10 Actionable Strategies for Acquiring Backlinks for Your Site

Backlinks are the live wire of any website. Yet, an unhealthy 55% of websites do not have an SEO backlink strategy. That’s about 1 in 2 of all websites. Against this background, our Guest Contributor and Digital Marketing expert, Kate Parish shares 10 actionable techniques for acquiring high quality backlinks for your blog!

What do you do to make your business, blog, or online store popular? You may employ digital PR, social media, or state-of-the-art innovations.

Suppose you own an online store on Magento. What can you add to the website to enhance the shopping experience? You may transform the traditional store architecture into a Magento headless solution, speed up the page load, and improve navigation.

However, the fundamental thing you can’t overlook is creating qualitative content. But even the most professional guide may appear in the darkness of Google search without proper promotion.

With all SEO strategies, link building remains essential for promoting your website in search.

Why?

It works as a word-of-mouth recommendation. Other resources signal Google to pay attention to the page, as it contains something relevant. It may be statistics, an explanatory article, or a citation. The more resources point to your page, the more visible it becomes.

According to research, almost 55% of websites don’t have any backlinks or neglect the SEO backlink strategy. So the sooner you develop a backlink strategy, the better.

This article contains link-building tips to increase trust and visibility on Google.

10 Proven Backlink Strategies for Your Website

1. Write Long-Form and Well-Researched Content

Why should anyone mention your website? If your content is decent, long-form, and well-researched, it will certainly obtain high-quality backlinks.

Your goal should be to create link-worthy content to improve your backlink strategy. Other bloggers and industry professionals will reference and link back to your website.

Yes, it’s a time-consuming method. One article may take a month to draft and publish. But it’s well worth the effort, as you’ll receive backlinks, drive organic traffic, and show your expertise.

The types of content you may create:

• how-to articles;
• guides;
• list pieces;
• quizzes;
• among other things.

Have You Heard of the Skyscraper Technique?

Here I’d like to talk about the Skyscraper Technique, introduced by Brian Dean of Backlinko. It’s a link-building strategy based on three main principles:

1. Look for content that has received a lot of attention and has many links.
2. Write a piece that’s ten times better.
3. Promote it to individuals whom you mentioned in the article. The pitch doesn’t look spammy or pushy in this case, so people will be more eager to share the post on their social media or websites.

This strategy helps you generate high-quality backlinks that will boost your organic traffic and rank for competitive search terms and keywords.

Let’s take the “best Italian courses” as an illustration. If you create a list of the best resources, overview them with attention to detail (their pros and cons), then other sources will cite your articles as a source.

The best part of such listicles is that you can update the blog post as much as you like to keep up to date. You can add new items to the list as floors of the skyscraper.

Pro tip: don’t limit yourself to just the best courses; add the worst ones or tailor the content to the year of publication, as seen on the screenshot below.

2. Get Insights from Your Competitors’ Activities

Where do your competitors gain high-quality backlinks? How do they attract organic visitors, generate leads, and publish content? You should know what the others are doing if you want to stay on top of what’s going on in the industry.

Ethically spy on your competition to:

• find backlink sources;
• examine their organic keywords;
• top-performing content;
• social media activities;
• and other things.

There are SEO tools like SEMrush to get these insights. It contains an overview of any website’s backlinks. Open the Backlink Analytics section and enter your competitor’s domain. Proceed to the Backlinks tab to see a list of domains mentioning your competition.

SEMrush also provides the Backlink Gap Tool to streamline the process. It supports the analysis of up to five domains to show the sources and pages linking to your competitors.

SEMrush also provides the Backlink Gap Tool to streamline the process. It supports the analysis of up to five domains to show the sources and pages linking to your competitors.

You can outreach these sources as part of your link-building strategy. For example, if your competition writes guest posts, you can also follow this pattern and create content for websites accepting guest blogging.

Or, if they participate in a forum discussion, register on the website and get a backlink from there too.

3. Gain High-Quality Backlinks with Infographics

Another proven example of backlink-building strategies is to utilize infographics. How do you define infographics? These are graphic, picture, and chart-based representations of facts.

Just as images, infographics help visualize the written material, improving readability and making readers 650% more engaged than text. It also conveys complicated concepts in simple pictures.

Other websites can take such infographics to quickly summarize the subject and cite the source (which is you). The best part is that it’s not an aggressive promotion. Instead, you assist other content creators with helpful material.

While you may hire an expert to make an infographic, you can make one yourself using a variety of free web tools, such as:

• Canva;
• Fotor;
• Google Charts;
• Easel.ly;
• etc.

4. Analyze Broken Links

Another effective SEO backlink strategy is to use broken link building. It involves looking for informative web pages with external links to dead pages. Such pages are the ones that no longer exist.

Why do broken links appear? For example, the source website removed a page (also known as a 404 error), the URL is incorrect, or the website itself has been closed or relocated to a different domain.

Whatever the case may be, don’t neglect this fantastic opportunity to obtain a backlink. Here’s what the broken link building strategy takes:

• finding broken links;
• contacting the website to restore the link;
• pitching your site as a replacement.

To locate broken links, start with your competitors and expand your search to include other websites in your niche. Again, SEO tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs can help you.SEMrush has a filter functionality in the Backlinks report. Click the Lost box to display non-existing links.

Once the list of broken links is ready, you’ll need to contact or email the website’s web admin and report the broken link. Introduce yourself, include the specific location of the broken link, and show your desire to assist. And what’s the alternative to the broken link that you’ll suggest? Right, your website.

