Link building is deemed the best among the SEO or Search Engine optimization strategies. SEO is the heart of digital marketing, as a strong SEO benefits your website on two vital counts–a high ranking on the SERP and a high influx of organic traffic. 

Just how important link building is in the success of SEO is very well demonstrated by a study conducted by MOZ where 150 top SEO experts in the world were asked to score the SEO ranking factors that influence Google’s core search algorithm on a scale of 1 (least influential) to 10 (highest influential), here is what it reveals:

Credit : https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

Now that we are convinced that a major part of our SEO strategy should revolve around link building, the question remains how effectively we can go about it. We’ll try to seek the answer in the rest of this article. But first, let’s understand what are links and why they are important in SEO.

Digital marketing is all about making good use of networks and allies. Links or backlinks (to be precise) are references to the source sites as attribution and acknowledgement for using their digital assets. In a nutshell, the advantages of backlinks can be listed as:

• Recognition for your website as a source of authentic information.
• Recognition for your website as the creator of a popular infographic, video, or other digital assets.
• Incorporating your content or website in a link roundup.
• Recognition for you or your company as a source of critical information

Link building refers to this mission-critical exercise of earning backlinks from other websites to your own.

When another site refers to your site with a link, it adds up to the credibility of your site. More links, especially from websites with high domain authority, translate into a high ranking of your site. High-quality links indicate to Google that your site is a valuable resource that should be cited. As a result, sites with more backlinks rank higher on SERP.

Building links should be a priority for all marketers and business owners who want to boost their site’s authority and drive referral traffic. However, common methods of link-building activities involve leaving comments on related sites or writing guest posts to simply gloat about where our content has been published.

But if you want to boost your site’s authority and rank higher on search engine result pages (SERPs), you’ll need to establish authoritative backlinks on a regular basis. To put it another way, you must employ successful link-building techniques that yield results. The 15 proven techniques explained below will help you get high-quality backlinks and stay ahead of the competition with a  high rank in the SERP.

#1. Identify the sites with high domain authority:

Because a single quality link from a website with a high domain authority can boost all of your content in the rankings. It’s more about quality than quantity when it comes to link building. Google uses a 100 point scoring system to grade a website based on the inbound link profile of that site. The point scale is logarithmic, which means a site with domain authority point 60 is ten times stronger than a site with domain authority level 50.

You should target websites with a domain authority of at least 30. A link from a low-domain-authority website will have little or no effect on your Google results.

#2. Try for the editorial links:

Look out for the relevant content in other media and try to establish contacts with reporters/ writers in your domain and share your profile for getting editorial links. Editorial links result in high search engine rankings because they come from authoritative websites that have pretty impressive metrics. For example, a mention or backlink from the Times of India can give your site a big push. 

#3. Publish Guest post:

Guest posting or guest blogging is about creating valuable backlinks on your own by publishing articles on authoritative sites. There are some authority sites who invite high-quality content on a variety of topics. Select the ones that publish blog posts pertaining to your domain and get registered. This is an effective SEO strategy provided your guest posting has high content quality with contextual links directed to your website.

#4. Create link-worthy Infographics

Infographics are used by big marketing agencies as the #1 link building tools. It’s one of the most popular techniques to attract readers attention and receive qualified traffic to your website using  backlinks. Combination of great graphics and texts produce link-worthy content. 

Here are some Infographics best practices to attract links:

• Stick to quality
• No need to mention dates
• Post your infographics to key communities

#5. Publish evergreen posts that earn backlinks through the passage of time:

Contrary to posts and news articles that relate to the trending topics such as Fortnite, Pokemon Go, etc., evergreen posts remain relevant to the readers even after a long time since the content was originally published. Over time these evergreen posts gain high link equity, which not only help them rank high on the SERP , but also attract number of backlinks and editorial links.

Another fact about evergreen posts is that they they are tough to be outranked.

#6. Earn contextual backlink through image search:

If your site has a lot of visual information (infographics, screenshots, charts, etc. ), there’s a good chance that some websites are using them without giving proper credit to you.

You can take the below steps to address this problem and also gain backlinks.

• Make a list of your original image assets with their URLs.
• Then use Google image search to pick out the websites that are using those images without attribution. Make a list of their email addresses.
• Write emails to the owners of those sites pointing that they are using your linkable assets without mentioning the source URL (put the URL of your site as the source). In all likelihood, this will work because otherwise they might get punished by Google.  And this way you will earn some backlinks that might get you some qualified traffic.

#7. Allow bloggers to review your product for free:

This is particularly effective with women’s physical items. There are hundreds of women bloggers make a living by reviewing things. Give your product to them free of cost and request reviews in their blogs. Here’s how to get backlinks using product reviews in four easy steps:

• Select the blogs that write and review products in your category
• Make a list of the bloggers’ email addresses
• Write to them about your intention, and for their physical address to send the product.
• Get your products nicely packed and courier to them with a hand note thanking them in advance for reviewing your product. 

