An effective link-building strategy will keep you one step ahead of the crowd—as long as you’re not using black hat tactics. Although most web owners ignore this technique, reports still reveal that 35% of clients will spend $1000 a month (or less) on their link building!
This shows how much value some marketers place on backlinks. A project, if carried out successfully, can give you an incredible turnover within a defined timeline.
A link-building strategy can turn your whole marketing plan upside down if you don't do it the right way. In a 2019 report by SEO tribunal, 65% of marketers affirm that link building is the hardest SEO tactic to complete. Considering its overwhelming steps, most marketers simply avoid it, while putting more effort into other "easier" strategies.
Nonetheless, it's still unarguably one of the fastest ways to drive traffic and boost your rankings on SERP. But you have to put in extra effort to beat the highly saturated market.
Is Link Building a thing?
If you're completely new to link building, you may not understand the rest of this post. So, here's a simple definition by SEMrush:
"Link building is the practice of acquiring links to your website from other websites."
It's a good way to receive rewards (backlinks) from site owners for creating high-quality content that fulfills the search intent.
Every bit of content you create deserves enough traffic for conversions. So, amid other ways of generating this traffic (social media, emails, ads, etc), link building seems to be one of the fastest ways to promote your core pages and gain authority. But, before you take your first step you need to be sure that the content you're trying to promote is solid.
What content should be used for Link Building?
Content is the hub of every link-building campaign, else, what are those sites linking to?
You cannot use every form of content to build backlinks. Marketers are looking for pieces that will add value to their site, so you have to know what these valuable pieces are and how to use them to attract visitors.
With these 4 content types, you can create link-worthy content that can even fetch you backlinks naturally.
- Visual content
- Videos
- Original data
- In-depth guides
1. Visual content
Visual content aids in brand recognition and can assist in lead generation. It is so important that in 2018, about 68% of marketers gave reports with a plan to increase the use of visuals in their marketing campaigns. Trends like these indicate the strength of visuals over plain texts.
Some of the visual content includes
- Infographics
- Flow chart
- Illustrations
- Gif
- Images
- Cartoon
- Photography
A surprising study from a collection of stats by Hubspot reveals that design and visual content is the biggest challenge for 23.7% of content marketers! This shows that many marketers find it difficult to create original visual content, hence they ignore it.
However, they can always save the stress by using visuals from third-party sources and easily linking back to them. With this in view, you can create your infographics, flow charts, images, and screenshots, indicating a data survey, step-by-step guide, chart, or any other useful content.
When bloggers spot these, they'd be glad to pick them up and link back to you.
2. Videos
This can also be seen as a subset of visual content. Videos are more original and cannot be easily duplicated. You can create content like YouTube videos, webinars, interviews, etc.
With the information shared in the videos, some sites can pick up a thing or two, which they'd be happy to add to their blogs. They can always refer to salient points, quotes, tips, etc., and of course, link back to you.
3. Original data
Most times, marketers will need to work with realistic data, as opposed to theories. They boost authority and expertise in any subject matter. Content like these includes,
- Research works
- Statistics
- Case studies
- White papers
- Reports and surveys
- Polls
Not every marketer has the resources or time to conduct surveys, make research, or write case studies. This could be an opportunity for you to show how something works in real life.
Writers will always link back to your source, seeing as it contains valuable and useful data that will enrich their content. Fery Kaszoni, from Search Intelligence, used this strategy to gain a 100 per cent boost in organic traffic.
4. In-depth guides
Brian Dean, from Backlinko, shared how he once received too many emails from people who needed keyword research advice. To solve this, he decided to create an "Ultimate Guide" that answers most of their questions.
Many marketers who didn't have the time or resources to create one, had to link back to his guide. You can do the same for any of your favorite topics that may be in high demand.
Sites that need detailed information on such subject matter can pick up your guide and link back to you. This information can be how-to guides, reviews, blueprints, "best of" lists, etc.
Link Building Outreach: Sharing the news!
High-quality content will attract readers and boost your engagement—no doubt. However, your visibility may not get past the bajillion of content that flood the internet space, if you just publish and abandon the content.
If you're serious about building backlinks, you don't wait for sites to find you—no matter how attractive the blog or homepage looks. You will have to reach out to prospects and request a space on their site where you can add your link. That's the concept of Link Building Outreach.
Daisy Sawyer, the campaign executive of Seeker, puts it this way:
"Outreach is, at its core, communication. It’s the very literal process of reaching out to someone and telling them something great and, ultimately, prompting them to do something with that information: share it, write about it, or link to it.
“Outreach is pinpointing a fact or piece of data and creating an interesting story out of it. Successful outreach happens when you create something creative, unique, and newsworthy and get it out to the right people. Sounds simple – but you’ve got to get it right!”
You can carry out an outreach through emails, PR, influencer marketing, social media, etc.
A careful insight into an analysis published by Authority Hacker revealed that they earned 4,306 backlinks from 4,244 referring domains over 3 years! They hit this mark after a massive outreach by sending over 630,000 emails to 152,000 website owners—in 78 campaigns!
This is a typical example of a long-term project that yielded massive results!
What effective tactics can you use to build links?
Link building campaigns can ruin your marketing strategy if you don't adopt a functioning system—again, this doesn't include black hat tactics.
