six ways to build Quality Backlinks for SEO

First, links were how Google figured out which websites were good: a backlink was a recommendation, so websites with more links ranked higher. Google let the web decide how good each page was. Since then, Google updates have largely been about getting ahead of efforts to game this process by acquiring unearned links.

We’re now at a point where only very white hat link building methods still reliably work. It’s basically impossible to beg, borrow, steal, or buy links effectively. All you can do is earn them. But there are still smart ways to do that. And some of them allow you to piggyback on your competitors’ successes at the same time!

 

Google has warned against guest posting and put a lot of people off. But high quality, targeted guest posts are different from the mass-produced, low-value posts that were a staple of many SEO strategies a few years ago. Done right, guest blogging can be an effective link building tool.

The first thing you need to do is get the best guest blog spot you can. Identify sites that might take your guest post by scoping out your competitors’ guest posts. For an example here, I’ll use Neil Patel, which means we’ll get a lot of search results.

Start with an advanced Google search, using the author’s name in quotation marks and the words “guest post” also in quotation marks. Include the author’s home domain with a minus sign in front so all those results will be excluded.

The HubSpot and Forbes results are actually articles by Neil Patel; the others mention him in pieces about guest posting. Since Patel’s name is everywhere online, it might help to narrow this down a little. So an alternative is to search within the URL and identify the author as the author, so you don’t get anything that’s about them or just mentions them.

Do that by searching for the author’s name in quotation marks and using the search parameter inurl:author.

 

This is better. There are more usable results. But we can use Ahrefs’ Content Explorer to identify content written by a certain author, too. Enter the author’s name as a search term in this form:

Author: “Author’s Name”

Make sure there’s no space between the colon and the first quotation mark.

 

This is much better than Google. Not only are we seeing more of what we’re looking for, but we have sharing and backlink data right there on the sidebar.

If your competitor has already been featured on a site, there’s a solid chance the same site will take you, too. Now that you’ve tracked down some sites, pitch to them via their “write for us” form or email the editor.

Next, you need to get the best guest post link(s) you can. Guest blogging works to build links because you can put links to your website in your post, and usually in your author bio.

Make sure the links are contextual, if you can, rather than hidden in author bios where they are less likely to be clicked and where Google doesn’t love them as much. The best way to get a natural contextual link is to treat that resource exactly as you would if it was someone else’s. Just put it in naturally, and use anchor text that refers to its relevance, not to your site. And be generous. In the top search result above, Patel links out to Quicksprout once, and to Moz, Copyblogger, and a bunch of other places as well.

 

 

 

Public relations in the context of link building simply means using the same methods to get backlinks that you might use to get press.

If you would like to be a source, sign up to HelpaReporter.com, and they’ll tell you when they need someone with your skills for an interview.

Also, consider classic PR moves like press releases. Bloggers and journalists hoover up information, so if anything has happened – you have a new integration, client, product, feature – make it easy to find. Then you’re likely to be linked to in any article that covers the subject.

Where most people get press releases wrong is overuse of anchor text links. That’s one of the factors most likely to trigger a Penguin penalty. Instead, use your press release to field a variety of anchors linking to your site.

Additionally, press releases can still be added to directories and databases, making them an even better 

SEO

 

 tool.

Even when you do get mentioned, though, there’s no actual guarantee that the people referencing you will give you a link. Sometimes things slip through the net. When that happens, it can be worthwhile to reach out and remind them that you’d like to be linked to.

You can track mentions in Ahrefs. Go to Alerts > Mentions > Add Alert > Search Query > Daily > Add.

 

You can track your competitors the same way.

 

 

 

Even good, well-maintained websites suffer from “linkrot.” Links lead to a location on the internet, but since websites move their content around, eventually, some links will lead to empty locations. Users arrive looking for a resource and find a vacant lot.

Broken link building fixes this and gets you links. It relies on finding broken links, identifying the content they refer to, and then offering the referring site the chance to refer out to some new, unbroken content – yours.

Everyone wins: website visitors see more up-to-date, useful content and fewer 404s; sites don’t have a whole bunch of broken links; and you get a high-quality backlink. For marketers, this is an effective way to get two birds with one stone: you get a blog post built around the right keywords, and, unlike a guest post, you get to keep it. So if anyone uses it as a resource, those links come straight back to you. But you get link juice up front, too.

How do you do it?

Start by identifying a site that you’d like a backlink from. If you have keywords figured out, search for them and identify sites that rank for them. Then check out those sites in Ahrefs and identify a broken link.

Use the Broken function in Site Explorer to identify backlinks that aren’t working. Let’s look at Copyblogger, a copywriting blog. Remember to check under outgoing links or you’ll get broken backlinks that lead to Copyblogger, not from it.

Make sure they’re dofollow links, which should link to useful content. Select Dofollow from the dropdown under Broken Links, and you get a very different view.

Having identified a broken link that looks like its subject is in your wheelhouse, follow it. You should see a 404 on the site’s domain. I followed the third dead link for 21 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue. The anchor text gives me a pretty good idea of what the subject will be: “why interviews are great for blog content.” The URL, http://clevermarketer.com/interviews-blog-content.html, tells me the same story. And it’s a 404.

 

Now it’s time to check out what the content was originally about, in order to craft something that replaces it and surpasses it.

Just because the content is not there now doesn’t mean we can’t see it. The internet comes with a free time machine, located at archive.org, which will let you search for what was located at a given URL in the past.

 

 

 

Brainchild of Brian Dean, skyscraping means finding content in your space that’s already awesome, and then out-awesoming it. A simplistic way to do this might be to think, “Hmmm, 101 Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing is doing incredibly well. I’ll do 1,001 Ways and clean up!”

It might work. Or you might create something that’s bigger without being better. More points, more words, and more pictures doesn’t always mean more value for the user. Instead, look at the content you’re skyscraping and ask yourself:

Which questions go unanswered?

Which instructions are hard to follow?

Who isn’t getting served here?

Shoot for quality, even though it’s the toughest thing to quantify, and you’re more likely to come out ahead.

If you have a specific competitor in mind, you can start skyscraping by using Site Explorer in Ahrefs to look for pieces in your niche that are doing particularly well. We’ll use Copyblogger again.

Enter the domain and select Site Explorer > Pages > Best by Links.

 

 

 

Rather than linking to your blog post or a page on your website, resource links come back to your solid research or collected knowledge that everyone else needs to know.

How often do you think people link back to Content Marketing Institute’s B2B Content Marketing 2016 report?

 

That’s 1,516 unique domains linking to that one piece of content.

The key is to create resources that are useful to people in your space, so they will link back to them when they use them in blog posts or other content. It doesn’t have to be original research. It can be a compendium of information from different places, gathered together, and presented with one group of people’s needs in mind.

You can build resources by using the same methods you’d use to steal a competitor’s traffic and links: find out what people in your space want to know by identifying the content they’re consuming, and then address that knowledge gap.

 

 

 

If a site will link to a competitor, it will probably link to you, too. Start by identifying the top ten sites for each keyword you want to rank for. Do a Google search and pick the top ten domains.

Suppose we want to rank for “Halloween email marketing.”

We’d get to see some truly appalling puns.

 

 

 

Link building remains one of the most effective ways to rank better and drive more traffic that’s also more accurately targeted. As older methods become useless or actively harmful, and basic white hat techniques become all but indistinguishable from content marketing, the winning edge will go to marketers who know how to implement advanced link building techniques that tie their domain to the right sites.

 

Richard Bayston