10 Tips for Increasing Backlinks to Your Site and Strengthen Your Rankings
Backlinks are the most crucial factor for search engine ranking. They are also responsible for generating organic traffic on your website. Improving your search engine rankings, acquiring new customers, and boosting your sales are essential backlinking strategies. However, if you are new to Search Engine Optimization, you might be confused about what is backlinking?
In this blog post, I will take you through the best tips to increase backlinks and explain why backlinks are important. But first, let’s understand backlinking.
What Is Backlinking or Backlinks?
Backlinks are basically links from one website to a different page or a website. They are also known as inbound links, one-way links, and incoming links. Google and other search engines consider backlinks as “votes,” and the page with the highest number of backlinks tends to have a higher organic ranking.
Why Are Backlinks Important?
Even though Google has made tremendous changes to its search engine algorithm, backlinks have never lost their importance. This is because backlinks serve as votes from other websites. These votes tell Google that your content is valuable and credible.
Google and other search engines need to build a trust circle to understand whether specific content is authentic and valuable to be ranked. Therefore, search engines use “backlinks” to determine whether a particular page is beneficial for their users.
To understand backlinks, ask yourself, “How likely are you to trust a stranger, as opposed to someone your friend has introduced?” Naturally, we are inclined to trust someone who has been introduced to us by someone we know. Backlinks work in the same way. Metaphorically, websites that link back to you are your friends who introduce you to search engines and their users.
Take this example further and imagine your best friend has introduced you to someone. Now your likelihood of trusting that person has increased compared to the previous example.
Similarly, if you have a backlink from a high domain authority, it will matter more because search engines prefer quality over quantity.
What Type of Backlinks Are Valuable?
Not all backlinks are equal because of their domain and page authority. In other words, websites linking back to you must have other credible websites linking to them, creating a circle of trust.
In simple terms, a single high-quality backlink is better than 1,000 low-quality ones. Moreover, if you have backlinks from websites that work in your niche, you’ll have even higher chances of improving your search engine rankings.
Quality outranks quantity in search engine rankings because of domain authority. Essentially, higher authority means a website can transfer more authority to your page or site. For instance, a backlink from Harvard will outrank 1,000 backlinks from random websites.
10 Tips for Increasing Backlinks to Your Site
While crawling the web, Google mainly looks for backlinks to arrange its results in response to a keyword search. If your website has high-quality backlinks, your chances of ranking on Google’s first page will drastically increase. Although hundreds of metrics determine your website’s ranking on Google, backlinks are the most important ones. However, getting high-quality backlinks is challenging, but it shouldn’t be. In fact, there smart ways to earn backlinks for your website. Here are 10 ways you can quickly get high-quality backlinks.
1. Highlighting Broken Links
One of the easiest and my favorite methods for getting backlinks is the broken link technique. In this strategy, you will be hunting for websites that lead to “Error 404” (broken links). Once you have found broken links, contact the webmaster and inform them about it. At the same time, you can pitch your website as a replacement for the broken link. Since you are doing the webmaster a favor, your chances of getting a backlink are drastically increased.
To find broken links, all you have to do is go to “Google” and search for:
“Your Keyword + Link.”
For example, if you have a website for arts and crafts, your search will be similar to this.
“Art and Craft + Link.”
This search will show all the websites in your niche, and you can click on their links one-by-one to discover broken links. An easier way to do this is by installing Google Chrome Plug-in called “Check my Links.”
When reaching out to a web admin, you should introduce yourself and be friendly. Instead of being greedy for a backlink, you should carefully phrase your sentences. Remember, you are not hunting for backlinks; you are helping the webmaster replace their broken links with your website. So, be polite and offer other websites alongside yours to be unbiased.
2. Use Infographics
Using infographics is one of the best ways to boost organic traffic and get backlinks for your website. Infographics are also great because they are easy to understand and visually stunning to look at. That’s why the demand for infographics has increased considerably, and businesses are actively seeking visual ways to share information.
You can easily make infographics with tools like Canva and upload them on infographic directories. When brands use your infographics, they will link back to your website. This will provide high domain authority link juice to your website and ultimately boost your ranking on Google.
