One of the best ways to improve your site’s performance on search engine result pages (SERPs) is to get backlinks. But, unlike internal links, getting enough backlinks is seemingly out of your control.
Or is it?
The challenge with getting a sufficient number of backlinks to your site is that it depends on whether another site is willing to link to your site. Fortunately, there is a lot you can do to get more backlinks to your site.
This article will dive deeply into what backlinks are, why they are essential, how to choose them, and ultimately, how to get legitimate backlinks.
What Are Backlinks?
A backlink is a link from a different website to a page on your site. For example, if you sell baking supplies in your online store, and a blogger who runs a baking site links to the products on your store, you have a backlink from them.
Why Are Backlinks Important?
Backlinks are to search engines what referrals are to businesses. Each time a foreign site links back to your site, search engines view it as a vote of confidence in your content. This boosts the authoritativeness of your content, which is a pillar of SEO.
Secondly, people often link back to sites to point readers to valuable and helpful content. This is also great for SEO, as it shows that your content is beneficial.
Additionally, backlinks can considerably improve your discoverability by search engine bots. This is more so if authoritative and popular sites link to your site.
Why, you ask? Research shows that the bots take popular and known sites as their starting point when exploring content. Naturally, the bots will find their way to backlinks on mega sites, which makes your site more likely to get ranked. This is also great for exposure.
Finally, another benefit of backlinks is that they increase your organic traffic. If another site includes a link to your site in its content, a reader who clicks on it will instantly go to your site. This improves your traffic significantly.
What’s better, the traffic you get from backlinks is high-quality, primarily because people who click on the links are already invested in your content. If you sell a product, visitors who find your site through a backlink are already further down the conversion funnel than those who discover your site through SERPs.
How To Choose the Right Sources for Backlinks
Having a lot of backlinks for your site is excellent, but not all backlinks are created equal. Here is a two-step criterion you should follow when selecting sources for your backlinks.
Relevance
When choosing backlink sources for your site, you want to select those relevant to your content. If you run a beauty blog, getting backlinks from a construction site will not do your website any favors. Make your pitches to businesses within your industry.
Authority
You also want to get backlinks from authoritative sites. Google has an intricate algorithm for measuring a site’s authority, known as PageRank.
Although the algorithm considers many factors, one of the most prominent ones is a site’s popularity. The more popular a site is, the more authoritative it appears to search engines. This is where you want to source most of your backlinks.
10 Tried-and-Tested Ways to Get Backlinks from the Right Sources
Here is a list of ten excellent ways to increase backlinks to your site. These techniques are great for beginners and experienced SEO gurus alike.
- Use the Skyscraper Technique
The skyscraper technique is relatively simple in theory but requires some work to execute. The general idea is to have authoritative websites link to your site instead of your competitors. This quote by Brian Dean, Backlinko’s founder, sums up the essence of the skyscraper technique perfectly.
First, identify a competitor’s page with the most backlinks. You can use an SEO tool like Ahrefs to see how many backlinks a competitor’s page has.
Then, create content around the same topic, making it better than the competitor’s. You can do this by making your article more detailed, accurate, or easier to understand.
Then, reach out to the websites that had linked to your competitor’s site and pitch your content as the better option. Be sure to point out why your content is better, for instance, because it is up-to-date or more accurate. Then request them to link back to your page.
Often, the sites will be willing to link to your content if it is genuinely better. After all, no one wants to lead their audience to a page with incorrect information or which does a poor job of explaining concepts to readers.
- Become a Guest Author
Another way to get backlinks from great sources is to become a guest author for high-profile websites. This works because you can add as many links to your content as you wish, provided they send readers to relevant and useful pages on your site.
If you are a financial analyst, for example, why not send a request to leading finance websites like Investopedia or Forbes, asking to be featured in one of their posts? This same logic can be applied to virtually any field.
When choosing a site to become a guest author, select one within your industry or, better yet, your niche. Remember, relevance affects the quality of backlinks, so working with companies within your field is advantageous.
On most occasions, sites welcome guest bloggers for two main reasons. First, guest bloggers tend to introduce new and exciting ideas that the site does not ordinarily cover. Secondly, guest authors provide the site with free content with minimal effort on the website’s part.
- Do Original Research
Another way to get quality backlinks is to do original research. Websites are constantly looking for facts and data to support arguments; if you can supply these, there is a high probability that others will link back to you.
To make the most of this tactic, you want to ensure that your research is thorough, accurate, and fact-backed. The more detailed the information you supply, the better.
Conducting original research is also great for boosting the authoritativeness of your site. This, in turn, boosts your SEO, thus increasing your chances of ranking for critical keywords.
Although you must support your research with tangible proof, you do not need to present it boringly. Consider creating infographics or detailed ultimate guides and how-to articles.
