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Link building is hard. In fact, it’s so hard that 41% of experts see it as the most challenging part of search engine optimization (SEO).
That’s because acquiring backlinks can often be costly and time-consuming. To make things worse, investing your time and resources doesn’t always guarantee high-quality and do-follow backlinks.
The thing is, ranking high without backlinks is almost impossible. That’s exactly why you need to master the link-building game. The good news is, I can help you with that. I’ve built more than a thousand backlinks in the last year, and I know how to do it the right way to ensure high search engine rankings.
Below, you can find the top five strategies I’ve used to achieve this:
Related: What Are Backlinks and Why Do You Need Them for Your SEO?
Why link building is important in 2023
With the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools, everyone can create a ton of content in the blink of an eye.
Sure, you need to come up with good prompts and spend some time editing, but publishing quality content has never been easier.
If tons of quality content floods the web, search engines must find a way to rank it, and backlinks are proving to be the most reliable way to do that.
The more quality backlinks you have over your competitors, the more likely you are to rank better than them on search engines.
Below, I’m going to cover my top five link-building tips that helped me build more than 1,000 backlinks for my clients in the past year.
Link building doesn’t have to be difficult. Here are five simple strategies to acquire quality backlinks that propel your content to the first page of search engines:
1. Choose quality over quantity
One backlink from a reputable website is much more powerful in terms of SEO than a dozen backlinks from low-quality sites. That’s because search engines view quality websites as reliable, so if your content is good enough to get an endorsement from them, it benefits your credibility with search engines.
But how do you recognize a quality backlink?
A quality backlink comes from a real website with a real audience. You should avoid private blog networks or link farms, as backlinks from these sources are only going to hurt your search engine rankings in the long run.
A quality website has a high domain rating or domain authority and good SEO standings. For the backlink to have the most impact, it should come from a website in a relevant niche and it should be a do-follow.
Forum backlinks, blog comment backlinks and links from self-publishing platforms like Reddit, Medium and Quora have little impact on your website.
2. Leverage competitor backlinks to your advantage
One of the best ways to get backlinks is to analyze your competitors’ link-building efforts and leverage those insights to your advantage.
To begin, you need to run a competitor’s website through your favorite SEO tool to get a list of their backlinks. Next, you should analyze why each website links to your competitor’s content.
Was it active link building? If that seems to be the case, you can also reach out to that website and arrange a backlink.
Was it a product feature? In this case, you can reach out to the journalist or a blogger and offer exclusive access to your tool or service in exchange for a featured mention.
Maybe your competitor’s content contains unique data or high-quality infographics that attract more backlinks. If that’s the case, you need to focus on creating better-quality content to outshine them.
Related: Backlink Strategies That Will Force Your Competitors To Link To You
3. Offer value
When engaging in link-building outreach, you can’t just ask for backlinks and offer nothing in return. Everyone knows how valuable backlinks are in 2023, and nobody will give you one unless you offer them value.
For example, you can offer to give back a link from your website or include a backlink to their website in a future guest post. Maybe you can share their content to your social media following or to your email list of 5,000 plus people.
The important thing is to know what you can offer your link-building prospects and really capitalize on that.
4. Create useful resources
Quality websites are careful about who they link to. They want to provide their readers with the best possible experience, and if your website doesn’t offer any value, there’s no reason why they should give you a backlink.
Creating useful resources is a great way to improve your passive and active link-building efforts. According to 70% of SEO experts, creating data and research content attracts the most backlinks.
You can also use valuable content for active link building. For example, if you create a useful resource — like an interesting case study or data from an in-depth survey about the current state of your industry — quality websites are more likely to link to it than some generic blog post.
In a nutshell, the more valuable your content is, the more likely people are to link to you.
5. Build relationships
Instead of chasing one-off links, you can benefit more from building long-term relationships with bloggers. Begin by offering value — share their content, provide insights or help them out on a small project. Keep the lines of communication open, and drop a genuine comment or share from time to time.
Investing in these types of relationships can result in more backlinks in the future. For example, after establishing a solid connection with a blogger, you can leverage that relationship to build another backlink or link to another partner website as a favor.
Related: 12 Tips for Creating Meaningful Business Relationships Online
With quality content creation being easier than ever, backlinks are still one of the most important factors search engines use to rank your content.
You need to embrace quality over quantity, learn from competitors, provide value, create invaluable resources and foster lasting relationships. That way, you’ll easily conquer the link-building world and start ranking high on search engines.
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