In digital marketing, it’s a constant battle to achieve SEO success. However, one proven strategy to be successful in SEO is getting high quality backlinks. Why? This crucial element can boost your site’s credibility and visibility on search engines. This will further boost your brand, which will grow your audience and eventually turn into profit. One might think it’s only possible if you’re a big business with a vast audience, but even small businesses can do it.
This article will discuss strategies that even small business owners like you can use to secure high quality backlinks, help your website build more authority, and have a more significant digital footprint than your competitors. But before that, let’s discuss some essential keywords before delving into those juicy strategies.
What is Link Building, and Why Do We Need It?
Link building is a marketing effort that requires getting links from other websites. It’s seen as one of the most potent tools for higher ranking in search engines. That said, the building blocks of link building are high-quality backlinks.
However, not all links are equal. Some links are way more valuable than the others, and these are the ones you should be looking for. For example, a link from an authoritative website related to your topic is much higher in quality than a link from a small website nobody knows.
So why should we care about link building? Link building is a crucial component in SEO, which helps your website rank higher in search engine result pages. A good link building strategy can help you create more high quality backlinks, which can help your website build more credibility and authority. With that, your audience will view you as a reputable, trustworthy, and authoritative entity in the industry.
Utilize Local SEO
When considering how to acquire backlinks effectively, citations are usually one of the most popular ways. This is especially true if you want to be more popular locally. To do this, you need to look into listing your business name, phone number, and address on various online and local directories. This way, you can lay the foundation of your online presence and eventually get high-quality backlinks.
Once you make a significant digital footprint locally, it’s now time to pool your resources on more extensive listings and directories. Directing your efforts on Google My Business, Yelp, and Yellow Pages is imperative. Of course, consistency and accuracy are essential if you want to increase your popularity. Once you’re up there on those sites, you can get their backlinks to further enhance your website’s digital footprint.
Leverage Vendor Reviews
Collaborating with established suppliers and vendors presents a massive opportunity for you to get backlinks from your partners’ sites that you can use for your website. If you have a good relationship with these partners, you can inquire whether they’d be able to showcase a case study or testimonial they can publish, complete with a backlink on your site. Once you’ve convinced them to do so, you can then get a powerful backlink that can further enhance your website’s credibility.
Experiment with Innovative Formats that Encourages Backlinking
Experimenting with different content formats to help you stand out from your competitors can help you acquire more high-quality backlinks. From interactive content to infographics, innovative styles can make your content more engaging, shareable, and backlink-worthy for your readers.
If you don’t know where to start, we can help you with that. The first thing you need to do is identify what kinds of formats your readers usually engage with. After discovering which format is best, you can create content in that specific format. Your audience will then see how much your business values their perspective. After that, you can promote your content, encouraging your audience to share and link it to friends and family.
By utilizing these techniques, you can secure high quality backlinks from other people and businesses willing to create backlinks for you, boosting your SEO. This will also help you build more authority in the industry, which can help you create more traffic for your site.
Join Relevant Memberships and Associations
Another effective method of acquiring high-quality backlinks is to engage with industry-related associations, business groups, and chambers of commerce. It’s a great strategic move that offers networking possibilities and enhances your credibility. It can also help you have connections with the leading authorities in your industry and, most importantly, the chance to acquire backlinks from your peers’ sites.
By joining these initiatives, you can acquire backlinks from member profiles, directories, and even their businesses, especially if you have a good relationship with them. Not only that, but by joining these groups, you also show your willingness to commit to your industry, which can also help you gain the trust of your audience.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a mutual-benefit strategy in which you create high-quality content for other websites in exchange for a backlink. You must identify authoritative blogs, websites, and online publications catering to your audience.
Once you’ve picked several, you can pitch well-researched, insightful, high-quality articles that provide value to their readers. You can include a backlink to your site in the author bio or even within the content. This earns you a backlink and could help your readers see you as an industry expert.
Press Releases
If you’re looking for a unique and a passive way for other websites to create a backlink to your website, a press release is one of the most effective ways to do so. Press releases usually talk about recent developments in your business, an announcement of partnership or sponsorship, or even events like charities or company milestones.
Spreading well-written press releases through trusted distribution platforms will get the attention of news sites and other media outlets. The articles they will write about your press release often include a backlink that links to the press release you published on your site.
However, if you have no idea on how to create an engaging press release, let’s help you with that. Firstly, you need to write a compelling headline. The headline is the most important aspect of your press release as it is your chance to pull in readers by making them interested in what the press release has to say. After that, a good summary of the press release should be followed to keep your readers on your toes and then go with the content itself.
In your body, you should always emphasize the goals and objectives of your company to let the readers know your justification for doing your projects. And lastly, you should always write your press release with the readers’ perspective in mind. This will help you know what they want to read and have an insight on what they want to see for your company in the future.
Broken Link Building
This strategy requires a significant amount of time and research. However, it’s a very effective method of acquiring backlinks for your site. Broken link building involves finding broken links on external websites and substituting your content for the site owner’s. You can use online tools like Broken Link Check or Check My Link.
Once you’ve found a broken link, you can try to contact the site owner and notify them of the broken link. After that, you can offer your content as a substitute for that particular broken link. However, ensure that your content is relevant to the site.
Look to Sponsor
Sponsorships are an excellent way to earn valuable backlinks while supporting local events and charities. You can often secure a backlink on the organizer’s site by sponsoring local events, industry conferences, and charity drives. This one works very well with charity sites since their traffic is often high. The higher the traffic on the organizer’s site, the more likely people will click on your backlink. And with a backlink on their site, you’ll soon acquire higher traffic over time.
Reach to Podcasts
This one is more niche and can be unconventional, but it’s rapidly becoming more prevalent these days, thanks to the increasing popularity of podcasts. However, one major problem with this strategy is that not all podcasts have a website. The first step in this strategy is looking for a podcast that writes a summarized version of their episodes. To do that, you need to pick a podcast that goes with your selected niche.
Once you find a podcast with a website about your industry, you must find a summarized episode relevant to your content. From then on, you must listen to their podcast and see their angle on your topic. Finally, engage with the hosts and prepare to pitch for a backlink.
Final Words
Building a strong backlink profile can be challenging for business owners, but not impossible. It requires a multifaceted approach to test your communication, pitching, and social skills. However, with the help of the strategies we discussed above, securing high-quality backlinks is not out of your reach.
With this guide, you have a solid foundation for your approach to getting high-quality backlinks from your top competitors. Implement these strategies, measure your progress, and continuously improve, innovate, and adjust your approach. Eventually, getting high-quality backlinks will be second nature to you.
