
This is the perfect link-building opportunity to take advantage of. Here you don’t need to write fresh content, you can just use the articles you have already written and shared on your blog. Isn’t that good news or what? 😄 But, you’ll need to do research and find blog articles from other websites that contain broken links.
Note: Broken links are links that no longer work, and when you click on them, the web page can’t be found because it usually no longer exists.
So, when you find a page with a broken (dead) link on it, you can offer the website owner to replace the dead link with one of your articles. First, of course, you have to find broken links that match your target audience and are on the same topic as your content.
Write Reviews and Testimonials
Another way of earning backlinks is by writing reviews and testimonials for other businesses. This is a fast and easy way of building quality backlinks. And it’s not so time-consuming, which is awesome. All you have to do is find relevant sites for which you will leave unique reviews or testimonials(if they have a section with testimonials on their website). If they publish your review, they will link back to your website, and voila, there’s a new backlink for you!
But as with almost every link building strategy on this list, you need to carefully choose the sites for which you will write a review. This means that you have to keep an eye on the domain authority of the site as well as the niche. For example, we as a web hosting company can leave a review on the cPanel’s website since we’re using their services. And when someone sees the review, clicks on the backlink, and comes to our site, it will be a relevant visitor for us. On the opposite, if I leave a review on a bookstore’s website, it won’t be a very relevant backlink for BlackHOST as a web hosting company.
Use Social Media
Today, social media is an integral part of the way we work. And I guess you can’t imagine a day without spending time on Facebook or Instagram (privately or for work). Well, luckily for you (or not) social media platforms are also a great place for link building.
Obviously, the more content you share on social media, the more people can see it, and more people can share it with their own audience. So that’s a great way to get both brand exposure and backlinks.
Pro Tip: It’s best if you can share your articles on social media in several different ways.
For instance, first, you can share just the link of the article with some text, after that you can share some images and infographics from the article, or if you have video content, you can share the video separately. This way, more people will see diverse types of your content, and you’ll increase the chances of getting spotted and shared by others. For example, someone might like the video or infographic they saw on Facebook and may use it for the next post and add you as a source. So, don’t pass up this opportunity!
Find Unlinked Mentions
Did you know that there’s a chance that someone has mentioned your business online but didn’t add a link back to your site? How dare they!? Note that even if someone has mentioned you without adding a backlink, Google will still give value to your brand mention.
However, in order not to miss this wonderful opportunity for link building, you should do research and contact all the relevant websites that have mentioned your brand online (of course, if the mention has a positive connotation:)). You can use some tools for finding unlinked mentions of your brand, or you can do that manually. If you choose to do this process manually, here’s an example of what your Google query should look like if you’re looking for a mention of our brand:
The query intext:blackhost means that the results will show only pages containing our name somewhere in the text, while the rest of the query is for excluding results from our website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
After you’re done with the search, you need to choose which sites you will contact so they can add the backlink to the mention. Because a mention with a backlink is far more valuable for SEO. Additionally, when someone sees the mention, they can visit your blog by clicking on the link.
Comment on Blogs
What about finding other blogs in your niche and starting commenting on their articles? Well, this is another fairly less time-consuming link building strategy. Let’s see how you can do this. 👇
If you want to build backlinks using this strategy, then you should start by searching for suitable blogs in your industry. You can make a list of all the relevant sites and decide which ones to choose for commenting. Find a good article on the chosen blog that is somehow connected to your business, read it carefully, and organize your words. Prepare your comment, and don’t forget to create a backlink, at the end, that’s why you’re there. Keep in mind that, in order to get relevant traffic you should write informative comments.
A blog comment section is a great place for sharing opinions and ideas for a particular topic. Besides, by commenting on other peoples’ blogs, you can initiate comments on your own blog and build relationships with your visitors.
Resource Pages
Resource pages are websites that curate links for specific topics. When you visit a resource page, you can spot a list with numerous helpful links that lead to different websites.
Because these types of websites are easily hijacked, you should only use resource links from reputable websites.
If you want to get backlinks from a resource page, you should contact the right person and pitch your content to them. But you should only try to get backlinks from directories in your niche. Note that this method is somewhat related to this list’s second link building strategy. This means that, in order to get backlinks from a resource page, you must have high-quality content.
Well, that’s it for now. I’ve covered eight excellent link building ideas that you can use for your blog. Now you can choose one of these backlinking strategies that you liked the most and start from there. Or you can make a plan and maybe use all of the mentioned link building ideas right away.
And don’t forget, if you want to mention us online, or you want to share some of these awesome link building ideas, please feel free to include a link back to our site 😉
