Millions of websites are competing against each other for a share of the market.
There are lots of ways they outcompete each other. But one of the most common and effective ones is by having a solid and well-developed link building strategy.
It might be the most challenging part of SEO, mind you. Acquiring links from high-quality sites requires you to jump through different hoops before the site owner replies to your inquiry.
And even then, you’re not sure if they’ll accept or not!
Nonetheless, link building has a huge impact on your site’s rank. And contrary to popular belief, Google’s dependence on backlinks isn’t diminishing.
In fact, it’s becoming stronger than ever! Thus, it’s important to know the ins and outs of backlinking.
Here, we’ll show you how to get high-quality links to improve your site and increase conversion rate.
Table of Contents: [hide]
- Link reclamation from “stolen” photos
- Guest blogging
- Google Alerts
- Link-baiting
- Video transcriptions
- Broken link building
- Repurposing and syndication
Conclusion - Link reclamation from “stolen” photos
There are sites that take your images like infographics, screenshots, diagrams, or others and use it on their sites without permission.
This shouldn’t be a problem since it nonetheless exposes your content on other sites.
But what makes this a problem is they don’t even bother to link to your site!
Since you have the right to your content, you should reach out to these site owners and ask for a backlink for the photos!
Find these websites using your images without permission and make them give you credit for the images.
Some of the tools you can use for this is Tineye and Google image search.
The two works good, but Google is better because of its user-friendly interface.
You want to head to Google images and click “search by image.”
google image search – Link Building Strategies
Then paste your spreadsheet’s URL or upload the image.
google search by image – Link Building Strategies
Click “search by image” to see all sites using your image.
Check the results and see if they linked back to your site while using your image.
If not, send them an email requesting for a backlink since they are featuring your content without any proper attribution.
- Guest blogging
Guest blogging might be old, but it is still one of the most effective strategies.
It works by writing an article for another site in your niche. You then receive a link back to your site (normally from the author byline) once the other site publishes the post.
Guest blogging is a great way of generating backlinks from high authority sites and builds credibility to your brand.
Neil Patel, Brian Dean, Kristi Hines, and Marcus Sheridan are authorities in online marketing. And that’s all thanks to guest blogging.
To know the sites where bloggers guest posted in, head to Google and use this search operator:
Author -authorsite
For this example, let’s use Marcus Sheridan of TheSalesLion.com.
Replace Author with his name and authorsite with his website.
Here’s how the search phrase would look like:
Marcus Sheridan -thesaleslion.com
And below is a screenshot of the results on Google:
google search marcus sheridan – Link Building Strategies
The first result shows a site where Marcus Sheridan writes for.
If you click on it, you will see guest posts he has written for IMPACT.
The fact that Marcus secured an author account at the site means that it’s possible for you to do the same!
Browse through the results and find other pages that share the same URL like the one above.
Using this search operator will yield you authoritative sites.
Therefore, if you’re sending a pitch to write a guest for them, there’s a good chance that they’ll reject your offer.
Why is that?
Unless your brand and authority equal or exceed Marcus’, then you probably won’t get a chance to write for these sites.
But don’t fret! There’s another search operator that you can use to find sites that actively accept quality guest post regardless of your reputation.
Here it is:
Niche inurl:write-for-us
Replace Niche with your own. For example, if you specialize in writing about blogging topics, then use “blogging.”
This search phrase will show you pages of sites and blogs that accept guest posts.
The page contains guidelines on the kind of guest posts to submit on their site.
Using the search operator, blogging inurl:write-for-us, here’s what you will see:
google guest blogging – Link Building Strategies
If you click on any of the results, this is what you will see:
be a better blogger write for us – Link Building Strategies
Most of the time, you will immediately see the writing guidelines that you need to follow for writing your guest post.
For this page, however, you must click on the button to see the guidelines.
All you need to do now is follow the instructions so the site will publish your post faster.
- Google Alerts
Google Alerts notifies you if your blog is mentioned across the web. This lets you easily reach out to the site and request a backlink from them if they still haven’t.
All you need to do is set up your Google Alerts account. Once done, you can then monitor mentions to your brand.
google alerts – Link Building Strategies
To edit the settings, click on the cog icon to show these drop-down menus:
google alerts 2 – Link Building Strategies
Determine how often you want to receive the alerts and the types of results you want to receive among other options.
In this case, below are ideas that you can track and monitor:
Your full name, website/brand name. Some sites may have mentioned your name on their site and forgot to link back to you. More on this later.
Keyword that you want to optimize for. Browse through the results and check the link profile of each page. Find a way to get a link from those pages.
Bloggers. you can see their latest posts and comment on them while leaving a link to your site
- Link-baiting
Link-baiting is best if you’re targeting one-way link building It’s all about creating high-quality content that attracts one-way links from other sites. However, make sure that your content is factual and accurate.
You can do this by furthering your research on certain topics. Always double check your content and be sure it’s up-to-date.
