For anyone who’s ever tried to build backlinks for their website, you know it’s very time-consuming work when done the right way. Sure, you can go on Fiverr and pay someone to spam blog comment sections to get “backlinks,” but that’s not going to help you in your SEO strategy in the long run. Instead, you want to:
- Build highly credible, authentic backlinks from reliable sources
- Backlinks to be high-quality (the more credible each of these links is, the more likely they are to have a positive impact)
You might be asking, “Can’t I get a bunch of easy, less credible links instead and have the same impact?” No, you actually can’t.
A link-building strategy that goes after less credible links can be viewed in Google’s eyes as “spammy” and can do more harm than good. So much so that there are companies that specialize in removing these types of backlinks. We get that it can sound a bit confusing, but let’s dive in!
What is Link Building?
A backlink is exactly what it sounds like. When a link to your website is placed on another website, that qualifies as a backlink.
A good link-building strategy includes increasing the quantity and quality of inbound links to your website. The goal of doing this is to help improve a few things:
- Gain relevant traffic from these links on other websites (or referral traffic)
- Increase your domain authority
- Build brand awareness
- Increase your search engine rankings.
Think of each inbound link as a vote of approval on your website. The more quality inbound links you have, the more search engines and users see you as an industry expert that they can trust.
What Is the Difference Between Inbound Links and Backlinks?
Backlinks and inbound links are the same thing. Inbound links/backlinks are referral links from other websites pointing to any area of your website. These backlinks can point to your homepage, a service page, an image on your website, and everything in between.
As simple as this all might sound so far… There is a lot more to backlinks and link building in general, but if you feel like you already have a decent grasp, we have an entire chapter of our Beginner’s Guide to SEO that talks in more detail about link building.
Backlink Building Strategies
There are a lot of strategies on how to get inbound links to your website. The key here is to make sure to stay away from buying links. It is not worth the money, can hurt your overall SEO strategy, and is a lazy way to try to improve your SEO.
Instead, do things like spending more time on building relationships with companies/professionals in your industry or industries you’re looking to enter, and write helpful/detailed/user-focused content that people would share with others. If you’re still not 100% where to start, we’ll start to go into a bit more detail on things you can do.
Start a Blog & Update Regularly
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in; you can write content around what you do, common questions your customers/clients have, industry news, and the list goes on.
Consistently creating blogs that have helpful content that is accurate and not just spam that will have people naturally linking to it is one of the most beneficial ways to get more backlinks to your website.
Bonus Tip: Remember to link to other content on your blog as well. This helps give more detailed information on a subject you might not know enough about, and maybe they’ll backlink to you as well.
Write Guest Blog Posts
Maybe you don’t have time to create a blog and update it regularly. That’s fine! Guest blogging is a great way to showcase your knowledge to someone else’s audience and gain a backlink in the process. Typically, when you write a guest blog post, they are willing to link back to your site.
Remember you’re not only doing this as a way to get a backlink but also to show expertise. You don’t want to put in little effort because if you do and what you write is mediocre, that’s what people will start to see your content (and overall brand) as.
Get Involved in Your Community
Volunteering to talk at events, sponsoring events, joining local chambers, hosting your own events, and just becoming involved in your community can be a beneficial way to get more backlinks to your website.
This one is certainly one of the most time-consuming that we’ll mention, and they won’t always give you links, but these types of backlinks can be incredibly beneficial, and the added benefit of getting your business exposure in other ways isn’t bad either!
Bonus Tip: You should do this regardless of backlinks. As a company, especially a local business, you should give back to the community that keeps you in business.
Create Free & Shareable Resources
There are so many beneficial resources you can build, such as free tools related to your industry, shareable templates, infographics, or any other form of visual content that provides people with helpful material. Once someone finds a resource or tool helpful, they’re much more likely to share the content with others.
An example of an SEO resource that is shareable is our entire Beginner’s guide to SEO. We’ve broken it down into chapters that are able to be shared for more specific information. Once someone finds a resource or tool helpful, they’re much more likely to share the content with others.
While there are a lot of ways to generate backlinks, the strategies above are what we’ve found the best and most effective to start out your link-building process!
If there are any other ways you link to build backlinks, start a conversation with us, and we’ll be sure to add your input to this article and give a backlink to help you start your link-building journey!