Many studies have found a direct relationship between backlinks and search engine rankings on Google. That’s why link building is essential for achieving higher positions on Google and other search engines.
The competitive advantage provided by quality backlinks is significant, as it saves you time in ranking for any target keyword. For example, if you can rank for a keyword within 6 months through effective link-building strategies, it could take you years to achieve the same result using semantic SEO alone. Therefore, it’s a wise approach to invest your time and efforts in link acquisition.
Even Google has now silently recommended building links in their new Google search essentials (formerly webmasters guidelines).
Tell people about your site. Be active in communities where you can tell like-minded people about your services and products that you mention on your site.
– Google
So to rank on Google, it’s in Google’s guidelines to be active in communities to share your website, services, and products (in short, build links).
But.
Most professionals believe that link-building is hard.
But that’s not true.
After reaching out to hundreds of bloggers and businesses and answering tons of HARO queries and questions on relevant forums, I can confidently say that link-building is expensive, but it’s not difficult.
If you do it properly you can acquire a ton of free backlinks as well. For instance, I have acquired over 90 DA backlinks organically by creating linkable assets on my websites.
The recent top link acquisition was from these popular websites:
Line has over 90 domain authority and managerstoday has over 70 domain authority.
And I also acquired many backlinks from well-reputed companies with the same strategy. For instance, you can look at these two link profiles that were naturally acquired.
You can also implement my easy link-building strategies to enhance your rankings.
Now let’s see, which strategies actually worked for me and my clients and you can also leverage all of these to acquire backlinks.
On this page
Create linkable assets to naturally attract backlinks:
This is a unique strategy that most businesses overlook or don’t execute correctly, but when done properly, it’s one of the best methods for acquiring high-value backlinks from authoritative or corporate websites.
For instance, the backlink I mentioned earlier from the LINE website, as well as backlinks from Loop and a well-established manufacturing company (75 years old), were the results of this approach.
To execute this link-building strategy effectively, there are a few critical steps to consider:
First, understand what a linkable asset is.
A linkable asset can be any webpage or resource that people would naturally want to reference. According to Backlinko, people often link to research studies and statistics, but I’ve found that people also link to PDF files, evergreen content, and comprehensive guides.
Thus, any resource that offers valuable insights or helps enhance someone’s article is a linkable asset.
For example, if someone is writing about how managers impact workplace culture or turnover, linking to research that shows over 50% of employees leave due to bad management is a powerful resource to support their claims.
Next, here is another thing that matters to attracts links from your target websites.
Once your content is ready, remember that people won’t use your website’s search function to find it. They rely on search engines like Google, Bing, and ChatGPT to discover valuable content.
That’s why it’s crucial to optimize your webpage for SEO and aim for a top ranking—ideally within the first 3 results.
In my experience, it’s often easier to rank these kinds of assets since fewer competitors target them, and with ongoing research being published, many opportunities are left untapped.
When done properly, I guarantee this strategy works and can bring in backlinks from websites you wouldn’t even expect. I’ve experienced this many times, which is why I’m confident it will work for you too.
One key element to remember is to focus on brand positioning. Your website should look professional and trustworthy, or people will hesitate to link back to you.
Reach out to the website managers of your competitors’ backlinks:
It’s an easy strategy to acquire backlinks because your competitors have already secured links from those sites. This means you are more likely to convince those webmasters or editors to link to your site.
Ideally, you should create more engaging content so that webmasters would enjoy it and willingly link to it.
If you are ready to leverage this link-building strategy, here’s how to do it:
- Go to your SEO tool—it can be Ahrefs or SEMrush. Add your competitors’ URLs and navigate to their backlinks.
- Open each link and find webmasters’ email addresses using tools like Hunter.
Now, people use different strategies:
- Ask them for the opportunity to write a guest post on their website.
- Tell them you have more valuable content assets, so they should consider replacing your competitors’ links with yours.
- Find a broken link on their site, ask them to remove that broken link, and suggest adding your relevant link.
If you consistently implement this link-building strategy, I can assure you it works. Most web owners may request compensation for placing your backlink, and if you have a sufficient marketing budget, it will become significantly easier to secure valuable links.
Broken link outreach strategy:
I have experienced this firsthand so I can tell you this strategy is quite effective. I obtained five unique links just by emailing people about something wrong with their website.
However, most of them didn’t reply! But who cares when you can secure thousands of dollars worth of backlinks with minimal effort?
Here is how it works:
You might already know that many domains expire regularly. Sometimes, domains with authoritative backlinks also become available or change over time!
But the backlinks don’t disappear.
Once you find those broken links on authoritative sites, you can reach out and ask them to replace those links with a similar article.
If you don’t already have a corresponding article on your website, what can you do in that case?
You can take the broken link, put it in the Wayback Machine, and see what the original article was about.
You can then create a similar article with updated and more helpful information. After that, you can reach out to the webmaster, informing them that one of the links on their site is broken. They should consider replacing it to avoid hurting their search rankings.
Learn how to find expired links:
There are two effective methods I have used to find these expired links.
