Gaining links from other websites helps increase your site's visibility, rankings in search engines, and traffic.
A backlink is simply an incoming link to one of your web pages or articles from another website that is relevant to yours. By building strong backlinks, you can improve your overall SEO performance and gain more recognition from your target audience.
In this guide, we've listed the best backlinking strategies that every business striving to stand out online should adopt.
Table of Contents
Five Most Effective Backlinking Strategies in 2023
These powerful backlinking strategies are the key to standing out in today's competitive online landscape.
- Guest Posting
- Broken Link Building
- Skyscraper Technique
- Directory Submission
- Link Building Automation
1. Guest Posting
Guest blogging allows companies to build relationships with other bloggers and their audience, and leverage each other’s online presence. It focuses on creating content for another website or blog and including a link to your website.
Interestingly, an Ahrefs study found that most content doesn’t get any traffic from Google, so getting your content noticed and receiving the necessary traffic is a considerable challenge. It is, therefore, not surprising that 75% of marketers prioritize creating content designed to attract backlinks, according to PPC Hero.
Aside from generating quality backlinks by contributing content to relevant blogs, you also can:
- Strengthen your authority within the industry
- Attract a larger audience to your blog or website
- Share useful information with potential customers
- Connect with other bloggers and influencers in your industry, which can lead to future collaborations or opportunities
While it may take some time to find the right opportunities and craft valuable content that resonates with the target audience, when done correctly, guest blogging can be a powerful tool for generating traffic and growing your brand.
2. Broken Link Building
If you’re wondering how to get backlinks, building broken links is a powerful strategy. Allowing businesses to fill in the gaps left by their competitors' outdated content, broken link building is one of the most popular techniques SEOs swear by.
The process involves searching for broken links within your niche and creating new, updated content to replace outdated resources. To begin, you should:
- Target competitor websites to find broken content links using a broken link checker tool like Ahrefs.
- Use a backlink checker tool once you have identified a broken link (Semrush or Ahrefs) to see all the websites that link to the broken resource. Ahrefs offers a backlink checker tool as well, which can help you with this step.
- Create new content that offers value to readers and can serve as a replacement for the broken link. The new content should be high-quality, informative, and relevant to the topic of the outdated resource.
- Reach out to the websites that link to the broken resource and offer your replacement content as a solution. By doing so, you are not only offering value to the website owner and their audience, but you are also building backlinks to your website.
For instance, if you discovered that Semrush's blog post on broken link building was a broken link, you can use Ahrefs Backlink Checker to find all the websites that link to it.
You would then write an email to each of these websites, informing them of the broken link and suggesting they replace it with a link to your article on the same topic.
3. Skyscraper Technique
The skyscraper technique is another powerful, widely-used backlinking strategy. It involves finding content that has done well in terms of engagement, links, and rankings, then creating your even better version — the proverbial "taller skyscraper.”
By understanding what content other sites are linking to, you can identify opportunities to create content of even higher quality that will attract more backlinks, boosting your website's visibility in SERPs. To get started with the skyscraper technique, you need to:
- Search for already successful content within your industry or niche. You can use tools such as Ahrefs or BuzzSumo, which allow you to easily find high-performing content.
- Take some time to properly evaluate each piece and consider how it could be improved. This may include creating more detailed graphics or infographics, providing additional sources and references for further reading, or extending existing points with greater depth and detail.
- Ensure any images used are correctly attributed, as this will ensure compliance with copyright laws while also showing potential hosts that you respect their work.
For the above, outsourcing an SEO agency may just be the ideal choice for your business as they have the relevant know-how to execute this technique seamlessly.
4. Directory Submission
Directory submission is a great way of getting your website noticed and building backlinks efficiently and on a budget. This strategy involves submitting the URL of your website to relevant directories to get it listed with other sites related to your industry or niche.
Doing this can help improve the visibility of your site, as well as increase its ranking in SERPs. To get started with directory submission, you need to:
- Identify which websites are worth targeting. Use tools such as Moz’s Link Explorer or Majestic’s SEO tool which will provide you with detailed information on each domain.
- Ensure each directory has been properly indexed by search engines before submitting any URLs — something which can be checked using Google Search Console.
- Consider if there are any additional benefits associated with the directory, such as featured listings or sponsored ads.
- Take time to read through the terms and conditions associated with each directory before applying.
- Try writing unique descriptions for each listing rather than just copying from existing sources.
5. Link Building Automation
Link-building automation has been gaining traction in recent years. It can help streamline the tedious process of manually seeking out and acquiring backlinks. For instance, you can automate broken link building and have a tool detect links on webpages that are no longer active.
Using web crawlers to discover linkable content is another great example of automation. It allows you to quickly scan through large amounts of websites and locate any possible opportunities for gaining backlinks—this saves not only time but resources as well.
Browser plugins are also incredibly useful when it comes to automating the link-building process. These tools allow you to quickly search for potential linking opportunities based on keywords or phrases related to your business or industry.
Some plugins even offer advanced features such as automated outreach emails, which send personalized messages directly from the browser, further speeding up the entire process while providing maximum efficiency.
We also talked about other link-building tips worth checking out that can help you get more backlinks to your website.
Takeaways on Backlinking Strategies
Just as SEO strategies are crucial for your company’s bottom line, having a solid backlink strategy is essential for any business looking to increase website engagement and visibility.
If you don’t know how to get backlinks, the best advice anyone can give you is to adopt a well-rounded approach that includes a combination of different tactics. This is how you will maximize your chances of success.
Automation tools can make the process easier by helping you quickly locate potential linking opportunities. However, if you don’t have the time or nerves, you can always hire one of the top link-building agencies to do all the heavy lifting for you.
Backlinking Strategies FAQs
1. What is a backlinking strategy?
A backlinking strategy is a technique used to improve a website's search engine rankings by acquiring links from other websites. A backlink is a link from one website to another, and search engines use backlinks to determine the authority and relevance of a website.
2. What are examples of backlinking?
You can find various examples of backlinking all over the internet (even in this article), such as when an article links to another website or source. Popular blog sites often provide examples of website backlinks that link back to relevant content.
