Building high-quality backlinks are one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
They are an indirect ranking factor for search engines since they denote your site's trustworthiness.
The first ranking page on Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions 2-10
If you want to drive organic traffic to your site, there are two critical things that you must bear in mind: 1. Relevance and 2. Authority
Building quality links help with both, so they are a significant part of any SEO strategy as they help improve your reputation in the eyes of the search engine.
Earlier, link building used to be very simple. It consisted of writing a couple of articles for article submission sites; in return, you earned a link from them.
But after Google introduced their Penguin algorithm update, things have become stringent. The links earned in the right way will undoubtedly improve your Google ranking, while the wrong ones can get you penalized.
This is why we need to adhere to link building strategies that involve getting high-quality backlinks instead of focusing on the number of backlinks.
Building high-quality backlinks is a major roadblock for many websites, but it is also rewarding.
Most of the time, our link-building strategies involve commenting on blogs belonging to our niche, which barely earns us a nofollow link (backlinks that do not pass on the authority of the website).
If you need to stay ahead of your competitor’s link-building strategies, you must build high-quality backlinks that will consistently deliver good results.
In this blog post, we will lay down all the quality link-building techniques you can use to build backlinks ethically instead of merely link spamming, which can hurt your ranking on the SERP.
How To Build High-Quality Backlinks
1. Spy on your competitors’ backlinks
Have you ever encountered a situation where your site is performing well for a certain keyword and is ranking on Google’s first page, yet it fails to surpass your competitor’s site ranking higher than you?
You may have your on-page SEO perfectly optimized and at par with your competitor’s, using the most relevant keywords yet falling one step behind them.
Backlinks are the deal breaker here.
Your competitor may have a better backlink profile consisting of high-quality backlinks from many authoritative sites than your weaker profile.
In such a case, one of the best ways to build quality backlinks for your site without breaking a sweat is by spying on your competitors’ backlinks.
SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, Screaming Frog, SpyFu are very helpful in getting data about all the places your competitor is getting backlinks from.
All you have to do is pick the sites with high domain authority and start building quality backlinks.
2. Keep an eye out for unlinked mentions:
This is another quickest way to get high quality backlinks links. All you have to do is find the blogs or news where your brand name is already mentioned but not linked to your website.
You can find out this by setting up Google Alerts for your brand or you can even tools like BuzzSumo, Ahrefs, or Mention.
Once you find the places where your brand or any source from your website is mentioned, but the author has not linked back to you.
Write an email requesting to link back to you, highlighting that the content will appear more credible when the source to look for more information is given.
This way, you can reclaim any unlinked mentions and appear to be helpful to the author of the content.
3. Use infographics to build links:
According to a report by Backlinko and BuzzSumo where they did a study on 912 million blog posts and articles, it was found that after “why posts” and “what posts,” infographics are the most heavily linked to the type of content.
From this, it is evident that many people already focus on creating blogs and articles, given the plethora of them you already find online. But not all of them give the same attention to infographics.
As a consumer, you must already know how visually aided information is more appealing and makes a greater impact.
So tap into creating infographics, and many people who already write information-rich blogs but do not have visual elements to support them will make use of yours.
How does it help you, you wonder?
You earn high quality backlinks, of course.
4. Guest Blogging
The practice of guest blogging is old, yet it is still one of the best ways to get your brand heard amongst an already existing audience base from your niche.
Due to the new practices, some ethical and some not, guest blogging has thinned out a little as people do not want to spend their energy on writing content that would end up on someone else’s page.
But when you look at the other side of it, especially when you are a small to medium-sized business, you can get exposure and get your brand out to a larger audience.
Moreover, when you write high-quality content for a website with higher domain authority, linking the anchor texts back to your website will give you exposure and build high-quality backlinks too.
5. Reach out to promote your best content
Out of the many contents you have already published on your website, when you find the ones that are your best pieces or are performing well, it is time to take it one step further.
Those content can be very well used to get contextual links when properly promoting it.
The best way to find blogs related to your content or the topic online is to find how your content can complement and add further value.
Then compose an email to the author pitching your content and how it can be helpful to them. If your pitch works out well, then in return, you earn a good quality backlink for your content.
If you carry out the same process with your same blog but pitch it to different people, you can easily build a high-quality backlinks profile for that content.
6. Start pitching to weekly round-ups and lists.
A lot of online magazines and bloggers publish weekly round-ups and periodical lists of “Best x products,” “Best x places to shop,” or “Top x things for…” etc.
Often these lists top the SERP due to a high volume of information and being helpful to the user. So if you can’t rank at the top of the SERP, try to get mentioned in as many of these high ranking lists and roundups as possible.
Just like how we learned about pitching in the previous strategy, similarly, start pitching for this as well to include.
7. Publish guides and important statistics
Often the most comprehensive and informative piece of content serves various purposes and covers multiple topics that would take more than one blog.
It gives people all the information they need in one place, so ultimate guides or comprehensive blogs are highly preferred and shared by people.
Such guides generate a lot of inbound high quality backlinks because many publishers reference the concept they mention.
For example, here, we are solely focusing on how to build high quality backlinks and high quality link building techniques to help you rank high and generate more traffic.
But if we were to mention other on-page optimizations that you can carry out to improve your ranking, we will simply link you to an ultimate on-page SEO guide that covers everything comprehensively.
8. Add your website to online directories.
Adding your website to online directories and business websites is a quick and easy backlink-building technique.
Several online directory websites with high domain authority exist; you just have to enter all your relevant business details and don't forget to add a link to your website.
But beware of the many spammy directories that are just there for the sake of links. Submitting links to such directories will cause you more harm than good.
9. Broken link-building technique
Broken links hinder the web crawlers when crawling the site, which can affect the indexing and ranking of any website.
But did you know you can use the broken links found on other websites to your advantage?
Using digital marketing tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and tools of a similar kind, you can find the broken links that lead to a blog page or website that no longer exists.
The next step, find which of the blog posts using the broken links are relevant to your topic or website. Then compose a helpful email to the author that points out the broken link to bring it to their attention.
While bringing it to their attention, you can gently suggest an alternative to the broken links by providing links to your content that fits the context.
This way you will be helpful to them in two ways: 1. Bringing the broken links to their notice 2. Providing a solution to it
So most of the time, they will find it hard not to return the gratitude back, and you will earn high quality backlinks for your website. A win-win for both.
Quality Link Building Tips:
- Remember to focus on the quality of the links and not the quantity. As tempting as bulk purchasing backlinks sounds, they can end up causing you more harm than good.
- Check the website domain authority you are considering acquiring the links from. The higher the domain authority, the better the quality of the backlink.
- Apart from domain authority, relevance is also important. A relevant website and/or one that belongs to the same niche as you will be a better source of acquiring backlinks than those not relevant.
- While getting backlinks, you must use appropriate anchor texts, most preferably using keywords as anchor texts for backlinks. Combine domain relevancy with the right anchor text.
- Lastly, links from old sites and domains with .edu, .org, and .gov are valuable and high-quality links.
Take your time to try the quality link-building strategies we have discussed so far to feel what works best for you. You do not have to stick to one and keep alternating between the different techniques to get the best results.
Most importantly, monitor your website’s analytics and backlink profile to see which content is performing well and generating more backlinks.
Building high quality backlinks take time, and its impact will not be seen overnight; that does not mean it is not working.
If you ever need help building a high quality backlink profile for your website and getting important insights on your competitors to up your back linking game, our team at MyTasker will always be happy to assist you.
Our professionals possess expert knowledge and skills in digital marketing and have a keen interest in helping brands grow.
