link building

How To Take Your Link Building Strategy A Notch Higher

Link building has been an integral part of any SEO strategy. And it has only been evolving over the years.

Mythbuster: Link building isn’t dead but has only grown stronger in practice.

Perhaps, you might already be using it to grow your website’s online presence.

But, it’s time you should look into your strategy once again.

Did you know there are several ways you can scale your link-building practices and earn high-quality backlinks for your website?

Apparently, there are a few strategies that should be a part of your link-building game in 2021.

Without any further ado, let’s dive right into it. 

Help Out A Reporter

If you want your website to rank on the first page in SERPs, you need backlinks. But not just any link. Perhaps, you need backlinks from high-authority websites. Notably, news websites and magazines are considered to be the best sources. 

Fortunately, earning backlinks from such high-authority websites isn’t as difficult as it sounds. All you need is to become a source for reporters from such sites. 

Commonly known as HARO (Help A Reporter Out), the practice is indeed free to avail.

HARO is actually a network of reporters and journalists from popular news websites and magazines. Yes, you can find journalists and editors from top websites like Washington Post, Fox News, and many more.

Honestly, this practice would require a lot of work and effort on your part. But, it would guarantee absolute white-hat backlinks for your website.

The steps are pretty simple. First of all, you’d need to register as a source on the HARO network. The next step is choosing a plan that you’re comfortable with. You can choose a free or a paid plan.

By now, you’re almost halfway through your journey to get high-quality white-hat backlinks.

Now, all you need to do is keep an eye out for contribution requests.

As soon as you receive a request to contribute to an editorial piece, make sure you revert back with a very brief yet valuable pitch.

Use “Skyscraper” Content

If you believed HARO was good, you’re probably about to be shocked.

Every year, millions of content pieces are published online. But, not every piece of content ranks.

The ones that do must be doing something really out of the box. Right? Well, think again. We suggest you simply enter a search term – link building company – in the Google search box.

Did you receive millions of results? And at first sight, do they all look the same to you?

Well, this is where the “skyscraper” technique comes into play. 

Certainly, there are gazillions of pieces that essentially are the same, but only the best ones rank atop.

So, what differentiates the better piece from the good one? Certainly, it’s the backlinks. 

You can use this strategy to your benefit too.

All you need to do is find a piece within your industry that’s already performing well. By performance, we mean to refer to the pieces of content that have a good number of backlinks.

You can simply use Google search for the same. The pieces that rank in top positions are generally the ones that have more than 35k backlinks.

Now that you have a well-performing content reference with you, it’s time you create your own copy of the same. But, you need to be better. At least 5-10 times better than the content that you’re referring to.

The last thing you ought to be doing is promoting your content. Of course, there are like hundreds of ways to do that. One example could be reaching out to the references that you’ve mentioned in your blog post.

Apart from earning you natural backlinks, promoting your content would also help you seek brand mentions for free. 

Build Links From Outdated Resources

Now, this one is something that should surprise you, as it goes the unconventional way.

To get white-hat backlinks to your website, you’d first need to find outdated resources within your niche.

In other words, you’d need to find sites that have either changed their name or have moved to a new URL. You can also find sites that have either stopped offering a service or updating it or have completely shut down.

Why?

Well, this is the perfect opportunity to reach out to the people who are still linking to the outdated resources.

The next step is to find those people or websites that are still linking to the outdated URL. Now, this is an important step. You should be looking for sites with reasonably high DA (Domain Authority).

Now that you have a list of sites linking to the outdated resources, it’s time to reach out to them. 

You would want to give them a heads up about their outdated (broken) link. And alongside, humbly suggest they link to your website.

Because you’ve been a valuable resource to them, they should be more than happy to link back to your website. And there, you have a completely white-hat natural backlink. The one that brings a lot of high-quality link juice to your site. 

Use Proven Content Formats To Generate Links

Several marketers would vouch for this, not because it’s good but because it is one of the easiest ways to rake up your link-building game.

According to a report from a link building company, 75% of all online content receives no links at all. Yes, you read that right.

NO LINKS AT ALL! 

But, the good news is, there are certain types of content that perform better. Indeed, performed great online.

If you want to get backlinks for your website, focus on content formats that are proven to get linked.

Some of the formats include “Lists” posts, “Quizzes”, “Why” posts, “How To” posts, and so on. Well, you get the gist.

Are we suggesting that these content formats are the only ones that perform? Of course, not. 

You need content to get backlinks, but you need it to be amazing.

Of course, these formats should give you a headstart, but don’t limit yourself to these only.

There are other content strategies to follow too.

For example, you can create “Ultimate Guides” for your on-page content.

Research suggests ultimate guides are perfect link attractions.

Why do ultimate guides perform so well?

First of all, these tend to contain a lot of content. And second, Google absolutely loves long-form content.

Land Up On Authority Resource Pages

Well, resource pages are like Aladin’s magic lamp for link builders. They are solely there to link out to other sites.

That’s great, right? But how do you get links from a resource page? And that too a page with authority. 

First of all, you’ll need to find a good resource page with reasonable domain authority.

Nonetheless, this can be a little tricky. Not many people tend to tag their resources under the name “resource page”.

Instead, you’ll more likely find pages named as “helpful resources” or “useful resources”. Or you may even find subjects like “Library” or “Archives” on some websites.

It would be rather convenient to search for these terms and a keyword you wish to target. For example, you can search for “resources Off-page SEO”. Or you can search for – buy backlinks guide – and add “resources” at the beginning or the end of it.

This should bring up all the relevant results with similar tags and meta data on your screen.

Once you’ve found such resources, it’s time to reach out to them and humbly ask for a link.

Here we’d like to offer you a pro-tip. Rather than using generic outreach email templates, it is better to personalize them. 

As a rule of thumb, the more you personalize your emails, the better are your chances of securing a backlink. 

Bonus Strategy: Use Brand Mentions To Earn High-Quality Backlinks

It is not uncommon for brands to get mentioned in a blog post. But, what’s noteworthy is, the bloggers might not actually link to your site.

To your surprise, these brand mentions are rather easier to get backlinks from.

The reason being, the author already likes you (of course, because they mentioned you).

So, what you can do is send out a friendly email to the author. And most likely, they’ll be more than happy to link out to your site.

One thing that you can do to improve your response rate is – not asking for a link in the first email you send out.

Reports suggest appreciative emails are 40% more likely to receive a response. And once you engage in a positive conversation, you can politely ask the author to link to your site.

So, What Do You Think?

Now that you know the ways to improve your link-building practices, we’d like to hear from you.

Which strategy did you like the most? Was it the HARO or the skyscraper? Or was it the Outdated Resources?

Would you like us to make any changes or suggest any improvements to these strategies?

Leave us a comment below and share your thoughts. We’ll be glad to learn from you.

 

 

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