Behold the Mighty Backlink
Historically, backlinking strategies have been both an efficient and effective part of online marketing. These practices can be a powerful way to increase traffic to your website, and improve your ranking, reputation, and even relationships. Over the years, backlinking has changed and evolved, yet it still remains an important part of any successful digital marketing strategy.
A backlink is any link to your website that exists on another site, linking users “back” to you. Hence, the term “backlink” (it is also known as an “inbound link”). Usually, these links are left on either inside or at the end of an article, comments or blog post. While it is obvious that more links to your site are likely to equate to more traffic, backlinks themselves present an SEO benefit that can result in higher search engine rankings.
Backlinks and SEO
High-quality backlinks play a vital role in the ranking process of search engines. That’s because search engines are always looking for ways to appropriately rank results. Backlinks provide an easy way for automated search engines to determine a site’s value. Ostensibly, the more inbound links a website has, the more popular and, thus, high-quality it must be.
Once upon a time, this methodology was exploitable by “spamming” the comment sections of blogs with backlinks to boost a site’s ranking. However, search engines quickly became wise to this practice, and now penalize the ranking of sites with “poor quality” backlinks.
Content is always the key with search engine rankings, and this extends to a site’s backlinks. Once your business website or blog is filled with some unique and quality content, only then can a backlink strategy be pursued. But it’s not just the content on your site that you have to worry about.
The importance of backlinks from an authentic site cannot be overemphasized. This is because Google rewards sites with many backlinks from other high-ranking blogs or websites. If your site is worth it, other top sites will point links to you. In other words, only high-quality sites can be able to succeed in getting links from another high-quality site. And, of course, as you get more and more links to your site, you also get more traffic.
This strategy can be furthered by adding a “second tier” of backlinks. In this scenario, you expand the reach of your “first tier” backlinks by adding links to the pages that contain them. For example, your first tier may be an article that contains a link to your website that has is posted on a popular blog. Your second tier might then be links you post to that article in social media, or on other blog sites.
In the case of the first tier, it often takes some time to get backlinks in place on other authentic sites. Meanwhile, the second tier of links is often much simpler. However, it is important to note that building a lot of links within a short period on suspicious sites can get you penalized by Google. As is often the case with SEO, too much of a good thing can sometimes drop your rankings quickly.
Use Social Media
Over time, social media websites are being utilized by virtually every business users or common individuals for online marketing. For instance, Facebook is one of the most used social media sites for internet marketing purposes. But there are other sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Instagram that can also serve the same purpose.
All that is required is to sign up with Facebook or any of the other platforms like Twitter and create the bio of your company placing your site link on it. Additionally, you can make use of a Fan page robot. This functions to automatically post your links to the most popular social media platforms.
Buy Backlinks
Another way to get backlinks is to buy them from freelance sources. One potential source is Fiverr, a popular freelance website that allows you to buy services for as low as $5 (US). Although this may be less costly in terms of expense and time, some of the SEO services may do more harm than good. When you are looking at buying SEO services on Fiverr, you need to consider the two types of SEO service providers:
- Sellers who can post your links manually to high-quality PR sites.
- Website owners who will publish your articles or links to their websites, and blogs which at the same time similar to guest blogging services.
However, there are two essential rules to put into consideration when you purchase these services of Fiverr: - You need to make sure that you buy “dofollow” links only. These are links that can be traced by web bots, unlike “nofollow” links.
- It is also advisable to buy backlinks from either high authority traffic websites or top PR sites.
In summary, you should always message the gig providers and inquire about their services and the sites they will post your links on. This will help you know more about their services before you finally place the order.
Get Some Press Releases Submitted
Press releases are great ways to announce your product, services or business to a large audience if you have designed, launched, or developed something new. Whether it is a website, a new product, or a unique service or blog, a press release is an ideal instrument to tell the world about it. There are numerous press releases sites that allow press release distribution. An example is the PRWeb.com. They help you get your business noticed by posting on news websites to create high exposure.
Of course, each press release usually contains a link that will link the readers back to your website or blog. The good news is that a press release can be submitted to a host of news website thus creating high exposure and getting a higher number of backlinks.
Submit Guest Posts to Relevant Blogs
Guest posts, as the name implies, is the act of creating new article or blog posts and forwarding them to a host of relevant blogs or websites for approval. After it is approved, the website owner will publish it on their site or blogs. This is a win-win situation for both you and the owner of the blog or website that receives your article. The site owner is rewarded a free content and you get a quality backlink for your website.
