Link building strategies are crucial for SEO in 2022! Links drive up SEO ratings and help you build your brand. Then how to get comprehensive backlinks that help you get to the top of search engine rankings?
Although backlinks contribute to the success of any SEO strategy, they don’t happen automatically. They might come and go, become toxic or obsolete so it’s important to consistently find new opportunities. As an SEO specialist and consultant, I have learned a lot about strategies for getting backlinks. Here are the easiest strategies for 2022.
1) Get Backlinks From Sites that Are in Competition with You
Having good content in place is always highly advisable. Once you have it, you’ll want to get yourself some backlinks on relevant sites to rank higher – and that starts with finding possible links on your competitors’ sites.
This could be a tedious manual process with tools – but there are free & paid tools that can help you analyze the backlink profiles of your competitors. This way you don’t have to do all the work and will save time and energy. The first tool I’ll use is my own, Online Backlink Checker.
This tool is really easy to use. You can just open it, go to your competitor’s website, and click “Check backlinks”. It’ll audit their site and give you the percentage of DoFollow links and past data.
If you want to improve your backlinks, pick the most authoritative sites and then contact the owners to see if they would be willing to include your site in their links. Just make sure before you do so, that you haven’t already placed a link from them.
2) Broken Link Building Strategies
“Broken link building” is the process of finding backlinks that take users to pages with 404 status codes on other sites, then contacting those sites and suggesting they add the link pointing to a page on your site with related content.
A good way to gain high-quality backlinks is to do so through broken link building. This can be done in a couple of different ways:
Find Your Competitors’ Broken Backlinks
You can uncover backlinks through a backlink analysis tool such as SEO SpyGlass. This will allow you to filter your results by high-authority DoFollow links that are throwing 404 errors. These are potential providers for your business now.
Visit the page this link was found on and see if you have a relevant replacement. If it’s relevant, the person who set up the original link might be grateful to know so they can get it fixed.
Analyze The Website You Want Backlinks From
If you’re targeting a specific site for backlinks, then you can analyze it to see if it has any broken links. You can use Screaming Frog to do this analysis.
If you think you have a great replacement, take initiative and offer it up to the site owner. For example, if you have one that’s worth mentioning in your own blog post (with a link), do so! However, don’t expect that the site owner will always accept your content or give you a backlink in return although some of these sites do.
Reaching out to others can be tough, but here are some good tips to keep in mind:
1) Make sure you’re transparent and honest about your intentions. Don’t offer assistance without being clear that the link you want them to click on is from your site.
2) Keep it simple and friendly – people mainly want two things: their problem solved or question answered.
3) Regain Lost Backlinks
One of the most important parts of SEO is ensuring your backlinks are still good. It’s worth setting aside some time to figure out which links are broken or have moved. To do this in SEO Spyglass, go to Backlink profile > Backlinks and update the Page Info for each of your webpages with a broken link.
The most straightforward way to deal with this is to contact the site owners and ask them for assistance. Depending on what the problem is, you might ask them to place your link on another page if the previous one has been removed.
4) Link Building with Images
As images take up so much attention, promoting them on your site would be a good idea. The content they bring to the table, in terms of attracting backlinks, is well worth it!
Even if you use images for backlinks, make sure the link points to the broader page the image is found on and not just to that one specific image. Image directory links (ending in .gif, .png, .jpg etc.) can be dead-ends. To find out whether any of the links in your backlink profile are image directories, make a filter in your SEO tool to see if any target URLs contain .jpg, .gif, or .png extensions.
You should also let the website owner know there’s an error in their link. If they’re embedding your image into their website, they need to send you a direct link that sends people to the right page.
There are lots of places where you can check if people are using your images. A Google Images search is a good way to start, and if the site seems okay, you can ask them to add a link back to your website. If it’s not a credible site or you’d prefer they take it down, just contact them and let them know.
5) Guest Blogging Strategy
Guest blogging can really help get your company’s name in front of new people and further establish your credibility but if you include a link to your website in the content it will also be great for SEO.
It is a powerful tool that can help your company become more popular and reputable. By including links to your own blog within the content, you are also making it easier for other people to find your company online and learn more about your business, which helps with SEO.
6) Get Backlinks From Relevant and Authoritative Sites
It is of course a great validation of your product or service when you are on one of the best of lists. But what many people don’t know is that by being on a list that ranks products, you also get a link to your site from an authoritative site.
One way to find things you might be a good fit for is by checking websites that may compete with you. Find competitors that have a high number of backlinks and those backlinks should contain similar keywords, such as “best” or “top.”
On some sites, you can go to the site owner and ask how to publish your content. Sometimes it’s paid placement and other times it’s based on an editorial decision. If you provide them with an interesting summary of what your article is about, then they might include your article for free.
7) Expand Your Network to Find Authoritative Backlinks
Join conversations in your industry and connect with other people online—the more you interact with others, the greater your chances of getting to know each other and eventually linking content.
Joining relevant FB groups is a great way to make initial connections and start discussions. Don’t go overboard though or you may come off as too spammy or desperate. The main goal of this is to share information that might be helpful to people in the community. They’ll be able to do whatever they want with it and if they want, they might link to you and help share your content!
Online communities can provide you with some great networking opportunities, so pay attention to what other community members are writing about. For example, a blog post on a similar topic of your blog might be beneficial to you and it would be worth chatting with them.
There are a variety of strategies to consider when trying to create a diverse, credible, and trustworthy link profile. Each option may provide a different value, so it’s good to experiment with them all.
In addition, you can have detailed information about how to use SEO metrics to measure your content by reading my article titled How To Use SEO Metrics To Measure Your Content Marketing ROI!