Become a Link Building Expert in No Time with These Useful Tips

Let’s say you launched a pretty website that loads quickly and features a responsive design. That’s great, but you still won’t get the top SERP spots until you build credibility. One of the few ways search engines can identify you as a popular, reliable source for users is through backlinks.

Backlinks are among the top factors that determine SERP ranking. There’s no getting around it. They require a ton of effort and you have to monitor them regularly.

Fortunately, there are ways to help you become a link building expert. Follow these tips and you’ll get on the right track in no time. 

Ask for Backlinks

Cold requesting for backlinks might not sound like an efficient method, but for a smalltime newcomer to the scene, it can do wonders. Sometimes, all you have to do is ask a site owner to link to your site, especially if they have content relevant to yours.

Don’t limit yourself to site owners, however. If you already began building an email list, make sure you reach out to your newsletter subscribers. You should also ask followers on social media to link back to your pages too, especially if one of them has a site with more traffic than yours.

Yes, you may get rejections but don’t worry about it. You’ll still get a few credible approvals and those backlinks come from relevant, credible sites.

Don’t throw out the websites that rejected your request. Instead, come back after you’ve ranked higher and built more content in and around your site. Those site owners might reconsider your request in the future when your site has more meat to it.

Join a Community

Does your blog or commercial site focus on video games? Make sure you join video game-centric communities. These can range from Facebook groups to Reddit and dedicated game forums.

Make sure you do the same regardless of your niche and industry. Joining a community allows you to share your posts and pages to the world. Remember, a backlink has to come from someone else, so simply sharing a post on Facebook won’t do much for you.

That said, you get to expose people to your site more. There’s a higher chance that they’ll visit your pages and then backlink to it on their blog or forum posts. If you become an authority on a particular subject, more people will flock to share your posts as answers to forum questions.

Practice caution, however. Don’t join any random group on Facebook or sign up on any social media platform you can think of. Always consider the type of audience in those platforms and their relevance to your site’s content.

Weigh the differences of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest before you put all your eggs in one basket. Consider whether you want to build trust for backlinking on Quora or if you’d rather focus on Reddit threads instead.

Get Picky with Directories

Link directories garnered a bad reputation in recent years and for good reason. Before Google updated its algorithms, people could spam backlinks on a directory with no rhyme and reason and it would work. Some people argue that this spam-culture for link building is the reason Twitter got popular in the first place.

Of course, Twitter adjusted, and so did its users, as Google changed how it indexed web pages. Some directories did not, however.

The best one, of course, is Google My Business. It comes from Google and you should claim your Google My Business page since this builds credibility.

Yahoo, Yelp, and Fourspace are also close contenders. Yelp, in particular, grew the past ten years and is one of the most popular places people visit for business reviews and recommendations.

A link building expert should also consider Best of the Web (BOTW), Better Business Bureau (BBB), AboutUs, and Bing Places. Not all of these will boost your site efficiently, but they still help with indexing and building credibility.

Contribute an Amazing Guest Post

The secret to building backlinks is all about building relationships and releasing good content. With guest posts, you can knock out two birds with one stone. 

Start by visiting relevant sites. Get in touch and ask if you can contribute by writing a guest post. As mentioned earlier, you’ll get a few rejections, but don’t get discouraged since you could come back later on.

Most will agree if you can showcase some samples and prove your site is worth linking back to. After all, they’re exposing their visitors and readers to your site, so it has to be a worthwhile investment. 

There’s also the argument that they benefit more than you do. Submitting a guest post with backlinks to your site helps you, but it also helps them. You’re creating new content for their website, and more information for their readers to digest and share. 

If you want to get the most out of guest posting, make sure the content you contribute is impeccable and amazing. That might sound like a tall order, but the secret is to focus on credible, evergreen topics. We’ll tackle this in more detail down below, but the basic gist is that these topics remain relevant long after they’re initially posted.

Recover Broken Backlinks

Quickly, get a tool like W3C Link Checker or Broken Link Checker and run a test. Look for all the broken links you can find. These are links that lead to a 404 error.

You might discover backlinks from guest posts or featured posts.

Contact the site owner and let them know about the broken link. It’s possible they misspelled something in the URL or you updated and moved content and forgot to tell them. Let them know so they can update their posts and fix the link, ensuring people who click on these links get to your pages.

