As a website owner, of course you must know how to get quality backlinks to maximize your SEO efforts. An effective backlink strategy helps increase website authority and ranking, resulting in higher organic traffic. Unfortunately, not all backlinks have the same value and influence.
Imagine you’re planning to start a new “niche business,” a big & tall clothing boutique, in your town. There’s a market for uniquely customized clothing in your area, and people can’t find what they need in the stores that are out there.
So, this is a great niche market opportunity. You’ve researched and written your small business plan. Like any good entrepreneur looking to grow a business, you come up with a plan to advertise your boutique to get a line of eager customers lining up outside the door. You know your target customer base. You also have an idea of how to advertise to them.
Now, you need to do some competitor research. What other boutiques in town are going to be your direct competitors? Who’s targeting the same customer base? And, more importantly, how are they advertising to that customer base?
Naturally, you’re going to borrow from their playbook to make sure you’re reaching your customer base as effectively as possible. From there, you can explore marketing approaches that they haven’t touched on before.
The common thread in all of the above is that you are not trying to reach the general population with generic marketing: “come one, come all!” is not very effective. Your research, planning and marketing approach all revolve around a niche customer base that is interested in the niche product you are selling. Likewise, the best niche backlinks do not try to reach everyone on the internet and they do not send generic link signals to the search engines.
Niche backlinks are targeted advertising. They are relevant to your specific area of focus, and they reach your target audience without wasting your time and money on traffic that does not convert. They increase your authority, they make sense for SEO and Google will reward you for showing up in the places that make the most sense for your website topic.
In other words, they are the right backlinks for your niche site!
What is a Backlink?
A backlink is a link on a website that leads to another website. For example, if a travel blog includes a link to a hotel website, this is a backlink to the hotel website. Backlinks are essential for SEO because they signal to search engines like Google that other sites consider their content credible, potentially boosting their search rankings.
For example, let's say you've just built a website but no one has linked to it and you haven't signaled to Google either. So how will your website be found? In contrast, when someone links to your website, search engine spiders can crawl the link, find your site, and index it.
Therefore, one of the reasons why backlinks are so important is that without them, search engines won't know that your content is there, and neither will users. But there are a few things you need to know! That every backlink must be of good quality.
How do I get high quality backlinks?
Before we start discussing how to get backlinks, you should first know the characteristics of quality backlinks:
a. Influential
Backlinks must come from websites that have a 'high-authority' domain (have strong influence), such as well-known and leading brand websites in their industry. Inbound links from spammy and low-quality websites can actually harm your website's reputation and SEO performance.
b. Relevant
Google prioritizes backlinks from websites in the same niche. For example, for websites about web development, backlinks from technology websites will be more valuable than backlinks from travel blogs. Relevant anchor text also helps readers understand the context of the link.
d. Dofollow
Dofollow backlinks are very important for link-building efforts because they will also transfer link equity between web pages. On the other hand, nofollow backlinks do not transfer the influence of the source domain so they are less beneficial in terms of SEO for the target website.
Come from many sources. Google prioritizes source variety over the number of links. So, 10 links from 10 different websites will be much better than 100 links from one source. Now that you know the factors that affect the quality of backlinks, let's get to the point.
Backlink Strategies for SEO
 |
| What is the Best Strategy for SEO Backlinks? |
Effective backlink strategies involve a combination of content creation, outreach, and analysis to acquire high-quality links from other websites. Key strategies include creating valuable, shareable content, engaging in broken link building, guest blogging, and monitoring your backlink profile.
Here's a more detailed look at several backlink strategies:
1. Content Creation
Backlinks, in the context of content creation and SEO, are links from other websites to your website. This is a way to get a "vote of confidence" from other websites, which can improve your ranking in search engines like Google. Here the tips how to do it:
a. High-Quality Content
One of the most effective techniques in link-building is to create assets or content that will be used as a reference source by others. Quality content like this will usually net a lot of organic links and is often shared by readers. There are several types of quality assets to consider:
- Online tools. In addition to providing benefits to readers, providing free tools can be an effective way to get backlinks. For example, a fitness website owner can create a nutritional calculator to help visitors analyze their food menu.
- Useful guides. Complete tutorial content has the potential to generate a lot of backlinks to your website because any website can use it as a reference source to complete its content.
- Research or studies. Whether through direct research or statistics from various sources, fact-based articles can help you in how to find backlinks. Articles like this provide relevant data that other bloggers and publishers can use to support their claims and arguments.
