Editor’s note: this is a guest article by Kevin Ocasio. The views and information expressed here are the writer’s own and may not necessarily reflect this blog’s own.
As someone who’s serious about growing a business blog that will thrive for many years, I can attest that building quality links is one of my biggest challenges. You need search engine optimization if you need your customers to see you at the top of search results, and backlinks are a very important aspect of any successful SEO campaign.
I’m certain you’ve heard of different link building techniques – all comprising of both good and bad practices. We’re here today because we want to focus on legitimate ones that give value not only to your website but also to the people in your blogging or business niche.
What are you waiting for? Let’s dive right in.
How to Build Links to Boost Your Website
1. Look for resource pages
Obviously, what you should do using this method is to find resource pages where you can include links to your compelling pieces of published content. If you don’t know what a resource page is, it’s a specific page on a website that features links to other blogs on a specific topic.
To start looking for potential resources, simply type into Google’s search box “keyword” + “helpful resources” or “keyword” + “useful resources.”
In the example below, you can see that I searched for resource pages on the topic paleo:
Evaluate these pages based on their page authority (PA). A higher PA gives you SEO juice given that the page allows do-follow links to your site. At the same time, make sure that the pages are on authoritative domains.
Once you’re sure about a resource page, you can now start crafting an email that you will send to the site owner. Let the site owner know that you’ve found the page very helpful and you honestly think that your blog post will make a great addition to his or her page.
2. Guest post on quality websites
It’s not enough that you run your own blog and publish daily blog content.
Amplifying your reach by posting on other sites does not only build your credibility and let your voice be heard, it also gets you high-quality and targeted traffic through the links that you include.
Guest blogging sometimes gets a bad rap and the reason for this is that many site owners use this for the sole purpose of building links. These people submit content that’s either spun or comes from a writer who doesn’t truly understand the topic.
First and foremost, use guest blogging as great chance to help people through your valuable tips and advice.
When I look for guest posting opportunities across the web, I do a simple Google search by typing “niche/topic” + “guest post” (see screenshot below):
3. Look for broken links in your niche
The web doesn’t run out of broken links. The fact that millions of domains expire each day opens a ton of opportunities for you to discover a broken link on a website.
What you need to do is to contact the site owner with the broken link, let him or her know about it, and recommend your better resource. Remember that your piece of content must be good and relevant to the lost content that the site owner will be enticed to link to it.
Tools that can help you check for broken links are the following:
- Check My Links Chrome extension
- Domain Hunter Plus (a great alternative to Check My Links)
- Screaming Frog
If you get an email back from the site owner who has decided to include your link, make sure to manually visit his or her site to check your link.
4. Create a scholarship to get .edu backlinks
It’s no secret that that .edu sites are a gold mine to increase your rankings. These sites are very authoritative. Even the best marketers and SEOs admit that getting such backlink is hard. You reach out to these .edu sites and your chances of getting a fruitful response is minimal. However, it’s worth it.
To get link juice from these major learning institutions, you need to look for university pages that link out to scholarships. This means that you will need build a scholarship page. Consider the scholarship page below as a good example:
Source: Backlinko
When your scholarship page is ready, find university pages on Google using the search string below:
Contact these universities by sending them a good email where you make a suggest for them to add the link to your scholarship page to their website.
Wrap Up
Now that you have learn these four strategies, hopefully you can begin applying them today.
Each link building tactic may take some time for you to master but once you’re able to do it, you’ll see better SEO results and succeed in your online business. Last, but not the least, create quality blog content so that you naturally attract quality links in your niche.