You don’t want to risk your blog’s reputation by creating content based on falsehoods. Furthermore, this also helps you rank for keywords because your blog gets more exposure from the links.
In other words:
Write Skyscraper content.
This type of content allows you to develop content that’s a cut above the rest.
Doing so allows you to stand out from the pack and increase your chance of attracting links to your page.
- Video transcriptions
You want to get backlinks from high-authority sites, right?
Well, transcribing videos of popular industry influencers is what you need.
Transcribe influencers’ video content and publish it on your site. Be sure to mention them so they’ll notice you and give you a link back.
It’s a fast and effective way to build links as it’s directly from the influencer. You can also use their large audience to your advantage. They can even share your transcript and draw more attention to your blog!
Go to YouTube and type the influencer’s name on the search bar.
Let’s use GMBN as an example. The filter should be set to “this month.”
youtube influencers – Link Building Strategies
Choose a video that doesn’t have any transcription, then transcribe afterward.
Reach out to the influencer and let them know you’ve done a full transcription. Your recipient is most likely to be surprised (and awed) because of your contribution. There’s also a high chance that they’ll use it sooner or later.
Leveraging on GMBN’s 1.1 million subscribers makes it easier for you to promote your posts and send huge traffic to your site.
So the question now is this:
What’s the best way to transcribe the video?
Sure, you can type out the words of the video while watching. But there must a better and more efficient way to go about this.
You can either use any of the free transcription tools in this post or hire someone from Fiverr to do the job for you.
- Broken link building
Broken link building is another effective strategy as it avoids Google penalties due to your published guides.
It also helps swap out dead links, maximizing your link building potential. To do this, first, find a broken link on another website that’s relevant to your blog.
The best types of pages where you can find broken links are resource pages.
These are pages that feature links relevant to a specific topic.
To find them, use this search operator on Google:
Niche resource pages.
Again, replace niche with your actual niche.
Here’s an example of the results:
blogging resource page – Link Building Strategies
Not all of the results would be resource pages. But the ones in the red box are.
Click on Jeff Bullas’ page to see this:
jeff bullas blogging resources – Link Building Strategies
www.jeffbullas.com
If you have blogging workbooks of your own, then you’d want to get a link here.
But, as mentioned, you need to find a broken page within that you can use as leverage to reaching out to them.
A tool you can use to find broken links is Check My Links. It’s a Chrome extension that shows you links that are not working.
After installing the extension, click the icon on the browser menu. The tool will check for broken links in seconds.
check my links – Link Building Strategies
The example resource page above does not have any broken links. So you need to go to the next page and run the Chrome extension it the same way as above.
Once you do find a page with a broken link, you need to reach out to the site owner.
The importance of blogger outreach has to do with the amount of coverage you get. The stronger your outreach is, the more potential leads you will receive. You can follow Adam Connell’s framework to know more about this.
Once you have the email, write an email informing the owner that they have a broken link on their resource page. Also, ask them to include your page about the same topic that would make the resource page look better.
Now, why does this tactic work?
One word:
Reciprocity.
By telling them of the broken link, you help them improve their page. They will have to remove the broken link to provide their visitors with pages that work.
And since you did site owners a solid, they will be more accepting of your suggestions.
You’ve built rapport with the site owner. Now, it’s time to get a return for your kindness!
But don’t get your hopes up just yet. There’s still a good chance that they will reject your offer.
But at the very least, the success rate of broken link building is much better compared to a cold email asking for a backlink.
At best, you need to send lots of emails for your broken link building campaign. It’s a numbers game at this point so you need to scale and measure the results to maximize results.
- Repurposing and syndication
Reach a wider audience by repurposing high-quality content. Repurpose your blog post into a different format such as a video or infographic.
You can then submit the repurposed content to video or infographic-sharing sites like YouTube and Pinterest.
An example of this would be to turn your most visited article into an informative video clip. This kind of content easily becomes viral in Facebook especially if it’s targeted on the right market.
Also, read: Increase Your Blog Traffic 135% in 60 Days: The Hanging Fruit Method
You can convert posts into videos using Lumen5.
Just paste the URL of your page on the tool and it will automatically generate the video for you using the text and images featured in the page.
lumen5 – Link Building Strategies
You can edit the video by changing the text, images, music, and layout to match your brand.
If the video becomes a hit, then repurpose it again as an infographic and share it on Pinterest and Reddit. Users in these platforms are more than willing to talk about your image and discuss it among themselves and to others.
This maximizes your content’s exposure and increases the likelihood of getting links. Your content can also be syndicated by another site and place it alongside a backlink.
Conclusion
Link building is no doubt challenging. However, it’s totally worth it as it maximizes your reach and increases conversion. It’s also necessary for your blog’s SEO health as it helps you rank with the help of digital marketing.
Follow the techniques mentioned and you’ll surely get quality backlinks in no time. Just be sure to implement them regularly and do your best to create the highest quality content possible. When you do, then you’ll be off to better days ahead.