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Link building is an essential cornerstone of any solid SEO strategy, and with Google’s continued trend towards machine learning in its algorithms and rewarding sites that display relevance, quality, and authority, building a healthy link profile is harder than ever.
In this post, we’ll look at 10 of the most powerful link-building tactics you can use to build a quality backlink profile and start climbing your target SERPs.
Related: Why Is Link Building So Controversial?
Guest blogging
Guest blogging is the classic go-to for link-building tactics for one simple reason: it works!
This tactic involves contacting blogs and online news sources in your niche and pitching the site owners’ content outlines. If they accept and like your content, you can link back to your target website either as part of an author bio or within the body of the content.
There are a few better ways to ensure your backlink’s referring page has the kind of topical relevance that Google loves to see. It’s also a great way of demonstrating your expertise to your target audience in the process. Just be sure to cast a wide net with your blog outreach, and don’t just stick to sites that explicitly call for submissions.
Leverage your existing network
Leveraging your existing network is one of the easiest link-building tactics out there, yet it’s unfortunately neglected by many SEOs.
If you’ve spent a long time in your industry, you’ve likely built a rich network of ex-colleagues, partners or other contacts. These people may be able to authorize organic dofollow backlinks on their site and will already be familiar with your level of expertise in a particular topic.
Ask around and see if your network can throw some relevant links your way.
Register on business directories
Directories are a controversial subject in the modern SEO community. However, considering how cheap and easy it is to acquire these kinds of links, there’s very little downside to finding directories with a clear relation to your niche and getting listed with a link to your site.
If you choose your referring domains wisely and look for a high degree of relevance for both the directory site as a whole and the businesses that are listed on it, you’ll be able to build a high volume of valuable links in a very short space of time.
This can be a particularly useful link-building tactic for local brick-and-mortar businesses looking to optimize for localized keywords, such as “florists in Honolulu.”
Related: 19 Sure-Fire Subject Line Formulas for Link-Building Emails
Broken link building
Another big one among low-cost, low-effort link-building tactics, broken link building is a great way to build links at scale for those embarking on a new SEO campaign.
This tactic involves finding broken links (pointing to a dead page) on websites that have a topical relationship to your business and reaching out to webmasters, suggesting that they amend the link to point to one of your resources.
The referring webmasters get to improve their user experience, and you get a powerful new link!
Unlinked mentions
Link-building through unlinked mentions is one of the more attractive link-building tactics because it doesn’t involve creating fresh external content to act as a referring page.
In this strategy, you simply find mentions of your brand name on external sites, then reach out to the webmasters and ask them to link their mention of your business. As they’re already familiar with you and are happy to mention you as an authority in your industry, you’re likely to have a high success rate.
Competitor link building
Competitor link building involves analyzing your competitors’ backlink profiles to determine which kind of content is most likely to garner high-quality links within your topic focus.
Using a backlinks analytics tool, you’ll be able to see whether your competitors get the lion’s share of their links to infographics, ultimate guides, tutorials or other kinds of content, and also discover the actual focus of the content.
You can use this research to inform your own content calendar and maximize the chances of attracting quality, organic links from similar referring domains.
Related: 6 Elements Your Link-Building Campaign Must Include
Repurposing content
Think about your site’s MVP — that one piece of content that gets a huge proportion of all the traffic and shares and has kept on proving its value long after it was first published.
If it’s done well in its current format, it will likely see the same success in other formats, such as a video or infographic.
Though it’s one of the higher-effort link-building tactics on this list, repurposing content can pay dividends by building on your stock of evergreen content and offering plenty of long-term value.
Redirect links pointing to inferior content
During your research for SEO drives, you’ve probably come across pieces of competitor content that have a ton of quality backlinks despite the content being fairly mediocre.
If you’ve got a page on your site that you know blows a certain competitor out of the water, then you may be able to acquire new, powerful backlinks by reaching out to the referring domain authors and suggesting they link to your content instead.
Considered one of the “gray hat” link-building tactics, redirecting competitor backlinks will not only help your visibility but could decrease your competitors’ in your target SERPs.
Forum link building
Forums and similar sites are often associated with spammy, low-quality link-building tactics. However, they can be fantastic referring domains for links to content and resources that are relevant to the conversation and useful to the site users participating in these communities.
One of the best link-building tactics for sites with a rich library of authoritative content, this strategy involves looking for discussions about your business niche on sites like Reddit or Quora, offering some useful input, and linking to your content as a reference.
Social media link building
Social media can be a hugely effective tool in your link-building arsenal, enabling you to become a more visible authority and develop a strong network of content creators who are likely to cite you as an authority.
Some of the most effective social media link-building tactics include using popular hashtags when sharing content to get your online assets in front of journalists and bloggers, following journalists in your niche to look for interview and citation opportunities, and actively participating in industry discussions to get your brand in front of potential linkers.
