Backlinks are the foundation of any strong SEO strategy. The more high-quality sites that link to your site, the higher you rank in search results, and the more traffic you see to your site.
Building backlinks isn’t always easy, though, and some of the techniques that were popular even a few years ago (like buying links) are little more than an express lane to Google penalty land. Not only that but all backlinks aren’t created equal, either, with links to low-quality sites useless or even harmful to your SERP position.
The good news is that there are actually plenty of ways to build backlinks that are totally “legal” in Google’s eyes and actually work better than some of the unapproved techniques. Some of them are obvious (guest posting, fixing broken links, etc.) while others are a little bit more clever. The three methods described here will make the process easier — and give you big results.
1. Use Twitter to Find Guest Posting Opportunities
Guest posting is an effective way to share content and get backlinks to your site. It can also be time-consuming to find sites where you can contribute and build the relationships necessary get your posts in front of the people who need to see them. However, instead of spending hours doing research, you can use Twitter to both identify opportunities and open the door to an ongoing guest posting relationship.
To help find opportunities, use the Twitter search function to find blogs that are posting material relevant to your business. Set up your search such as “your niche” + guest post, guest article, guest writer, guest author, write for us, submit your posts or the like. Your search results will undoubtedly return some blogs that not only accept and/or are actively looking for expertly written guest posts, but that are doing so currently and do some promotion of those posts. When you find them, you still need to check out the sites to confirm they are a good fit, but a lot of the research is already done for you.
If the site is something that you want to contribute to, use Twitter to start building a relationship with the site owner as well. Follow them, engage with their posts, and begin sowing the seeds of a strong working partnership.
2. Create Infographics
Infographics are one of the hottest forms of content going right now. Everyone loves them — the best ones present a lot of information in an easy-to-digest format, while also being visually appealing — and they have a better chance of being shared on social media due to their visual nature. And all of those shares on websites and social media mean more backlinks for you.
Creating an infographic is not difficult; someone with basic design skills can usually pull them together in a few hours, or you can hire a freelancer to manage the design for you. Once the design is complete, reach out to blogs and sites in your niche and offer the infographic as a guest post. This tends to be most effective when you offer the infographic with a custom introduction, but many sites will use your graphic and add their own surrounding content.
The only stipulation? Request that the graphic or credit line link to your site. When you do, this can lead to dozens of high-quality backlinks with limited effort.
3. Give Testimonials
This is one of the easiest, just most often overlooked, ways to get backlinks to your site. Best of all, this approach is a win-win: The business you’re providing the testimonial to gets some nice words on their site, and you get some increased traffic via a link.
Not to mention, offering a testimonial is usually more readily received by site owners than a request for a link, making them an easier way to build backlinks. The key, though, is to use testimonials sparingly and to only offer them when you really feel passionate or positive about a product or service. Bland, vague, or half-hearted testimonials aren’t helpful to anyone.
Building backlinks can take time, but these tricks will make it much easier. Give them a try today, and see if your traffic increases and your SEO improves.
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