- Use any SEO tool to find broken links. Tools will automatically find broken link opportunities on any website.
- You can also use the Broken Link Checker Chrome extension to find broken links efficiently.
Get links from business listings (an easy strategy):
It’s quite simple to utilize business listings for link building. You can search for business listing sites on Google and start creating profiles on them.
What you must consider is to use the exact same information everywhere to ensure consistency.
There are two limitations to this strategy:
- You must have fully optimized content on your site to attract potential customers.
- Use this strategy at scale to maximize its effectiveness.
It doesn’t matter if you build dofollow or nofollow links with this strategy; you will definitely see some SEO benefits from the additional backlinks.
Acquire backlinks with guest posting:
Guest posting is one of the most powerful and effective link-building strategies available.
It’s not without reason. Here’s why guest posting stands out as an effective link-building approach.
Google prefers that you acquire links naturally from webmasters with genuine intent. These are known as organic links.
In guest posting, it’s entirely up to the webmaster how and where they will place the link in the content, and whether it will be a dofollow or nofollow link.
Suppose you receive some links with natural intent; for example, if they trust your content and offer you a link back to your website. This means they are sharing their website’s authority with yours.
Isn’t that great?
However, you typically don’t easily get such authoritative links.
Even if you spend considerable time researching, preparing a comprehensive guide, and then offering it to someone else in exchange for a single backlink to your website, they may still reject your guide or not provide you with a dofollow backlink without charging you.
That can be disheartening.
So, how do you convince them?
Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut to persuade those who ask for payment.
We reach out to hundreds of individuals and offer them high-quality free content, but only a few are convinced; most still prefer monetary compensation.
So we continue our search until we find the right contacts.
For instance, we reached out to 345 individuals in 19 days, and quite a few agreed to a free guest post opportunity.
Otherwise, 99% of responses clearly asked for editorial fees like this:
So, it’s a long-term process to keep reaching out to people until you find individuals whom you can convince to link back to your site.
By doing this, you not only build relationships but also acquire industry-relevant backlinks that can enhance your website’s authority and visibility.
Try Connectively for digital PR:
If you consider yourself an expert in any field, I highly recommend joining Connectively (formerly HARO) as a valuable resource.
On this platform, journalists pose questions, and as a source, you have the opportunity to provide valuable answers and receive proper attribution. If your response is deemed more insightful compared to others, you may even get featured and earn free backlinks.
You can select the most relevant queries and start responding to acquire links.
Eventually, you will begin receiving emails from journalists seeking your expertise.
While you might need to wait a few months to accumulate a decent number of backlinks, with HARO pitches, you can secure high-authority (DA90+) backlinks for free.
If you find it hard, you can outsource this task to expert freelancers or an SEO agency and they will definitely get these links.
Acquire backlinks from forums and communities:
Many people believe that forum links are ineffective, but that’s not true. I have witnessed even big digital marketing agencies leveraging this link-building strategy.
There are two key factors to consider: the forum must be relevant to your industry, and the topic of the thread should align with your article.
Here’s how I find relevant forums for link building:
Use the following search phrases along with your keywords to locate suitable forums:
- Your keyword + inurl:forum/index.php
- Your niche + inurl:threads
- Your business type + intitle:forum inurl:threads
Once you create a profile on a forum, you can add a link back to your website. However, those profile links often don’t carry much weight.
Your goal should be to secure a link from within the discussion.
After creating a profile on a forum and engaging in discussions, you build trust with both the platform and Google (assuming the web pages are indexed).
You help Google recognize you as an authoritative figure in that niche, demonstrating that you understand the subject matter and that people appreciate your insights.
When adding links in forums, make sure to:
- Use naked URLs
- Use generic phrases like “here,” “this blog,” or “this piece”
- Incorporate relevant keywords
Earn high-quality backlinks with infographic submissions:
This is a simple and effective link-building strategy that all beginners can utilize.
Start by creating engaging infographics using a free tool like Canva, and then share them on major infographic submission sites.
- By doing this, you’ll earn backlinks from the websites where you submit your infographics.
- Users who appreciate visually appealing content will add your infographics to their posts. It will also help you accumulate links over time.
If you’re unsure how to find infographic submission sites, simply search for “infographic submission sites” on Google, and you’ll discover a plethora of free platforms to leverage.
Another effective strategy for acquiring backlinks with infographics is to publish them on your own website. For instance, we also have a category for infographics.
Many webmasters actively search for high-quality infographics each month, and if you provide what they need, they will gladly feature it and credit your website as the original source.
For example, consider this: people are frequently searching for infographics related to topics like cell phones, land, and more.
The search volume for these keywords is around 2,900 per month. If your business operates in these industries and you can rank for these keywords, it’s a no-brainer—you’ll attract backlinks consistently.
In short, link-building can be simple, but it requires effort and consistency. Those who invest the time to build quality backlinks ultimately reap the rewards in the form of higher rankings and better SEO performance.
What is link-buidling in simple words?
In simple words, link building is getting links for your website from other websites.
For instance, your website is A, and other websites B, C, and D mention your website A on their websites.