#8. Get your blog featured on the “Best Of” posts:

“Best Of” posts, published by several blog owners, enlist their favorite blog posts on a certain subject. If you can manage to get a good article of yours included in a “Best of” post it will garner contextual links. The following is a step-by-step guide to getting your post listed.

• Identify Your Most Linkable Post – Take a look at your most popular posts and pick the one that is  fairly large and is of high quality.
• Use Google to find your target sites – Use Google to obtain a list of high-authority websites that publish “Best of” posts related to your niche (Google search = best of post + your topic).
• Message the Authors of Each “Best of” Article – Ask each post’s author via email, if they can add your post to their list of favorites. 
• Before requesting a backlink from a well-known blogger, you should establish a relationship with them. This can be accomplished by leaving comments on their blog, emailing them a question, or following them on Twitter.

#9. Use interactive content on your site:

Interactive content like quizzes, games, polls, and calculators are creating high degree of engagement these days on the Internet. Due to their rising popularity, interactive content generate a lot of authority backlinks. Several web based tools such as Outgrow, Uberflip, etc. are available to help you generate such interactive content.

#10. Have a podcast of your own:

This will definitely boost your ranking in search results. Podcasts have high popularity and engagement quotient and can be used effectively in your link building strategy.

You’ll have more creative control over your content if you have your own podcast; you won’t have to waste time sending outreach emails to podcasters in your niche and waiting for a response; and, most importantly, podcasting is fun and allows you to build your own personal brand and showcase your expertise.

Other influencers in your niche will approach you to be a part of your podcast once it becomes famous. Not to mention the invitations you’ll get to be a guest on other podcasters’ shows.

#11. Sign up for Product Hunt:

This especially helps those who deal in tech products like apps, software, website, hardware projects , and other tech creations and expect to receive backlinks from authority sites. Product hunt is a site with domain authority of 86 and growing, where you’ll come to know about cool new applications or products, both upcoming or current. But what makes it unique is its forum of online discussion where product loving enthusiasts and tech experts have thoughtful discussions 

To acquire a backlink from Product Hunt, you must first register an account on the site, link your website, and be active on the forum. This can be accomplished by posting product reviews, providing comments on freshly released products, and, of course, regularly upvoting and downvoting products.

#12. Be on the Startup Directory:

If you are a startup, getting registered with one or more startup directories helps you receive quality reviews and backlinks. There are many startup directories to which you can submit your website.

For example, BetaList is a leading startup directory dedicated to early-stage online firms. The submission is free, but you will need to pay a nominal charge to expedite the process and ensure that your startup is featured. You can observe how they evaluate startups by looking at their submission criteria.

#13. Create your public profile and get a backlink:

Users sign up for sites where they may construct a public profile and submit a link to their website as part of the profile link development process. The link will help transfer of link juice from the profile creation site to yours.

The main idea is if the profile link building site is good, you should be able to get a quality backlink.

Gravatar, a WordPress-owned avatar site, is an example of a high-quality site where you can include a link in your profile. Other websites like Kickstarter, Moz, Semrush, and Triberr that value active communities allow you to build a public profile with links to your website and social media outlets.

#14. Create list posts with images and videos on a regular basis:

In a study to identify the sites that garner the most inbound links, it was discovered that blog entries that included both images and videos in a list format earned the most backlinks.

It’s not difficult to conduct research and create a fantastic list post. However, most inexperienced bloggers fall short, when it comes to using videos and graphics to generate backlinks. Here are a few tricks that skilled bloggers employ to make their blogs visually appealing.

• Use Graphs and Charts for better visualization of key stats
• Embed Proven YouTube Videos in the post
• Embed images in the Tweets that is relevant to the content

#15. Share your site with the Blog Aggregators

Blog aggregators are websites (dedicated to one or more niches) that compile a list of blogs in those industries. Their specialty is that people visit their sites for good pieces of content in specific field(s). So if you tie up with a few blog aggregators in your industry you are likely to get good numbers of relevant backlinks. AllTop, Blogarama, and BlogEngage are some examples of blog aggregators.

Even though they don’t have as much link juice as they used to, you can still obtain a significant amount of referral traffic from these blogs. Most blog aggregators will provide you with high-quality dofollow backlinks for free if you follow these three simple steps:

• Submit the RSS feed of your blog for consideration
• To confirm your site’s ownership, add a specific HTML code to it.
• Get your blog reviewed by a blog aggregator.

Despite constant changes in Google’s algorithm to refine the digital marketing results, which see many old concepts giving way to new ones, building backlinks remains to be a pivotal factor in the success of SEO. While these 15 link-building strategies will give you rich insights into link building, research and innovation will help you discover more.

Source- Fluidscapes
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