One example is the blogging statistics article below, which managed to get more than 12,000 backlinks and has been shared 1,500 times on social media.
b. Build Links Through Listicle Content
Listicle content is content that lists a number of products or brands arranged in a list as a review or recommendation. How to get quality backlinks through listicle content can be started by looking for content that does not include your website.
Use Google search operators to narrow search results based on specific targets by adding a minus symbol (-) to exclude your brand from the results.
For example, if you type "website design inspiration - Behance", Google will display all results that do not include Behance in their list. After that, contact the content creator and ask them to include your website in their list. Provide a promising and rational reason why your brand deserves to be included.
If your brand or website already has a large audience, find websites that mention your brand in their content but have not linked to your website. Use an SEO tool like Ahrefs:
- Open Content Explorer
- Search for your brand name and exclude the address. For example: “brand” -site:yourwebsite.com.
- Click Highlight unlinked and enter your domain name.
This tool will show you all the pages that mention your brand but don’t link to your website. Filter the search results to find more relevant opportunities, contact the authors, and ask them to include a link to your website.
c. Write Testimonials or Reviews
Testimonials also play an important role in building a brand's reputation. This is because 95% of customers tend to read online reviews first before buying something. Write a review based on your experience using a tool or product. Later, the company that owns it may share your content directly on its platform as social proof.
You can also let the owner of the tool or product know that you are reviewing it and then ask them to share your post with their audience.
For example, this review article from NerdWallet fully explains the pricing structure and main features of a financial company called TaxSlayer. According to data from Ahrefs, the review has garnered 6,000+ backlinks, including from TaxSlayer itself.
d. Write a Complete and Clear Guide
A good guide content should have a long enough article to explain a particular topic in detail, include all related keywords, be concise, and not long-winded. When writing a guide article, try to discuss a topic that is timeless. Topics like this will continue to be relevant for a long time so you can promote the content without having to do major updates regularly.
After that, search for target keywords on Google and analyze the articles that appear from those keywords. Identify the structure, keywords used, and optimization strategies. Use this information to write SEO-friendly articles.
You also need to promote the content after you have finished creating it. Find other websites in the same niche, then try to contact them. Explain how your guide article can help their readers, then try to offer to put a link that leads to your website.
After that, analyze which websites put links to other articles, then try to offer your tutorial article as a better alternative.
e. Use Infographics to Get Backlinks
Infographics are a visual representation of data. This content also needs to be considered to get quality backlinks.
Yes, unique infographics can make your articles more interesting than articles from competitors or other blogs, considering that there are millions of posts published every day. Other important reasons to use infographics in your content strategy are:
- Easy to understand. Infographics can present information quickly so that it will save readers' time and increase reading comprehension by up to 50%.
- Tends to be shared a lot. Infographics are shared three times more often than other types of content.
- Easy to create. It's not difficult to create infographics, and you don't need a lot of money. Various online tools such as Canva and Visme provide free infographic maker features.
Check out this How Car Engines Work infographic example that transforms complex automotive information into content that is easy for laypeople to understand. The content currently has over 3,000 backlinks from 527 referring domains.
Once the infographic is ready, don't forget to post it on your website and share it on social media such as Instagram and Pinterest to reach a wider audience.
2. Outreach
Outreach backlink is the process of contacting other websites or individuals to get backlinks to your website. These backlinks are important for increasing domain authority and website visibility in search engines. How to do outreach backlink? here the step:
a. Guest Post
Guest blogging is one way to get quality backlinks by writing articles for other websites. You can search for websites that offer guest posting opportunities with a simple search term on Google, using "target keyword + write for us".
Then, open each Write For Us page that appears in the results and read their guest posting rules. Find their contact information and send an email introducing yourself. Include your article idea and explain the benefits they will get if they publish your guest post. Do this process to other prospects so that you are known as an expert and can get quality backlinks.
b. Find Broken Links to Build Backlinks
You can also get backlinks by finding broken links. Yup, links like this can be an effective SEO strategy. Broken links are usually caused by deleted pages, changed URLs, and expired domain names. Well, you can find broken links that lead to competitor websites by doing these steps:
- Open Site Explorer in Ahrefs.
- Enter the website address.
- In the Backlink Profile section, click Broken. This tool will show you broken pages on your competitors’ websites.
