Link building can be a complex and time-consuming process. There are so many different tactics that can be used to get to your end goal, and this can be overwhelming for those who are new to it. However, link building is a crucial aspect for any successful SEO strategy as it can help improve your search engine rankings and increase your online visibility.
In this beginners guide, we explore five easy-to-understand link building strategies for SEO to help you start building high-quality links to your site. If you’re new to link building, and you’re looking to enhance your SEO efforts, this guide has got you covered.
5 link building strategies for SEO
Link building isn’t always about creating long form content, such as blogs, or interactive guides. As we’ve mentioned, there are numerous tactics you can utilise. Here are five straightforward link building strategies for SEO that are a great starting point for beginners.
Outreach
Outreach is a link building strategy where you simply reach out to different people within your industry and introduce them to your content – and this isn’t limited to just your content either. Your business, brand, personality, products, or services can also be features you introduce, just as long as it’s valuable and useful to them.
The best people to outreach to are those who have previously linked to similar content or brands as yours, or those that include your target keyword within their content.
Ahrefs Content Explorer is a great tool to use to find this information out. You simply type in your chosen keyword or phrase and it will pull up all the related web pages. Then to find people who have linked to similar articles, you can add a filter to Content Explorer which will filter pages with all the referring domains.
From here, you can find a relevant page and view all the sites linking to it. Once you’ve narrowed down your outreach targets, find their contact information and send them a personalised email. Remember, outreach is all about building relationships which means your first email needs to align with this.
Guest blogging
Guest blogging is a powerful link building strategy that involves collaborating with other websites in your industry to create valuable and relevant content. It’s one of the most notorious link building tactics, but it allows you to provide useful information to readers while having the opportunity to include backlinks to your own site.
Either you or the website you’re collaborating with will create the content, and once published, it’s a simple case of linking to it. However, you need to be clever with who you partner with. Be sure to choose reputable websites with a high domain authority to ensure maximum impact.
As well as that, you must ensure that the content you’re creating is high-quality and engaging, and it aligns with both yours and the website’s target audience. If the content is well-written, adds value to the reader, and it’s free, not only will it increase your website’s credibility and visibility, but it will also establish you as a thought leader in your industry.
Broken link building
Broken link building is a clever tactic that involves finding broken links on other websites in your industry and offering your own content as a replacement. It’s a win-win strategy as it not only helps other websites fix their broken links, but also allows you to gain valuable backlinks to your own site.
Ahref’s Broken Link Checker tool can help you discover every site that has a broken link on it. You simply input the website domain you want to check, and it will provide you with a list of all the dead links on. Once you’ve found a broken link that aligns with your content, you can reach out to the organisation, introduce yourself, and offer your content as a replacement.
This link building strategy often sees great results as you already know which sites are willing to link to relevant content like yours. This means the gain for more potential backlinks could be significant.
Unlinked mentions
There may be some occasions where other websites will mention your brand without actually linking to your site. These opportunities are a hidden gem and an easy steal. This is because the brand mentioning you will already be familiar with your organisation, so all that is required is for you to reach out and ask them to link to your site.
Tools like Google Alerts or Mention are great to utilise as they can help you keep track of these mentions, giving you a chance to turn them into powerful backlinks and harness valuable opportunities to boost your site’s authority and drive more traffic.
Link reclamation
Links can be lost all the time for numerous reasons, such as a website rewriting their content and your link gets dropped. Reclaiming these links is far easier than looking for new back link opportunities. This link building strategy is a fairly easy process because all it requires is politely reaching out to the website and asking them to re-add or update to a more relevant link.
Doing this will ensure you’re recovering valuable lost backlinks, as well as giving your site the credit it deserves, and ultimately boost your search engine rankings. It also helps maintain a healthy backlink profile, which serves as credibility in the eyes of search engines and boosts your domain authority. As well as that, reclaiming backlinks helps improve user experience as it ensures your website visitors are directed to the correct pages on your site.
Let us take care of your link building strategy
Link building is all about trial and error, as well as testing and assessing what works best for you, your strategy, and your business. We hope our guide helps you take on your link building strategy with confidence, whether you’re new to it or not. Once you’ve mastered the technique that’s right for you, you’ll more than likely find link building is a lot more rewarding and a lot less effort.
If you’d like more advice on link building, or you’d like our SEO experts to implement your link building strategy on your behalf, don’t hesitate to contact us today to learn how we can supercharge your SEO efforts and get your site to the top ranking.
