Over the past few years, Google changes its algorithm with updates like Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, Pigeon and others to establish better search rankings. All of these updates in some way affected all the traditional link building techniques.
If you build link unnaturally and aggressively, you’ll get a penalty sooner or, later for sure and Google will remove your site from their search engine results page.
Then, should you stop link building?
NO!
I have been doing SEO for many years and the core element I found for ranking a website is quality link building. Quality and natural backlinks are still a key factor for search engine rankings.
Effective Link Building Techniques to Use right Now
Today I am going to explain some smart and effective link building techniques without hurting your search rankings. If you can do that smartly, then you are sure to get some nice higher rankings on Google.
Let’s get started!
Ask for links
This is one of the easiest ways to acquire backlinks, and especially effective for the beginners. Even though, it seems unwise to ask for links, but it works in real world.
Ask for links doesn’t mean that you will “beg for links” or “pay for links”.
Let me explain how this can work. The most effective way of asking for backlinks is by approaching people whom you already know personally. All you have to do is just ask for a link to your friends, relatives, colleagues, partners, clients who have a blog or a site.
However, you need to make sure that the link comes from a website that is relevant to your niche, otherwise you won’t get your expected benefits and may even work negatively.
Ask for a link where you or your company has been mentioned
Sometimes, you will see situation like you or your company name has been mentioned in other websites without giving a link back to your site. In such situations, you can simply ask the webmasters to give you a backlink using your name or brand.
You are probably thinking that how would I know if somebody has mentioned or not, Right?
You can simply use Google Alerts or Mention to find who has mentioned your name or your brand name across the Internet. A tool called Buzzsumo is another source to find places where you have mentioned.
Once you acquire those information then you can outreach them with a really cool email. If you can approach properly to the webmaster, they won’t mind giving you a link.
Utilize social media networks
One of the most crucial parts of content marketing is promoting the content on social media. If you actively promote your article on social media, your articles will be shared, tweeted, distributed, retweeted, mentioned and talked about. As a result of this social buzz, you will acquire some free links from others.
When you are writing content, what you do?
You always try to feature the valuable and mostly shared contents in your article and give an outbound link, right?
Similarly, if people notice one of your pages is resonating on social media networks, they will read it and start linking to it. This way, you can earn some free links from others.
Do what your top competitors are doing
No matter what you search on Google, there’s a bunch of results available for it. If you want to compete with them, you need to play the same game. These data will help you to understand what is working for others.
Now, you need to check your top competitor’s backlink profile. There are many tools available to check competitor’s backlink profile like Ahref, Majestic etc.
Once you get your top competitor’s backlink data, you can reach out to the people who already provided a link to your competitors. If they managed to get these backlinks, why shouldn’t you too?
Guest blogging
This is another proven method to get powerful backlinks. You will get so many websites that will accept to publish your article. You just need to find the relevant websites to write for their blog.
When you write the articles for other’s blogs or websites, you will get a chance to add your website link to the article or byline. Guest blogging not only help you to get a valuable backlink but also help you to promote your brands.
But, you need to ensure that, the blog or website you want to write for is relevant to your site.
While very recently Google cracked down on people who were acquiring backlinks using guest blogging, the fact that guest blogging still works cannot be questioned.
So don’t write it off completely, yet.
Follow the skyscraper method
This is another excellent method for link building. This method simply involves finding an amazing content in your chosen niche and making something better or, more up-do-date.
Creating amazing content like guides, infographics, white papers, etc. can attract natural links, especially if you can churn out content like Brian Dean or, Neil Patel. Brian explains how the Skyscraper technique works, beautifully in his post at backlinko.
Once you are done with the content, then you need to draft a persuasive email and shoot it to people who are already linking to the similar content. If they find it really valuable, they will give you a link to your content.
Give testimonials
Giving testimonials to others is a smart link building technique. It’s a win-win scenario for both. Many businesses offer to say few words about your experience using their product or service. The testimonials help them to build their customer trust.
Business owners add the testimonial providers name, photo and business name with a link into the website. Just take a look at the below example from linkresearchtools:
By using this technique, business owners get another testimonial to place on their site for gaining trust, while you get a new backlink. So, this technique is beneficial for both.
Create Infographics
There are a lot of people who wouldn’t want to read through paragraphs of text. Instead, they love to read visual content, as visual content is much more attractive than textual content and takes considerably less time and brain power to digest.
If you can create attractive infographics, people will read, share, and add them to their website. If someone includes your infographics to their website, they will mention you as a source with a link back to your webpage. You can generate an embed code and ask people to use it if they like it.
Moreover, you can reach out to the bloggers who love to share infographics for high-quality backlinks.
Look for dead links
There is nothing more frustrating than clicking on a link and finding a 404 splash page. Isn’t it?
When you find any broken link while researching information on your niche in other websites or blogs, contact the webmaster to point it out and offer an alternative within your site.
If you can explain properly to the webmaster how that link is hurting its web traffic and how your page will help the readers, there is a high possibility that you may gain a backlink.
Final Words
You simply cannot have a top position in search engine without generating top-quality links. I have listed here 9 effective link building techniques and by following the above techniques, you will be able to improve your search ranking higher than you ever thought possible.
Let me know which backlink technique you enjoy most by commenting below.
About the Author:
Jabed Hasan is a Content Marketing Manager at Mountnow. He is passionate about writing and love to write on SEO, CRO, Growth Hacking and Online Marketing Strategies. You can follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.