Building backlinks to boost your website SEO is a very popular practice. It’s hard and time consuming. You can’t afford to go in the wrong direction when building backlinks for your site. If most of your links are spammy, they won’t add any value to your SEO.
In this blog post, I ‘ll share 11 evergreen link building strategies that will help boost your website’s search engine rankings and drive traffic to your site. So let’s discuss them one by one.
- Infographics
What is infographic?
Infographic is an image that uses some texts to illustrate an idea, concept or complicated information in an easy to comprehend manner.
Why infographics are good to get backlinks. Infographics share ideas in a more persuasive way, but most people don’t have such creative skills to do that. So they want to use your infographic to use on their website.
If you create a really good infographic, you can generate lots of leads naturally.
How to pick a topic for infographic that can go viral?
You don’t have to create infographics for the sake of creating it. Instead, you really need to put in some real effort and make it really good.
The first thing that you need to do is to pick a good topic. Do not copy ideas and make slight changes and publish them.
How to prepare infographic content?
Once you have picked your topic ideas, you need to collect the facts or ideas that can help you to communicate your point or tell the story. You need to think about all the aspects carefully and include them in your content. Once you have collected all important information, it’s time to design the infographic.
How to design simple yet highly engaging infographic in canva?
Canva is a really popular online designing tool. You can use it to create really amazing infographics. There are lots of templates available on Canva that you can use and make changes as you like. You can download your infographic images in pdf or png form.
How you can get tons of backing + revving audience with your infographics?
Once you have created your infographics, you have to aggressively promote it. You can use it in your blogs. You can add an infographic section on your website or blog and put all your infographics there, so that your audience can easily find that.
You can promote your infographics on your social media channels, where people will interact with your infographics and share them on their social media channels. You can share your infographics on FB, instagram so that people can add a source url if they have to use your infographic in their own blogs or websites.
One more way to get backlinks from your infographics is to send email outreach. It’s very important that you send emails to the right people. You can’t send emails to random people and ask for sharing your things.
You do Google search and find blogs in your niche. Review their content and see if your infographic can add any value to their sites. If yes, send them a nice and warm message with your infographic url. Not all will reply, but you can get some good quality backlinks.
2. Broken Link Building
What is broken link building
A broken link doesn’t exist on a web page anymore. Why? Because for some reason, the source is not available where the link was pointed to. If you click on a broken link, you will find nothing or 404. If you find such a link on a popular website or may not be that popular, you have an opportunity to earn a link for your website.
How to find broken link building opportunity
You can use a free chrome extension ‘check my links’, to find broken links opportunities. Websites and pages with lots of links may have broken links too. You should check them more often to find opportunities. You should look out for websites in your niche because niche links help in boosting website authority.
How to write content to replace the broken link
Now that you have found the broken link that you want to replace with your own website link, you have to replicate the content or make it even better(my suggestion is to make it even better). Now the questions, how do you know what was there on that page since the information is not there anymore.
How to approach the website owner to replace the broken link with your link
When you have prepared content to replace the broken link of a website, you can contact the owner. You can talk a bit about their website or blog and give them genuine complements. You can simply outline the importance of replacing their broken link with your content. If your the quality of your content is good and right for their audiences, they are likely to accept your request. To know more about broken link outreach script or strategies you can check out Brain Dean Broken Link Building resource here.
3. Guest posts
What is a guest post
A guest post is a blog or article that you publish on other websites. You need to find websites or blogs in your niche that accept guest posts. Along with your post, you can share your website url in the article or in the author’s bio. If you are a beginner blogger, you can also get a decent traffic to your sites through these links. You can also generate some leads through guest posts if you do that strategically.
How to find guest post opportunities
You can do online research to find guest posting opportunities. You should pick sites that are getting some traffic. Don’t chess sites that have low domain authority or very low traffic. Although it’s a bit hard to publish articles on high to medium authority sites. But when you get it, it will bring traffic and increase your domain authority, which plays an important role to push your ranking higher.
You can simply email the website owners and ask them whether they accept guest posts. If the site is already accepting guest posts, there are high chances that you can also publish your articles there. Make sure you do your research and prepare the article before you approach website owners. When they see your article, they are likely to accept it. It also gives them a feel that you are a legit person not a spammer.
How to approach website owner for publishing a guest if you are shy
Guest posting is a great way to gain initial traction for your site, but something you shy away from taking any actions. The best part of guest posts is that it’s free most of the time. Since you are adding value, website owners will happily accept your posts.
You can approach website owners with confidence since you are contributing and helping their readers. When you send them an email do some research and try to make your message personalized. Do some research about the website owners and interests, achievements etc and mention them in the mail. Try to find out something that you can genuinely appreciate in your mail.
