Having your own website or a blog doesn’t end with just creating content. If you truly want to make your efforts count, you should get familiar with Search Engine Optimization and the benefits it comes with. It’s not only about having a well-optimized content, though. There are many useful SEO tactics that can help drive traffic to your site, including link building. Find out how to get backlinks and why is it important in the first place.
How to boost your Search Engine Optimization?
When optimizing your website for search engines, your goal should be to affect the visibility of your website in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). In general, the higher and more frequently a website ranks in SERP, the easier it can be found by Internet users. A well-thought-out SEO strategy aims to make your website stand out, and link building is often an important part of it.
How link building helps SEO?
Building links basically means getting featured on other pages, blogs or portals with a backlink to your website. You may not realise it, but hyperlinks are one of the core aspects of the Internet since they basically “tie” all web pages and help to navigate them. For example, as an Internet user, you can easily browse similar content or find other relevant sources thanks to hyperlinks.
But there’s an additional advantage of them too. In order to index new pages, search engines follow featured links to a particular website and take them into account when determining its position in SERP. Actually, every backlink they find is treated as a vote of confidence in this site, which proves that it’s relevant and most likely high in quality. That’s precisely why it’s not only quantity of links that counts, but more importantly – their quality. Technically, the more valuable sources link to your website, the better for its authority and ultimately, visibility. But there’s also another side of it – poor links can harm the position of your website in the Search Engine Results Page. They can even get you penalized and recovering from such a penalty is not as easy as it may seem. Therefore, you should always build links in a transparent and legal manner. And here’s how to get backlinks for your website.
How to get backlinks for your website
No matter how familiar you are with SEO and building links, it’s always important to start with a proper link building strategy and specify your goals first. Most likely, the ultimate outcome is to increase the numbers of visitors and thus, the awareness of your site. Don’t just go for any audience, though. Focus on a specific target group instead – it may be difficult to create relevant content otherwise.
Once you have your goals and target group specified, get familiar with link building techniques that are available to you. Actually, link building is closely related to creating, distributing and promoting quality content. After all, the aim is similar – to attract attention, as well as acquire some mentions and backlinks to your website. There are many useful techniques that will help you build links, but you should always pay attention to your needs and resources when deciding what works best for your site. How to get started, then?
If you don’t have a blog – set up one. Blogging will simply keep your website updated, which is convenient both for the readers and search engines. Bots and crawlers are constantly looking for new pages to index, which is why they tend to come back more often to a site with regular updates. Having a blog will also make it possible to create relevant and more specific content, which can attract a wider audience and be easily linked to. How come? Valuable content is often a good enough reason to make readers want to share it across their own channels. Basically, if it’s interesting or viral, it will eventually get noticed – even by media, influencers, and other popular sources out there. Remember that’s the quality of backlinks that makes a difference, which means that the more relevant the source, the better for your site.
Make sure your content is well-optimized for search engines, though. What does it mean? When writing a blog post, make sure you include a chosen keyword (or a few keyword phrases, for that matter). It should match what your target group searches for – only this way, you’re able to rank high in the Search Engine Results Page. It won’t happen overnight, but it’s definitely worth to keep your content optimized for relevant keywords and wait for the traffic to increase.
“Revamp” what you already have. Once you start investing your time and effort into creating quality blog posts and/or website copy, you will eventually feel the urge to make even better use of them. This is when repurposing your content becomes useful. In most cases, changing the form and/or the publisher can help you reach a wider audience coming from different sources (hopefully along with some backlinks). Before you repurpose anything, try to think outside the box and come up with a plan. For example, you could first write a series of blog posts, then turn it into an ebook, or divide everything into podcasts, videos, and a set of slides. You don’t have to do so with every blog post you create, though. Choose only the best performing pieces of content or even some older ones, just to make them relevant again.
Speaking of creating content – once you start running your own blog, you will quickly become better at writing and optimizing your posts for SEO purposes. You can take advantage of this knowledge to write externally as well. You could try to get published on other blogs (in a form of so-called guest posting) since many of them accept quality contributions free of charge. You basically exchange relevant content for a backlink, which means that both parties get something out of such a collaboration.
If you find it hard to search for guest post opportunities, look into investing in sponsored articles instead. This option resembles guest posting but requires some payment for publishing your content. It’s actually a form of advertising (“native ads”), which provides an opportunity to secure a backlink to your website from the chosen source. Still, if you don’t want to research the publishers yourself, you can easily take advantage of the dedicated platforms. Try Whitepress.net, Markerly or PRnews.io – they will basically find the opportunities for you so that you don’t have to research them all by yourself.
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Do you expect to get more results fast? Try automatic backlink builders. Such tools are designed to create backlinks automatically, and most are available for free. It’s often perceived as a risky technique when it comes to link building though. The majority of the providers of such services claims otherwise. Make sure you set up your account properly and specify your requirements before you start using automatic backlink builders. It’s important to choose a certain theme, common for all the sites you will get featured on. Mostly because you will need to feature some links on your website in exchange. Still, everything here happens fast and without much of an effort from your side.
Alternatively, you can look for broken backlinks, or those pointing to 404s. What’s all the fuss about? There may be a few broken links pointing to your site, or an old URL that doesn’t function anymore (you can find them easily if you are using Ahrefs). If that’s the case – contact the website owner and ask them to replace a broken link. It may be worth the hassle, especially if the sources are of high quality.
Another option that will require some research from you is to relate to the recent developments and news. It’s often called newsjacking or growth hacking and basically means that you have to identify a trendy topic and write about it yourself. There are different approaches to it – you can curate the relevant news and keep it up to date, you can comment on the whole situation, or analyze it in detail. Remember that this won’t work if the chosen news and updates have nothing to do with your own website or a blog, though. In any case, once you’re in the centre of attention, it’s easy to get noticed and featured elsewhere – with a backlink, of course.
As for being in the loop, you can also make sure your readers and followers are always up-to-date. Use social media and your mailbox for that purpose. Actually, social media is a great tool to increase the awareness of your website. Post links every now and then, and engage in a conversation with the online community. To reach your audience more effectively, experiment with different channels and content types. And what about using your mailbox, then? First things first – include the hyperlink to your site in your email signature. Then, prepare a newsletter with the highlights of your content – just don’t forget to link to the actual site.
As a matter of fact, you’re almost one step away from becoming an influencer at this point. And it’s definitely a good thing since online PR can actually get you places. Try reaching out to media and other relevant sources yourself – maybe you can contribute to another blog post or article in exchange for a backlink? You could also add a few lines to Wikipedia Pages and cite your own content to get featured under the “References” section. It may be worth the effort in terms of quality traffic to your website. Just make sure your contribution has value – otherwise, it will quickly be deleted.
Once you test all different techniques and decide what works best for your site, remember to keep track of your backlinks and analyze the results. In fact, most people invest a lot of time and effort into acquiring new links, but hardly ever track them. Don’t make the same mistake! As usual, the quantity is not everything – when it comes to building links, only quality features can get your website rank higher in the Search Engine Results Page. If you apply a few of the above-mentioned tactics, you should be able to get quality backlinks in no time.