3. Leverage Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is the most effective way to reach a new audience and gain valuable backlinks. You can easily find websites asking for high-quality guest blogs. You can use the Google search console to find guest blogging websites by searching for:
- your keyword + inurl:write-for-us
- your keyword + guest-posts
- your keyword + inurl:guest-post-guidelines
- your keyword + become a contributor
- your keyword + bloggers wanted
- your keyword + submit an article
- your keyword + want to write for
- your keyword + contribute
- your keyword + become an author
- your keyword + guest post by
- your keyword + now accepting guest posts
Many high domain authority websites are looking for guest blogs to flourish their website with high-quality content. When such websites upload your content on their platform, they will provide you with backlinks. Even Google is open to guest posts on its Google Analytics blog.
You can even use social media to find guest blogs. Twitter is the best place to find guest posts, and you can find a plethora of websites looking for guest contributors. Moreover, you can even set alerts for guest blogs related to specific keywords with Topsy.
4. Build Internal Links
Internal links are crucial for running a successful blog page. They provide link juice to other pages of your website and help users navigate through your website. Internal links also improve user experience because readers can easily navigate to relevant pages when reading your blogs. There are plenty of tools that can automatically create internal links for your website, especially if you are working on WordPress.
Matt Cuts from Microsoft has recommended that webmasters keep their internal links below 100 for excellent SEO results and exceptional user experience. Building internal links transfer high domain backlinks from one page to another. For example, if your blog page has a link from a high domain authority website, linking it to other pages on your website will transfer link juice to other pages as well.
5. Promote Your Content
No matter how well-written your content is, it won’t get you backlinks unless you know how to promote it. Although social media is one of the best places to promote your content to generate web traffic, you can even use Google to increase your business’s organic reach.
Many bloggers are looking for quality content to post on their websites. These bloggers have high domain authority, and they post weekly. If you want your content to be shared in their blogs, you can reach out to them via Google. Simply search for “Your keyword + roundups.” This will show results for bloggers who post content related to your keywords. Simply change the setting to “weekly,” and Google will update its results accordingly. From here, you can reach out to webmasters and share your content.
Don’t hesitate in reaching out to these bloggers because they are always looking for new content. If they find your work worth publishing, you will hear back from them, and your content might be published in their next roundup.
6. Write Testimonials
Testimonials are a great way to earn backlinks from high domain authority websites. However, you are only eligible to write testimonials if you are using that particular product. Moreover, you can even request a backlink in exchange for a testimonial if your software provider’s website doesn’t allow backlinks.
Many software and tools are actively looking for testimonials to boost their sales. You can leverage this opportunity and make a fair exchange that will benefit you and the website you are writing a testimonial for.
7. Contact Bloggers and Journalists
To get high-quality links for your website, you need to spread the word about your business. You can do this by contacting influential personalities. Reaching out to bloggers and journalists is a good strategy to generate quality backlinks and boost organic traffic on your website. You can contact journalists and bloggers by using tools like Voilanorbert, Thrust.io, and Emailfinder.io. Alternatively, you can use social media to contact famous writers and influencers to publish your content. Linkedin and Google+ are best to build professional relationships. However, you should make sure that your pitch is short, to the point, and doesn’t sound greedy. Try to mention their benefits over your for publishing your content or giving you a backlink. Writing to the point messages saves time for the reader, and you don’t come off greedy. You can find a non-profit organization by searching for:
- contributors page + donate + your keyword
- donation + contributors + your keyword
- contributors page + your keyword
8. Donations
Many non-profit organizations accept donations in exchange for backlinks. You can reach out to such organizations, donate their amount, and your website will gain a valuable backlink. Some people assume this is a black hat SEO strategy, but it’s not. When you donate an amount to a non-profit organization, they will mention where the donation came from and add your link.
9. Get Interviews
Interviews are running hot these days, and you can participate in them if you have the relevant knowledge to share. Many websites are willing to learn about your experiences or your business strategies once you become an authoritative figure. Until then, you can participate in small interviews and share your life or business experiences.
10. Spy on Your Competitors
One of the easiest ways to earn backlinks is by spying on your competitor. There is nothing wrong with keeping tabs on your competitor’s online marketing strategy. Many organizations have specific marketing departments that evaluate their competitors’ approaches and design new ones for themselves accordingly. When you start tracking your competitor’s online marketing strategies, you will learn new ways to promote your website and generate backlinks.
Ending Note
Earning backlinks is challenging, but you can easily find link-building opportunities by using the proper methods and resources. Lastly, you need to remember that Google values quality over quantity. Instead of spending hours looking for 100 backlinks, you should focus your efforts on finding backlinks from high-quality websites.
