Need a hand building your online authority? Spiralytics helps companies like yours develop holistic link building campaigns that drive relevance, authority, and trust in your industry. Find out more!
Since the inception of search engine optimization, link building has been one of the key ranking factors for websites so they could appear higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s categorized as common practice in the field of SEO, with many marketers sticking to tried-and-true methods to make sure the desired results are achieved.
There are link building tactics that will probably never go out of style unless massive algorithm changes happen on how search engines rank websites. Some of the most commonly used by marketers are guest posting, broken link building, and skyscraper technique, which are all effective ways to build quality backlinks.
One of the most popular methods is guest posting, where you try to publish a piece of original content on an authoritative website to gain links and boost traffic. Broken link building, on the other hand, is also a popular practice where you help webmasters fix dead links by providing a better alternative or a more superior content. Skyscraper is the process of making a better version of a content that already has a lot of links.
Although these are proven ways to get links, link builders have made them “saturated” to the point that website owners have already identified the email templates for these tactics. Webmasters and influencers are already getting sick of receiving these types of emails.
Here at Spiralytics, we’ve explored various techniques and found the following to be equally or more effective. So, if you’re on the path to becoming the best link builder in town, here are the tactics you should also utilize in your efforts:
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Interviews
Getting to interview industry experts will always be a great way to attract links. However, the challenge lies in getting them to agree for an interview wherein you must ask all the right questions that your audience wants answers to. One good way to find out what questions you need to ask is to conduct a Q & A within your blog’s community on social media. You can also read comments on your blog posts and gain insight from your blog followers themselves.
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Resource Pages
The whole point of resource pages is to link out to useful content, making them a link builder’s dream. So, if you have a valuable piece of content, you’re in a good place. However, this doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be getting links to the keywords you’re trying to rank for, so focus on relevance above anything else.
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Partner Links
Having partners backlinking to your website is relatively easy, but you can go beyond existing partners. Often, linking to your clients’ partners, affiliates, or satisfied customers can have a positive effect on them. Once you’ve given them a backlink, you can check if they’ve done the same for you. If not, you can always reach out and ask if they could return the favor.
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HARO
HARO is a free service where journalists connect with bloggers and industry experts. By becoming a source, you can get valuable backlinks from news sites. However, getting these links is no walk in the park since the competition is fierce. So, you must only submit high-quality responses out to increase the likelihood of nailing those legit links.
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Image Reclamation
Image Reclamation is one of the easiest ways to get links. As the name suggests, this process is about finding other sites that have used your images (logos, product photos, blog banners, employee photos, icons, and infographics) to ask them for a link. Use reverse image search to find other sites that have republished your images.
Once you do, reach out and contact them to give you credit through a backlink.
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Profile Links
Signing up to become a member of a site gives you a link to you profile, but not all websites do this. Some allow quality links in your profile and others won’t, so the best way to make use of this method is to focus on profiles relevant to your niche. This avoids making your profile links look like spam.
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Linking Out / Ego Bait
Linking out is not only widely considered as best practice for on-page SEO, but it can help you establish and build relationships, too. You gain favor with other people by possibly having them return the favor sometime in the future.
When it comes to ego baiting, your job is to make people look good by stroking their ego, which will allow you to receive either a link, a social share or some form of recognition in return. Your target would typically be an authority figure, influencer, or brand in a specific niche.
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Second Tier Link Building
Known to be a method used by black hat SEO practitioners, tiered link building tactic can also be used by white hats in a more effective way. Essentially, this involves building multiple tiers of links to a target site.
To make sure you’re doing white hat SEO, fill tier 1 with your guest posts and other authoritative sites linking back to you. And instead of making your next tier spammy sites, what you need to do is look for sites with high domain authority or PageRank. Contact them and try to get that link.
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Media Events
Events promotion can be tricky if you have yet to establish your brand as an online authority. The trick is to create shareable content to promote a specific event that are published in its own event page. You can tap into events communities or websites dedicated to events in general as well as niche sites to get links.
Get Creative with Link Building!
Link building is undeniably one of the most effective weapons in your SEO arsenal. The good thing is it doesn’t involve just one tactic that you follow by the book. These tactics may be considered underrated, but when used wisely and paired with a solid link building criteria, they can have a massive effect on your SEO results.
As a marketer, whether you’re running search ads or doing e-commerce SEO, it’s your job to find what strategy works best. You can always combine popular tactics with these lesser known ones to customize your approach for every campaign. As you go through the motions of utilizing each one of these strategies and achieve some level of mastery, you’ll be a step closer to being one of the finest link builders out there.
