Finding ways to get better backlinks is half the battle with any website if you want it to rank better in Google, Bing and the other search engines. The other half is what to show the visitors once they’re on your website and how to profit from their visit.
Here are a few suggestions on how to build up a steady stream of quality backlinks over time.
Broken Link Building
Broken link building is where website owners look for pages or posts with citations that are no longer live. Websites go offline, pages get removed or changed, and this all invalidates links already on the web pointing to those pages. When visiting via the link, it brings up a “404 page not found” error, which isn’t helpful to the visitor and makes the site still publishing the link look out of date.
Searching for the broken links found on other people’s websites is an involved process using a variety of tools to achieve the result. Obtaining the correct contact details of the site owner, instead of just going through their contact form, is time-consuming too. However, pointing out the invalid link and offering a link to a similar post on your own site gets you a high-quality link that’s worth the time. Visit The Web Ally to learn more SEO techniques to improve your ranking.
Infographic Marketing
Infographic marketing has been a hot topic for the last couple of years. Using directories like NerdGraph, websites provide infographics that are ideal for distribution. They get picked up by peers that find the presentation of the facts appealing and their theme or topic relevant to their readers.
The more successful infographics avoid self-promotion like the plague. Being promotional is not the purpose of these graphical presentations. They need to be engaging with the readers who are attracted visually to the colorful presentation and interested in the information presented. Sure, the source is indicated at the bottom of the infographic and the originator’s logo is present, but other than that, let the infographic speak for itself. It must stand on its own merits or it’ll never go viral.
To get some ideas that are suitable for use in a presentation, check out Buzzsumo or Google Trends. Buzzsumo provides information on trending topics while Google Trends can track topical search volume over time in different countries.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking works well to assist individual articles to achieve greater visibility. The idea is that sites like StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Digg index a list of the latest articles on a topic. Readers can find topical content more easily than they can through Google. There’s more of a curated list of content happening here because of the voting systems included in some of the social bookmarking sites. It helps the cream rise to the top.
Some readers on social bookmarking sites click through to the author’s website to see if there’s more content in a similar vein. Because of this, new readers and interested prospective customers visit the originating website which generates fresh traffic and curious eyeballs. More backlinks from sites linking in help to elevate the ranking of individual articles published on your site. This creates a ‘raising all boats’ scenario where other articles linked from the first one also benefits from increased interest.
Guest Posting
Guest posting has waxed and waned in popularity over the last few years. Currently, it’s experiencing a resurgence of interest as a dependable way to drive traffic and new backlinks. The idea of guest posting is to have a post written that’s not published on your site, but on a related site.
For instance, if you own a dog blog, having a guest post published on a German shepherd dog site, on a topic that’s related to this breed, serves the German shepherd site’s audience well. The link is either in the body of the article or in the bio at the bottom, and it helps to add one more link to your website. Along with creating some good branding, it is a useful way to drive more traffic through to your site too.
With guest posting, to get accepted by a webmaster, it’s helpful if you already have a relationship with them. This can be something as simple as posting helpful comments on a few of their blog posts which they notice and reply to. This creates some name recognition and they may have even visited your site to learn more about it after seeing a few of the blog comments. Asking for a guest post at a later date becomes an easier sell once they know who you are.
Slideshows
Slideshows are sometimes seen in articles to let a visitor flip a series of PowerPoint-like slides. Slideshare is one of the strongest examples of an embeddable slideshow that can be shared with other people. It was so popular that it was acquired by LinkedIn and is now part of LinkedIn Learning section of their site.
To use slideshows well, it’s a good idea to have information relevant to the article, which is best presented in a series of slides. Websites that choose to publish a slideshow may well attribute the slideshow to its creator and this gets you a new backlink. You can always follow-up with sites that publish the slides and request a backlink if they don’t automatically put one in. When asking politely, this usually works in the same way that receiving a backlink from an infographic publication does.
Quality Over Quantity
Obtaining quality backlinks take time. It’s a process that when putting in regular time delivers backlinks over the months and years to follow. Trying to obtain thousands of backlinks within a couple of months of a new site is never a smart idea because it doesn’t look natural.
While it may seem a little daunting to invest the time it takes to receive a single high-quality backlink, it has a value greater than 100 low-quality links. As such, you’re better off putting resources towards securing a few quality backlinks that speak volumes about the usefulness of your business, services or content than scores of low-quality ones.
Securing high-quality, long-lasting backlinks is often something best outsourced to SEO professionals who do it for a living. Trying to build links yourself is not time-efficient and takes your attention away from your core business. However, if you’re intent on managing the process internally, the above suggestions are an excellent start. Above all, you must be patient with the process because it gets quite involved and doesn’t deliver fresh links immediately.
