We all know that link building can help you move up in the SERPs.
With a higher SEO rank, you can gain more traffic, page views, sales, and profits. That’s why the more quality backlinks you have, the higher your ranks, and the more sales and profit you can potentially gain.
But…it’s not easy building backlinks.
There are many strategies and tactics available, so much that it can be extremely overwhelming and challenging to get started. That’s why I only recommend using 3 link building strategies at a time.
In this article, I’ll list 3 of my favorite highly effective link building strategies. By focussing on only 3 at a time, you can quickly take the actionable steps required to increase your search traffic in 2020.
Let’s go!
Table of Contents
Why Link Building Is Important For SEO
When you combine link building with on-page SEO, it can take even the most obscure website to the top spot in the SERPs.
The more quality links you have endorsing and linking back to your website, the higher your rankings can be.
Link building also has other powerful benefits that go beyond search engines.
If a uses/customer clicks on a link that goes to your site from someone they trust, they will have a positive association with your brand. It’s, therefore, a great way to build brand presence, brand authority, and increase traffic to your site.
3 Effective Link Building Strategies
Below, I’ll go through 3 of my most effective link building strategies that can help you rank in 2020. Remember, you only need to work on these 3 to move up the SERPs significantly!
Backlink Analysis
If you’re starting and have a small budget, it can be challenging to compete with major companies in your niche. Unfortunately, you’d probably fail to gain the same quality links that your competitors are getting.
Instead of working harder… work smarter.
These major competitors probably spent thousands of dollars developing sophisticated link building strategies to build strong authority backlinks.
That’s why you should see how your competitors are doing it and copy them.
It’s one of my best strategies when it comes to win-rate Vs. Time invested.
Here’s how you can get started:
1. Prepare a list of your 5 competitors in the search results for a keyword you want to rank for. Here, include both large and small sites as they can all teach you highly valuable lessons.
2. Analyze their link profile. It’s an easy way to do this to download my intelligent spreadsheet. Alternatively, you can analyze your competitors’ backlinks manually with Ahrefs. First, go to the Site Explorer, add your competitor’s URL link, and hit the orange button.
Then, click on the link that says backlinks on the left-side menu.
3. You can see here, all their inbound links. Click on the Link Type Button to filter through the backlinks. You can organize them based on categories like “follow,” editorial, governmental and educational.
For example, if I wanted to see all the educational links my competitor received, I can click on educational, and all the educational sites linking back to my competitor will appear.
Make sure you export the list of URLs for the top 5 competitors.
4. With your list of backlinks, open up the links and track how your competitors received the link.
Is it because of the content quality? Is it because they provide something valuable?
As you repeat this process, you’ll uncover opportunities and get a good feel for what the readers in your industry like and which content gains the most backlinks.
Resource Pages
Many websites contain a resource page where they list out different tools, guides, and articles useful for their target audience.
Here’s an example of a resource page from Writers Helping Writers.
Most of the time, these resource pages are a list of links with some additional comments.
That’s why resource pages are a great way to earn backlinks. By finding resource pages in your niche and reaching out, you can gain high-quality backlinks in no time!
To start:
1. Find Resource Pages by heading to Google and entering these searches:
- Key word +inurl:links
- Key word +inurl:useful links
- Keyword +helpful resources
- Keyword +useful resources
- Key word +useful links
For example, if I wanted to find resource pages in the Yoga niche, I’d type something like this into Google.
Then, look at the results, pick out the websites that fit your content, and add them to a spreadsheet.
2. Now you need to reach out to each of these websites and pitch them your content.
Here, it’s better to split your outreach into 2 parts.
- First, send them an outreach email.
- Second, pivot to the link inserts suggestion.
Generally, the more people you reach out to, the more links you will gain.
It’s a relatively simple process. Just make sure you provide these sites useful evergreen content in exchange for a valuable backlink.
Crowdfunding
Want to try a highly underused and unknown link building strategy?
Donate to projects via crowdfunding sites.
It’s an excellent chance for anyone looking to boost their backlink profile quickly, because, when someone is raising money for their business via crowdfunding, they generally include a link to each person that donated. These donations can range from $1 to thousands of dollars.
You can find projects across a variety of different niches, which makes it an excellent opportunity to build backlinks.
There are two ways you can gain links:
- Donor links: These are pages that publish the details of all donors. Including a link to their website.
- Package link: Here, if you donate a specific amount of money, you are offered package links.
To start, you need to:
1. Find a crowdfunding project that will link back to your site that’s within your budget. There are many ways to do this, but a simple way to find projects without having to trawl through the site is to do a Google search that contains these keywords:
- site:[indiegogo.com] inurl: projects+” link to your”
- site:[indiegogo.com] inurl:projects+”donor page”
Here, I’ve used Indiegogo as an example. You can replace this with any other crowdfunding site.
While these searches do narrow down the projects that will add donor’s details or projects offering links, you’ll need to be prepared to go through all the results.
It can take a fair bit of time to pick one with the relevant niche and budget.
2. Once you donate, you’ll gain a link as part of your package.
Rounding Up
If you begin working on your link building strategy, you’ll be able to see a big difference in search engine rankings over time.
If you want to explore other link building strategies, I also suggest having a look at:
- Leveraging Testimonials: Reach out and offer positive testimonials in your niche
- Creating Data-driven content: Use unique data to develop and enrich your content
- Recycling old Domain names: Use expired sites to link to your site
But remember…pick 3 link building strategies and master each of them!
I recommend starting with competitor backlink analysis first.
This is generally the most comfortable option and has consistently delivered great results for me!
If you focus on three strategies and find your winning combination, before long, your website will have tons of authoritative links that will drive significant traffic to your site.
What are you waiting for?
Get started today!