Armed with this information, contact the domains that link to your competitors to report the broken links, and suggest that they replace them with links to your content that is equally relevant to the topic.
c. Join Business Organizations
You can learn from experts and gain valuable insights to grow your business. This strategy can also be a way to get free backlinks because these types of websites usually include links to their member websites.
If you have a local business, start by finding and joining organizations or communities in your area. Then, ask the web administrator to include your website in their directory page.
d. Perform Link Gap Analysis
In addition to creating content, analyzing competitor profiles can also be an effective way to get quality backlinks. You can identify the best performing content, keywords, and their traffic sources.
Ahrefs will present a report of backlinks owned by competitor domains, along with keywords and monthly traffic for the page. Use this data to identify high-authority websites in your niche. Contact them and provide a reasonable reason why your content is more relevant and quality than your competitors.
Next, find guest post websites that competitors use to get backlinks and try to publish your articles on those websites too.
3. Get Active in Forums
You can also join discussion forums to get quality backlinks. This strategy will not only help build your reputation as an expert but also increase targeted traffic to your website.
Well, you can start by finding relevant forums in your niche that offer dofollow backlinks. Or, check your competitors’ websites to find out which forums are linking to their websites:
- Open Ahrefs Site Explorer and enter your competitor’s website.
- In the Backlinks Profile section, click Backlinks.
- Select Dofollow.
- Enter “forum” in the search.
- Select the Domain name filter, then click Show Results.
Once the tool displays the results, create an account on the forum website and start being active there. Include a link to your website in your signature, and if possible, put contextual links to your pages related to the topic being discussed.
Also, you can be active on popular question and answer platforms like Quora. Although using nofollow links, these discussion websites help showcase your knowledge and expertise to a wider audience.
3. Backlink Analysis & Optimization
Now, let's discuss how to use backlinks properly and correctly for SEO optimization of business websites. There are several steps you need to follow, including:
a. Determine the Goal
First, you need to identify the purpose of using backlinks. Do you want to increase website authority, improve SEO rankings, or find referral traffic? Once you have a clear goal, you can design an appropriate backlink strategy.
b. Choose Quality Backlink Sources
It is important to get backlinks from quality sources. Look for websites that are relevant to your business and have high authority in the eyes of search engines. Backlinks from sites like this have a greater positive impact.
Even so, don't underestimate contextual backlinks from bloggers. The reason is, in addition to being able to provide diversification of backlink profiles, bloggers who are classified as micro influencers can sometimes actually bring in customers from loyal readers or their close relatives.
b. Use Relevant Anchor Text
When adding backlinks, make sure to use anchor text that is relevant to your content. In addition to helping search engines understand the context of the link and increasing the relevance of the page, it can also increase the chances of readers clicking on the link voluntarily.
c. Don't Over-Optimize
Avoid excessive use of backlinks in your content. Google and other search engines don't like over-optimization. It's better to gradually have several quality backlinks than many low-quality backlinks at one time.
Make a schedule or budget to buy backlinks, for example for the first month $50 then add backlinks in the 5th month with a budget of $250, the 10th month using a budget to buy backlinks of $100, and so on.
Setting a random budget will give a natural and natural impression regarding incoming backlinks. So it is not considered too ambitious, chasing targets, or over-optimization.
d. Invest in Quality Content
One of the best ways to get backlinks is to create quality and useful content. When you have interesting content, other bloggers will be happy to give credit links to your website naturally.
e. Monitor Backlink Performance
Finally, always monitor the performance of the backlinks you have obtained. Use free website analysis tools like Google Search Console or paid tools like Ahrefs to see how effective your backlinks are in increasing rankings and referral traffic.
Conclusion
Backlinks are a very important part of your SEO strategy. The more backlinks you get, the higher your website will rank in search results.
However, the number of backlinks is not the only factor that determines ranking; their quality must also be ensured. External links from trusted sources will increase credibility, and spammy links will actually harm your SEO and website reputation.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is a Quality Backlink?
A quality backlink is a dofollow link from a high-authority website in your niche. This link provides influence and value from the domain that refers to your website, thus helping to increase your website's ranking in search engines. In addition, the anchor text must contain relevant keywords that describe your content.
2. Are YouTube Videos Backlinks?
Unfortunately, links from YouTube are usually nofollow links. Although they do not directly affect your SEO strategy, these links are still valuable considering the high traffic potential from YouTube.
3. Do Backlinks Affect SEO?
Yes, quality backlinks will show Google that your website is highly relevant and credible so that search engines will rank it higher.