5. Use the Benefits of Guest Articles

If you’re ready to flex your writing muscles for other websites, guest blogging should be your choice. It’s an SEO backlink strategy to reach out to the target audience outside your website and drive traffic to your home page, service page, or blog.

How can you start guest blogging? First, you need to find websites that accept guest articles. Some don’t explicitly indicate it, so you’ll need to contact them to specify it. Others have a contributor account or a “Write for us” section.

There you can find topics they’re looking for and requirements to submit an article for publication. You can learn whether they allow including a link to your website.

If yes, will it be in the author’s bio section or within the article body? Note that the position of the link also matters. The higher it is, the better, while the link in the author bio has the lowest value. Will it be marked “no-follow”? This also matters because such a tag indicates that the link isn’t that trustworthy.

You may find guest blogging websites by doing a simple Google search. The query may look like “keyword + a guest article/write for us/contributor” to display the opportunities for guest posting.

Brainstorm compelling headings, a persuasive pitch, and a summary of what you’ll discuss in the piece. Clarify how it will assist the audience of the resource, and then start crafting the copy.

6. Leave Feedback on Other Websites

Client testimonials boost your credibility, but did you know about the benefits of leaving feedback? You can get high-quality backlinks by reviewing the technology, product, or service you use. While it doesn’t bring many backlinks, it can diversify your link profile.

Many companies seek testimonials to use as social proof and put them on the home page of their website. Below is such an example on the Zapier website.

If you can compose a testimonial or case study for them to use on the website, they can include a link back to your site to give credit. This backlink leads to your home page, so it needs to be high-quality. That’s why look for websites with high domain authority (DA).

7. Make Use of the Help a Reporter Out (HARO) Option

Getting backlinks from journalistic blogs and news websites is like winning a lottery. That’s because these websites have high domain authority, and a mention from them will increase the trust level of your site.

Such websites receive hundreds of pitches and can lose your message in this flow. But there’s a source that connects platforms and content creators. It’s HARO (Help a Reporter Out).

The experience with HARO starts with signing up as a source on the website. Then choose a pricing plan from Basic, Standard, Advanced, and Premium. The Basic HARO plan is free, it’s more than enough to begin your successful link-building strategy.

So, you’ve joined HARO; what’s next? The service will send you emails with requests for quotes, advice, recommendations, stories, and more from various news and media websites.

These emails are generally time-sensitive. Respond to the questions that are relevant to your industry. If they choose to feature your quote, you’ll obtain a hyperlink from the website.

8. Employ Interviews, Podcasts, and Forums in the SEO Backlink Strategy

Interviews, podcasts, and forums are three different ways to receive high-quality backlinks.

a) Interviews

Appearing in interviews helps you become an industry expert and drive traffic to your site. You can get an interview by searching the internet for sites that conduct interviews regularly.

b) Forums

The same applies to participating in discussion forums. To find relevant forums for your niche, try either of the following techniques or strategies:

• [your niche] + forums;
• [your area of expertise] + discussion.

Start with Quora. Simply type a search term into Quora, and it will return all of the questions on the subject.

Another strategy to locate forums is to look at what your competitors are doing. As previously said, you can find backlinks by spying on your competition. Monitor the forums they used to obtain backlinks using various SEO tools and then do the same.

c) Podcasts

Let’s look at podcasts as an SEO backlink strategy. You can either attend shows as a guest or broadcast your advertising during someone’s episode.

How can you obtain a backlink from podcasts if they’re audio? Yes, oral advertising during the episode won’t improve your SEO. However, advertised companies still sell 14% better if they appear on a podcast.

But don’t give up on the chance to acquire a backlink. Ask a host to add your link to the episode description on the website so your brand won’t go unnoticed.

Finding podcasts is similar to finding interviews. Conduct a quick search for relevant podcasts on platforms such as Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, etc.

Then write them an email expressing your interest. Include your experience, why you’re a good fit for the podcast, and how you can contribute value.

You’ll gain a following after you start appearing on many podcasts. If you decide to launch a podcast on your website, you can engage your newly attracted audience.

9. Listicles and Resource Pages for Link Building

Another backlink strategy we recommend is finding resource pages and submitting your website to them. What are resource pages? They are long lists of helpful resources and links to various products and services, as shown in the screenshot below.

How do you find resource sites and listicles? Search your keywords together with terms like “helpful resources” or “resource list.” Contact the site owner to mention your business.

Personalize your emails and add links to the places where you want your site to be mentioned. Demonstrate how your website, service, product, or tool benefits their visitors by adding value to the given resource page.

10. Look for Unlinked Brand Mentions

Sometimes you may see brand mentions in blog posts, product reviews, or discussions. And they may not include a link to the company’s website. These are unlinked brand mentions.

Your task is to identify who cites your business without credit and try to transform them into high-quality backlinks. How can you track this down? For instance, leverage the SEMrush Brand Monitoring Tool.

The tool tracks any indication of your brand and sends notifications as soon as they happen.

Final Word

Why do you need to develop a backlink strategy? Google favors websites that are worth sharing.

If other resources (preferably trustworthy) include high-quality backlinks from a website, it means it’s authoritative, useful, and valuable to people. And that influences how high the website will rank in SERP.

There are various backlink strategies to boost your website in search. Which one is best for you is typically determined by your industry, how you’ve previously tackled link building, and what your competitors are doing.

Determine the strategies that are best suited to your website and streamline the process with the help of SEO tools. And that’s how you will gain your competitive advantage by compiling a great link-building strategy.