There are effective techniques you can employ to help you generate more backlinks without having to always cold pitch random prospects who don't need your links. According to User, only 8.5% of cold outreach emails for link building generate results—especially when they're not personalized.
The cold emailing strategy isn't dead, though but the highly saturated market now produces more spammers making it difficult to build trust.
Nonetheless, you can still carry out your link building campaigns with other tactical approaches such as these,
- Guest posting
- Link reclamation
- Fixing broken links
- Digital PR
1. Guest posting
This is simply publishing your content on other websites as a "guest." It is an effective strategy as you could maximize the opportunity to include links to your site.
Although this tactic is effective, marketers have abused it by flooding the internet with low-quality content and spammy links. Its automation made it difficult for original content to produce the right results.
Matt Cutts, the ex-head of Google webspam team made striking comments in 2014, about guest blogging. In the article, he said,
"... because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.
Back in the day, guest blogging used to be a respectable thing, much like getting a coveted, respected author to write the introduction of your book. It's not that way anymore."
Following this, most publishing sites may not easily accept pitches from guest bloggers for the fear of spamming and facing Google penalties.
In addition to that, it is costly because you would have to hire expert writers to give you high-quality content. And you're not going to have an effective link-building campaign with just one guest post.
That being said, guest blogging is still an efficient way to build links. Research shows that 60% of blogs write 1-5 guest posts per month, indicating its relevance in building links and boosting authority. Although, you shouldn't rely on this tactic alone for massive success.
2. Link reclamation
This is simply reclaiming lost links. You may have resources on several sites but they neither drive traffic nor have any SEO value, so you need to reclaim them. Some scenarios include,
- Lone Visuals
Some websites may have used your visual content without attribution. Instead of feeling bad, see it as an opportunity to earn a link in return.
What should you do?
Simply contact the webmasters, informing them that you own the rights to the image and that you'd be happy if they give credits by linking back to your site. No sincere marketer will ignore such a polite request.
If you're worried about finding sites that use your images, you can use the Google reverse image search feature.
- Broken Links
If you run a site audit, you'd discover that some pages in your site are broken and no longer exist. If you still have links to these pages, you make readers bump at dead ends on your site.
This can also affect your SEO rankings. Nonetheless, you can always email the webmasters, requesting a change of links. If that won't be possible, you can easily redirect those links to functional pages.
To spot these broken links on your site, use tools like Moz Link Explorer, AHrefs, SEMrush, etc.
- Lone Mentions
Sometimes, sites can do a review, "best of" list, etc., and mention you (or your brand) in the post, without adding a link to your website. This is also a little opportunity to kindly email them, asking for a backlink.
3. Fixing broken links
This tactical approach is a bit similar to link reclamation. It involves looking for non-existent links on websites and finding ways to fix them.
As Fractl puts it,
"Broken link building is a technique built on the practice of finding 'broken links' on websites and reaching out to webmasters to receive a backlink from the identified broken link."
Woorank, after a study in 2018, reported that 12.2% of backlinks send users to a page that returns a 404 status—these links were either broken or missing.
If you notice that your competitors have broken links, you can take advantage of this by doing the following.
- Check out websites that link back to your competitors (you may need to compile those with a higher DA or PageRank)
- Run a backlink audit with SEMrush or AHrefs to analyze the broken links
- Collate your overall data: broken links, your new links, webmasters and their contact info, etc
- Conduct an outreach. Email webmasters, explaining the errors you found (include relevant screenshots if possible), and present your functional links to help them make necessary changes.
If you're using this strategy, you may need to personalize your emails for the webmasters to separate you from the other spammers and see a need to consider your request.
Digital PR
Digital PR link building is one of the most effective tactical approaches to earning backlinks. The strategy involves using public relations techniques like media relations and press releases to build links.
In practical terms, it involves,
- Creating an article around your industry (mostly trending stories) OR Sharing a discovery/study
- Finding relevant publications and journalists
- Sending emails, encouraging them to cover your story or research and linking back to you
- Following them up to make sure every step is in place
Fery Kaszoni, on LinkedIn, shared how he generated over 20 backlinks to a gaming site, in a single PR campaign.
Here's how he did it…
- He picked up a study on gaming characters (Mario, Pac man, Max Payne, etc.) and their supposed salary in real life
- Compiled over 50 most popular video characters and their jobs
- Wrote a press release about their findings
- Contacted hundreds of relevant journalists in the gaming and tech industry
- Big publications picked up the story
- Links flowed in!
The journalists are always set in every industry, waiting for a press release or "the big news". They'd be happy to publish your findings because you've saved them hours and days of research.
As Fery puts it,
"Journalists have a massive daily target, and with our stories, they can simply copy-paste the already written-up facts into their article, which is of great help to them."
Digital PR is a lot easier if you love researching, staying updated with the news, and doing everything to keep up with the trends
Conclusion: Is link building worth it?
From case studies and surveys, a careful and proper approach to link-building campaigns will yield an incredible increase in turnover rate. It is one of the most important SEO ranking factors which has been proven to boost traffic and SERP ranking.
Asides from driving traffic to you, link building boosts your site's authority and trust. It's good news knowing that people love your resource and are happy to add it to their sites—shows you're doing the right thing.
As much as it may not be easy to run an effective campaign on a very low budget, it's still important to create quality content that fulfills search intent. This way, you can have marketers who will willingly link back to you, without waiting for email outreaches.