Link Building For Beginners: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site
You've spend a lot of time creating a great website!
Choosing the perfect theme, font, colour, etc!
Creating the greatest content in your industry!
And then when it comes to traffic, you just find crickets! (no traffic)
It's pretty normal with most websites.
Most people spend a lot of time focusing on content creation but they ignore link building – which is an important factor when it comes to SEO.
Without backlinks, your website might fail to rank on Google since it will be regarded as a low authority site.
So the question is;
‘How can someone build quality backlinks to his/her website in a genuine way?’
That's what will be answered in this post.
I will show you 7 strategies that you can use to get backlinks to your website.
These includes:
Without further ado, let me quickly explain each of these strategies.
1. Link Building With HARO
HARO simply means Help A Reporter.
This is a platform where journalists and bloggers meet to exchange ideas related to certain topics.
On this platform, you can find journalists of big companies like Forbes – since they always search for new information to feature on their website.
Thus, they approach bloggers and other experts to share their opinions on a particular topic – and in return, they will link back to your website i.e. if your contributions are featured on their websites.
In order to get started, you need to visit their main website @ www.helpareporter.com and signup as a Source.
Once you signup, you have to choose topics that you're interested in – and you'll get some notifications when journalists are looking for contributions related to those topics.
Thus, if you provide great information, your contribution will be featured in one of the top publishing sites – hence earning you a backlink in the process.
Thus, l highly urge you to signup for this platform.
2. Link Building With SourceBottle
Similar to HARO is SourceBottle.
This platform works just like HARO – meaning you signup as a ‘source’ and you share your knowledge regarding certain topics.
But what l like about SourceBottle is that you can signup for their newsletter – in order to get some notifications when journalists are looking for information related to your niche.
Thus, you can get requests in real time – hence allowing you to share your thoughts in the shortest time possible.
Again, you will get a backlink if your contributions are featured on the publishing sites – hence earning you a quality backlink.
3. Link Building With 2.0 Sites
Most people ignores 2.0 backlinks since they are regarded as no-follow links.
Although they are no-follow, they are still crucial to your site's health structure.
Your website needs a balance between no-follow and do-follow links – so that your link profile looks more natural.
With that being said, my favourite way of getting web 2.0 backlinks is through using Medium.
Medium is an authoritative site that can help to improve your site's backlink profile – although the links are no-follow.
And the cool thing about Medium is that you don't have to create any additional content to publish at that platform.
You can import your already existing articles to medium using their ‘import’ feature.
Simply paste the url of your target blog post and make some few twerks in order to customise the article for Medium interface.
In just a few clicks, your articles will be imported to Medium.
All imported articles have an ‘Originally Published @ www.yourwebsite.com’ hence earning you a backlink in the process.
You can also get additional traffic from this technique – since your articles will be exposed to Medium's built-in audience.
Most people are scared about duplicate content – since they fear to use the same piece of content twice on 2 different websites.
But if you import your articles to Medium, they will be regarded as Canonical – and we all know that Canonical urls are allowed by Google
[Research More About This Topic]
4. Broken Link Building
Using tools like ahrefs, you can find some websites that are linking to some dead pages i.e. pages that are either outdated or no longer exists.
Once you find them, simply write better content that is more relevant to that topic.
Once done, simply reach out to the site owners of those sites linking to the dead pages.
Simply inform them that they’re linking to non-existent pages & you have a better piece of content that is up to date and more relevant.
And guess what?
Most of them will be happy to replace those dead links and link to your new piece of content which is up to date.
Although this involves a lot of work, it's still a great strategy of getting more backlinks to your website.
[Read more on ahrefs blog – since they explained this topic in greater depth]
5. Resource Page Link Building
Do you know that you can ‘steal' backlinks through other websites resource pages?
Most websites links to other relevant websites in their resource page – so as to refer their visitors to those websites for more information about a particular topic.
For example, if l mention anything related to SEO on my resource page, l can link to Neil Patel’s blog – since he's really good in that field.
But let's say that his content becomes obsolete at some point, l can choose to replace his link with another one – that is more relevant at that time.
This helps to keep the resource page healthy and relevant.
So how can you get started with this technique?
You can utilise tools like ahrefs to find some resource pages from other websites that are linking to outdated content.
Once you find them, simply contact the site owners and inform them about the issue.
And if you have a great piece of content that is relevant to that topic, most site owners will replace those outdated links with yours.
[Learn more about this technique at ahrefs YouTube channel]
6. Guest Blogging
This is the most common form of link building.
With Guest Blogging, you write content for other blogs in your industry (for free) and you’ll get a backlink in return.
In order to get started, you need to find some website in your niche which are better than your site.
Once you find them, simply reach out the owners of those sites and build some relations with them.
Once you start having some good relations with them, you can then ask to write for them in exchange of a backlink.
Most of them will be more than happy to accept your proposal – since they'll get a piece of great content for free.
You can join some PBN networks, Forums, & Facebook groups in order to find potential websites in your niche.
But be careful. Other networks are just scammy.
You can also visit some websites related to your niche and check their footers.
Some of them have a ‘write for us' section – where writers can submit their proposals.
7. Writing Great Content (Which Attracts Other Sites To Link To Your Content)
I know this sounds awkward, but writing good content can earn you some free backlinks – without working for them.
This is so because great quality content normally receives some links – since other bloggers in that niche will be more than willing to refer their traffic to that piece of content.
For example, let's say that lm writing an article related to SEO, l will be happy to link to other relevant articles in order to refer my audience to that article for in-depth information.
Thus, the owners of those websites will be able to earn backlinks for free without any efforts.
Thus, writing good content can earn you some backlinks – even though it’s a long term strategy.
Wrapping Up
I hope that you've gained some value from this quick post.
Using these strategies, you can get started with link building – hence boosting your site's authority.
However, it is important to mention that link building is not an overnight thing – it takes time.
Although there are other websites with a high Domain Rating, it is important to mention that they took several years to reach that level of authority.
Thus, you should look at link building as a long term game.