Don’t forget to look for broken links on your site too. Run a quick audit and look for 404 errors.

Google won’t penalize you for a few broken links but if there are too many, whether on your site or others, the algorithm might knock you down. After all, Google prioritizes better user experience (UX) and will notice if people can’t reach pages due to an abundance of broken links.

Study Your Competition

Take time to run analytics on your competitors. Look where they get their backlinks. Check which sites allowed them to guest post and which sites frequently backlink to their content.

Keep a note of the anchor text they used, the type of landing pages their backlinks lead to, the type of content these backlinks featured on, and the type of websites they featured on too. That’s a lot to track, especially because it’s likely your competitors rely on dozens of other blogs and commercial sites to build a strong backlinking profile.

There’s no need to replicate their strategies 1 to 1. You don’t have to approach the same sites and ask for the same type of deals. You shouldn’t copy your competitor directly because their backlinks might not be as reliable as some assume.

Run diagnostics on everything. Check if any of your competitor’s backlinks bring reliable results. 

Want a better solution? Look for the high-quality sites where they submitted guest posts and then try to do the same. You’ll get all the benefits of guest posting and you get to directly compete for attention with your competitor. 

Another solution is to create an opposite argument against a competitor’s post. If your competitor wrote a post about the reasons people should shop on eBay, refute this and make a post about why eBay isn’t ideal. People will backlink to both your posts as they pit one opinion against the other.

Write a Review

Want to know how to build links well? Look at the products related to your site, things you purchased, and services or apps you used. Why not write a review?

Writing a review for a product could get you valuable backlinks, but it takes a bit of work. Fortunately, the outcome of this process benefits both you and the company you submitted a review for.

The seller or service company might mention you in their reply. If possible, ask if they could convert that mention into an inbound link. Most companies will agree to this since you already did them a favor.

Reviews are a major help for these companies, and to yours. Reviews give more content for Google to index, which means they boost SEO efforts, and if they’re positive then Google also gives credit for the relevance and authority displayed. Submitting a positive review also gives that company more word-of-mouth to show potential clients.

You’re helping them by submitting a review, and their replies could help you if they include an inbound link. Make sure you get in touch and tell them to convert any mentions into links. Don’t worry, we’ll tackle this a bit more below.

Evergreen, Shareable Content

If you want content that people will constantly link back to, make sure you release evergreen content. This refers to blog posts that remain relevant months or even years after they went online. People will continue to link back to these posts because they remain informative and helpful even when other aspects of their respective industry changed.

This very post, for example, is a great example. Google might change and the algorithms will update, but the basic gist of building quality backlinks will remain the same for months and years. Google prioritizes good user experiences and authority backlinks. All the tips on this list build on those ideas.

What about other industries? If you’re a travel blogger, posts that focus on the best vacation spots or how to get cheap tickets will remain relevant for a long time.

If something changes, you can always go back to your evergreen posts and edit them. Don’t delete and edit the content on the page. Instead, write an update at the top of the post.

Convert Mentions to Backlinks

A while back we talked about converting mentions into inbound links. How do you do this and why is it an effective method?

People might mention your site, posts, and brand all the time without you knowing about it. Use tools to track brand mentions. You should also get on social media and look for hashtags related to your brand and products or services.

Once you find all these mentions, rank them according to authority. Contact the people or companies at the top of the list. These might be credible websites, known social media influencers, or reviews.

Get in touch and ask them politely if they could include a backlink in their comment or review.

Use Infographics

A picture is worth a thousand words. They also convey an important message rather quickly. Combine the aesthetic beauty of images with easy-to-read text and make an infographic!

Infographics are all the rage as they’re easy to use. You don’t need to read paragraphs of data to understand infographics. It makes them ideal for sharing. 

Try to make infographics that are both informative and engaging to look at. This increases the likelihood of people using and sharing it. People who feature it on their site, as a credible source of data, will credit you and include backlinks so people can verify the information is true.

Become a Link Building Expert

Use these tips today and become a link building expert. It can take time, money, and effort, but using these strategies can help you hit the ground running. 

Of course, you would do better with professional help. That’s where we come in. Check out our other guides and discover new ways to boost your efforts, like this one tackling how to build an email list from scratch.