Instead of being pushy, simply request them to check out your article and ask their opinion if it can be their next guest blog on their site.
Don’t worry if you get rejections. Keep trying and you will get better at this strategy and develop your own unique way to approach guest posts. These are just my suggestions, you can be as creative as you like.
Aim for adding value
Guest posting can be a great marketing strategy. You don’t have to limit it to link building only. You need to think in terms of giving up front value. When you do that website owners will love to work with you and open as many opportunities as they can for you.
Aim for do-follow link
You need to ask yourself – can I get a do-follow link from this website. If other guests are getting do-follow links, chances are that you can also get do follow links. But if you are not sure about it, you can simply ask the website owner to give you a do-follow link for your guest posts. If you have built and maintained a good relationship with the site owner, it’s not that hard to get do-follow links.
4. HARO
What is HARO
HARO stands for Help A Reporter Out. With HARO, you essentially are helping a reporter find a credible source for information or quote. If you get quoted by a report on a popular website, you receive a backlink which makes your site more authoritative. If you are serious about SEO, building HARO links should be your main link building strategy. The best part about HARO link building is that you start building them even if you are new in the industry.
Why does it exist
Reports are highly knowledgeable individuals. They probably know better than marketers, but sometimes they come across a topic which is new to them or they are looking for a source to quote. So they use a service called HARO where they have to submit their request and someone in the community helps them get the right quote. If you become their sources, you get backlinks most of the time.
How to get a HARO link in less than 5 days
First you need to get to the HARO site(https://www.helpareporter.com/) and register yourself as a source. You need to fill out some information and you can get going pretty fast here.
Everyday, you will get 3 mails from HARO with lots of quote requests in all major categories. You can quickly look through all the requests and pick those that interest you and you can be a source for that request.
Once you have picked the right request to reply for, make sure you write a unique quote and reply to the reporter who made the request. Make sure you have to impress the report with your work. Don’t say something so obvious, but make your quote unique and captivating.
If you want your quotes to be accepted, make sure you properly polish your writing so that the report just has to copy and paste it into her article. If you can create that magic with your quotes, reports will love you for that.
In the beginning, your quote may get rejected. There may be lots of reasons for that. Make sure you look as professional and authentic as possible. No reporter wants to link out to a shady website or sloppy quotes. Don’t give up, but keep ticking the box and you will become a HARO link building ninja.
5. Coin your own term
If you are in the SEO world for quite some time, you probably have heard of ‘skyscraper technique’. Backlinco’s founder Brain Dean invented this term. You can see it everywhere on the internet. Brain not only smartly named it, but the idea behind ‘skyscraper techniques’ is so powerful that no one can resist using it.
But how Brain get backlink from this term? Well, it’s simple. Whenever someone mentions this technique, they refer to the Brain dean or his domain. It gives him lots of backlink without any active efforts. Cool, Brain!
Can I do that?
That’s the real question. Brain can do it because he has a ton of traffic, may budget or smart marketing skills, but how can you do it if you are just starting out or you are not that popular.
If you are an expert in your area, coining a term is not hard. Infact, we all do that all the time, but since we don’t get our terms to get publicly accepted, we may think that it’s hard.
You can give a name to your ideas, tactics and strategies and take feedback from your colleagues and friends. You can also explain your terms to people who don’t have expert knowledge of your industry. If you do that, you will clearly know if you have created something worth marketing or mentioning.
Once you have gained the confidence, you can consistently use it everywhere on the internet. You can promote it everywhere so that people can start mentioning it.
I know this strategy may sound hard, but if you do it right, you will get a ton of credibility and backlinks as well.
6. Tell stories using statistics
No one wants to read a boring block of statistics which is hard to interpret. But if you make complicated data into small stories and present them in easy to understand visual form, people will love to read and share your stuff online.
To make your point stronger, if you use statistics with visuals, you will look more legit to your target customers. Instead of just talking about ideas, theories and concepts, if you put some cool data and share the story, your content will look more believable and practical.
When you hunt for data and statistics, make sure online refer to credible sources in your industry and mention the source. You can change the way data looks and add your own unique angle to use in your article.
You should add your own creativity to make your stats impactful and visually pleasing.
You can visit websites of university research and government bodies to search for statistics. With some research, you can find such a site that can provide you data that you need.
7. Use illustration
What is it an illustration
An illustration is a picture that tells a story, explains a complicated idea, or communicates something more profoundly.
You can come up with many ideas to create illustrations. Since they communicate so brilliantly, people tend to spread them all over the internet. With a good illustration, you can open opportunities for free fan following and backlinks.