With ultimate guides, most people writing in your niche will likely borrow some of your ideas and link back to your site so readers can find more detailed explanations. For how-to articles, ensure that you break down complex concepts into bite-sized steps that almost everyone can follow. People will be happy to send their audience to your site.
Additionally, consider getting regular input on a wide range of topics from certified experts. Including industry-leaders’ thoughts in your content increases the chances that other people will quote your work and naturally link back to your site.
- Get Featured in Podcast Interviews
Podcasts are rapidly growing in popularity as a content type. It is estimated that podcast listeners will increase to 100 million in the US alone by 2024! Talk about exponential growth!
You can take advantage of the popularity of podcasts to get quality backlinks. First, identify leading podcasts within your industry. Then, request that they interview you about your area of expertise.
A typical podcast interview takes about an hour but can pay dividends for ages. Usually, most podcasts have episode pages that provide details about their guests. This is where most also include backlinks to their guests’ websites- and where you will get your backlink.
Podcasts are also an efficient marketing platform as they allow you to showcase your expertise in a specific field. This is great for prominence and improves your authoritativeness.
- Pursue Unlinked Mentions
Have you ever seen your brand or business mentioned in a blog post or web article, but the writer did not link to your site? If you answered in the affirmative, this is a low-hanging avenue for obtaining backlinks.
Granted, manually finding every site that has mentioned your brand or product is an uphill task. This is why you should use SEO tools that scour the internet and find any mentions of your business.
Consider also turning on Google Alerts, so you get notifications whenever a new mention of your business occurs on the internet.
Once you know the sites and companies that are mentioning your brand but not linking to you, send them an email requesting that they do so. Often, they will oblige since they most likely already love your products or business enough to refer it to others.
- Take Publicity Seriously
Publicity can also earn you a considerable number of backlinks. However, you need to have a foolproof strategy for this to work.
One of the best publicity techniques that are highly effective is the Help A Reporter Out service, also known as HARO. Under this service, a reporter sends out questions to various businesses, often seeking expert opinions or data to inform new pieces or articles.
Responding to these questions increases your likelihood of being quoted in a newspaper and having the news house link back to your site.
Additionally, have regular press releases regarding significant events in your business, such as launching a new product line, relocating, or having a large sale. The news outlet will undoubtedly include links to your site when it reports your story.
You also want to make good use of your social media outlets, as they can help spread the word about your business, thus increasing your chances of getting more backlinks.
- Lean In To Your Business Network
You can also source backlinks from other businesses that you work with. These include your suppliers, distributors, and clients. Since you are already in business with these partners, they likely will oblige your request for backlinks to your website.
- Consider Using Brand Influencers
Brand influencers can also be a great way to get high-quality backlinks. Working with influencers generally involves sending your products for free or offering them services for free in exchange for favorable reviews.
Granted, working with high-profile brand influencers can be costly, but it is also one of the most effective ways to boost your brand awareness and sales. The more businesses learn about your company, the more likely they will link to your site.
Another benefit of working with brand ambassadors is they can boost your revenue through affiliate marketing. Under this partnership, your influencer gets a commission every time a user clicks on a link or purchases a product.
- Take Care (and Advantage) of Broken Links
If you want backlinks to improve your SEO, you must regularly audit them to ensure that they still lead people to actual pages on your site. Can you imagine how wasteful it is to have a backlink to your site from the New York Times, but the link leads to a missing page?
Familiarize yourself with SEO tools that enable you to detect broken backlinks so you can fix them. Once you create new content befitting the original backlink, reach out to the host site and ask that they change the link to the new page. Most will likely indulge you since they don’t want to send their audience to missing pages.
You also need to take advantage of your competitor’s broken backlinks. Use a tool like Ahref’s SEO tool to identify 301 redirects in backlinks, then reach out to the host company requesting that they include your links instead of your competitors.
- Pitch Your Resources
One of the best ways to get more backlinks is to conduct original research. But rather than wait for people to learn about your detailed analysis, why not send pitches to get more backlinks?
The easiest way is to send cold pitches to potential companies that would like to quote your research and ask them to link back to your site.
Which is the Best Way to Get Backlinks from the Best Sources?
In this article, we have discussed ten brilliant ways to get quality backlinks from reputable sources. However, in isolation, none will guarantee you as many backlinks as you probably need to get helpful link juice for SEO.
For the best results, consider creating a backlink strategy that involves several techniques discussed here. For instance, if you are pressed for resources but have a lot of time, you may skip the brand influencers and news outlets, concentrate on podcast interviews, and reach out to your business network.
However, don’t overwhelm yourself trying to master every tactic discussed here. Start with one, then work your way up to more.