Back-linking is one of the most important factors in any SEO strategy for ranking on Google search results.
It’s when a third-party links back to your website. Someone may link to a website when the other person’s content further explains something, or if they’re endorsing the brand.
Your domain authority is made up of a contribution of how many links you have from other reputable sites and also the relevance of those back links.
So, what are some strategies to consider when building relevant links?
- Post Valuable Content
Content that is valuable is shareable. Any time a third party posts your content just because it is valuable information for their audience, you’re gaining natural backlinks. That means you haven’t chased a link, you haven’t had to email anyone to beg them to link to you. You’ve simply posted good quality content or resources that people want for their audience.
This is by far the most convenient way to get a link, but it takes hard work and time to create the content. Think about what people will want to read, unique information, go in-depth so you’re releasing content that isn’t that well-known.
Another way you can try to get links by posting content, is to use a tool such as the Moz backlinks tool, type in your competitor’s URL and have a look at what sites are linking to your competition. You can then go on to see the article that are linked. If you can rewrite your competitors content with a lot more details and knowledge, then perhaps you can email the third party and mention you loved their article and think you’ve created content with updated knowledge that they may find useful.
- Broken Links
This one requires you to find articles that have links that don’t work. Perhaps it’s linking to a resource that has since been deleted, or to a 404-error page. In this case, you’ll write some content to replace the link. Write exactly what you think this article was trying to link to and then send them a little email to say ‘we loved your article but we noticed one of your resources is broken, if you need a new resource to link to we recently wrote…’
This one isn’t guaranteed but it is likely that most website owners will not want any broken links on their page because it could hurt their SEO. If you’re offering useful information for their audience free of charge, they’ve really got nothing to lose by linking to your resource. It’s helping you, and them.
- Link Exchanges
Speaking of helping out the both of you, another tactic is link exchanges. This means reaching out to people and offering to put links to them in your blog posts if they’ll link to you in theirs. You need relevant links. Exchange with quality sites, you can even guest post on each other’s site – writing content for each other’s blogs. This is a pretty simple strategy because it’s mutually beneficial, however it’s not completely risk free.
If done excessively or unnaturally you could be penalised for violating Google’s webmaster guidelines.
“Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”
However, studies show a LOT of websites use this technique, and are not penalised. This is because it’s recognised that reciprocal links can come naturally and are not in violation of any guidelines.
It is an effective strategy but you should be careful about how frequently you’re using it
There are a lot more techniques we can go through, or we can re go-over some of the ones mentioned in more depth, leave a comment to let us know what you want to read! And if you need help, give us a call.