How to create illustrations that goes viral
I know what you are thinking. You must be saying that I am not a graphic designer. How can I create an illustration? You are right that not all of us have the professional level of skills to create illustrations. But I am sure you can come up with an idea and hire someone to create an illustration for you.
How illustration can get to you lots of backlinks, traffics and follower too
No one wants to read a boring chunk of text, it doesn’t matter how it’s written. Your eyes demand some variety. Bloggers and website owners always look for amazing images and illustrations. When your site is full of such illustrations, everyone wants to use them and make their blogs look smart.
8. Skyscraper technique
What is skyscraper technique
Skyscraper technique means you are finding articles that are already ranking on 1 position on Google and creating something even better.
If you Google search your target keywords or a group of target keywords, you may find that certain websites and articles frequently get on the top of the SERFs. When you closely review these pages, you may find some information gaps or you may feel that you can write an article way better than these.
So skyscraper technique means:
- You are creating article or content that deserves to be on the first position
- Before hitting the ‘publish’, you reach out to website owners and promote your articles
Things you need to use skyscraper technique
First you need to find articles that are ranking on the top position for your target keywords. Once you have found these articles, then you have to produce something even better. If someone wrote about 15 tips to weight loss, you will write 42 ways to weight loss. You need to go extra miles to make your articles packed with real value and practical tips and techniques.
If you don’t focus on providing real value and practical information, you won’t succeed with this strategy. Fluff, boring and junk content is not going to get you on the first page of Google.
How to use it to get backlinks
Now the big questions:
How can you get backlinks using skyscraper technique? Skyscrapers technique inventor Brain Dean says you should reach out to people who you have mentioned in your articles. Most people will be happy to know that they are featured somewhere. They will happily share your articles to their audience which will make them look smart.
9 .edu sites
What is .edu
Websites with .edu domain extensions have high authority. Google doesn’t give priority to .edu sites as such. But you must go after .edu backlinks because such domains have high authority and high authority backlinks are really helpful to boost your rankings.
How to get backlinks from .edu sites
There are many techniques that you can use to get backlinks from edu sites. You can give a try to the following techniques:
- Contributing to the resources pages – According to your industry, niche or expertise, you can contribute to the resources pages on edu sites. You can do a Google search to find .edu sites. Add your niche specific keywords to find relevant pages to contribute to.
- Give discount to staff – You can offer discounts to staff members of your target university or college to get mention and backlinks. You can create a page and share the information there about your special discount offer.
- Contributing to the job section – You talk to someone in the placement department and get a mention for the job posting or internships you have available to get a nice backlink.
- Offering scholarship – I think it’s the best technique to build edu backlinks. Education institutes always want to grab a scholarship opportunity for your students. Institutes that offer scholarships can attract more students. To get a backlink, you simply create a webpage about your scholarship problem and ask them to share the link on their site.
10. Niche links
What’s a niche link
Although you can get backlinks from websites in all industries, it will be more useful if you can get a backlink from a similar industry or niche.
Google tends to give more weight to niche links as they send strong signals that your site has to be trustworthy in that niche.
How you can find niche link building opportunity
Keep a record of all websites in your niche. You can maintain an excel sheet to manage your details. You must include the email of the website owner or admin so that you can approach them whenever you run a niche link building campaign. You can also connect people who own sites in your industry on linkedin or facebook.
You can do a simple Google search and find websites in your niches. You need to give priority to those sites with higher domain authority. If these sites are giving backing links to other sites and open for content publishing opportunities, you must go after those.
How to write content to get niche backlinks
This is the most important step that you need to get right. If you pick a wrong topic or your content is shady, it will become extremely hard for you to get links.
So what you need to do is to check the quality of your target website content, how good their research is, and how well the article is written. If you can’t match up to their quality parameters, you will fail with it.
My suggestion is to pick a topic which is not covered anywhere on this site and write a really helpful article. You can go extra miles to deliver outstanding experience for their target audience. When you approach the site owner with such an amazing piece of content, you hardly say no to it.
How to make niche links consistently
Don’t make niche links every once in a while. Instead make it your long term strategy. In the beginning, you might struggle with how to find a good opportunity or how to approach the right way, but as you keep doing it, you will get better at it. In marketing, consistency is the key.
11. Build a tool
I know it will take more effort, time or money to make a really amazing tool that attracts backlinks like a magnet, but it’s worth the effort. A tool makes people’s life easier – just a few clicks and boom – you get the outcome which was hard, time consuming and really complicated to get otherwise.
Since a tool provides real value and solves your target audience problems immediately, it attracts lots of free traffic and backings. Even Ubersuggest founder Neil Paten says this technique is better than all other SEO techniques.
When you dig deeper, you can find an opportunity to create a tool around. After a few tries, you can get something that works for you.