Building guest blogging connections and getting your unique content featured on other websites will not only help broaden your brand’s reach and drive traffic back to your website, but it will also go a long way to help build your site’s authority.
Ultimately, the benefit of this type of backlinks strategy is to gain a long-term relationship with a more established and reliable brand and website. As a result of building a relationship with more prominent influencers, you open a new door for more opportunities including guest blogs and additional articles, as well as co-branded projects and more backlinks.
Post Comments on Relevant Blogs
The easiest and commonly seen of all backlinking strategies is blog commenting with a backlink to your site. Generally, this practice is held in poor regard, and considered to be rather “spammy.” It is not uncommon to find these kinds of posts made by bots, which are web programs written for the sole purpose of spamming backlinks. So, while you may be able to register as a backlink, it may just as well cause a site owner or moderator to delete it.
However, this doesn’t mean that you cannot utilize this strategy effectively. All that is required is to make a list of top blogs in your industry or niche, and then manually post high quality comments on each site. If your comment has relevance to the topic, it may avoid deletion. Just be sure to include a link in the Website link section, if not in your comment itself. With this strategy, you can get as many backlinks as many comments you have posted.
Participate on Relevant Forums
Forum Websites are also known as online discussion sites. They are comprised of contributors that have registered as members of the forum, and are often dedicated to specific topics or interests. By posting on relevant forums, you can drive targeted traffic to your website as well as help in expediting conversion. The benefit of this backlinks strategy are listed below:
- It is an SEO good technique that builds backlinks to your website
- It helps to increase targeted traffic to your blog or website
- Forum posting supports deep linking which contributes to bringing the SERP ranking higher
- It is also a good source for referral ranking
After you have signed up with a forum, you can begin a new thread asking questions or take part in relevant discussions with other forum members. By including backlinks in your posts, you can gain an SEO benefit. However, you should be aware that forums often frown upon this manner of self-promotion.
Get Involved in Question & Answer Websites.
There are many websites like Quora, Stack Overflow, Yahoo answers, LinkedIn answers, and others that offer the opportunity for you to participate. These Q&A sites are famous for attracting a lot of internet users from all over the world.
If you know a lot about the niche that revolves around your site, you may be able to provide accurate responses to a range of different question posted on those websites. Your knowledge will promote you. If people see that you are well-versed in a particular niche, they will most likely visit your blog or website and read more from you.
Article Marketing
One of the most popular and useful backlinking tricks is article marketing. As the name implies, article marketing involves writing high-quality SEO articles, blog posts, and even press releases, and submitting them for publication.
There is an abundance of directories where quality articles can be submitted, such as ezinearticles.com and amazines.com, to mention a few. While writing your article, it is quite essential to keep the specific guidelines of each directory in mind. This is because your article may get rejected if the directories guidelines are not properly followed. Ezinearticles, for example has strict guidelines for getting your article approved. Each of the articles must have a specific amount of words, and editors don’t allow articles with any grammar or spelling errors. You may find you need to revise your article several times before it is finally approved.
Most article directories will list your article for free. Other directories might have a membership plan, which costs a modest amount per month or year, depending on the plan you choose. For instance, ezinearticles.com offers you an option to subscribe to any of their several membership plans. All you need is to sign up with a plan, and you get to enjoy a quick article review and response to inquiries.
Video Marketing
Videos are quite compelling and eye-catching. They can also be used as a strategy for backlinks. There are tons of online website where you can share videos. For instance, YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, and others rely upon user-posted video content. It might interest you to note that YouTube is the most significant source of videos about any topic or niche under the sun.
YouTube allows you to post videos and leave a link below it that can link back to your site. If you don’t have enough time to create videos and post them, you can also make comments on other videos found on the website and leave links. But be advised, this practice is no different than spamming the comment sections in blogs or forums, and may cause backlash. Remember that your comments should be relevant and thoughtful, and add value to those who have come to view the video.
Use Popular or Local Directories
A few years back, submission directories were more useful and relevant and all directories out there were allowed for use. Nowadays, only very few of them remain that are worth posting on for backlinks. Here are some reliable top rank directories for submission:
Instead of submitting to lesser-quality directories, it is advised that you focus on the above-listed ones or some other local directories that are popular for your niche or industry.
There you have it! The 10 methods listed above are all useful in building your backlinking strategy for your website’s SEO. However, there is no “magic bullet” here. Generally, building backlinks effectively takes time and a mixture of these methodologies. If you do not have the time to invest in building backlinks yourself, you may wish to hire an SEO expert who has experience in successfully improving site rankings in your industry.
