Find the Right Link Method With These Tips

The rules of SEO are always changing, and link building is no exception. If you don’t keep updated, you may fall behind. Are your link building tactics up-to-date?

Not to worry! Whether you need a refresher course or you’re a total noob, we’ve assembled the latest link building info in this guide.

These free link building tools will give your website the SEO boost it needs. Most of them are minor improvements on things you’re already doing.

Read on to see which link method, or methods, work best for you!

Ask Your Friends

To start with, you’re bound to know several people who own websites. They’re sure to help you build links if you ask them.

Ask all your friends and family members if they have a website and if they wouldn’t mind helping you build links. Think of a way they can mention your link that’s relevant to their own site and pitch it to them.

One good option is asking them to link to your website as a source in an article. Or you can ask them to write a review of your business or website.

Schmooze With Influencers

An “influencer” is someone who has a lot of influence in your particular niche. They are the leading brands, CEOs and other top authorities in your field. And if you can get them to link to you, it’s one of the most powerful link building methods there is.

How you do this is not much different from reaching out to your friends. Figure out some way that linking to you would be relevant to them and pitch it to them.

Usually, this means asking them to post a review of your business, products or services. One popular type of review for this purpose is a side-by-side comparison between your product and another.

Another type that works well is the “unboxing” video. That is, they take your product out of the box and talk about it.

Getting talked-up (and linked to) by an influencer will boost your traffic and your credibility.

Guest Posting

Or write the review yourself in a guest post! Guest posting is one of the most popular and most effective link building techniques.

To build links with guest posting, contact another website and ask to write for them. Then insert a link back to your own site.

But you have to be careful not to sound spammy. If you do, you may get penalized by Google or rejected by the site you are posting on. Here are some general rules to follow while guest posting.

This should go without saying but only submit high-quality content. Make it interesting and check for typos.

The host site will not accept boring, poorly-written content. And if they do, no one is going to click on it anyway.

Don’t overstuff your post with links. It’s spammy, terrible and will get you rejected or penalized. In fact, you should have only one link to your website per guest post.

But, most importantly, choose the right anchor text for your link. Your choice of anchor text will have a major impact on your SEO.

To avoid SEO penalty, your anchor text must be relevant to the page it’s linking to and it must sound natural. To boost SEO in major ways, use a popular keyword for the anchor text. It’s worth it to do some keyword research.

Write High-Quality, Shareable Content

The other most popular link building method is simply writing the type and quality of content people will want to share. Here are some basic tips on being trendy.

Don’t write anything until you do keyword research. Use the top-rated keywords to form your topic. Include the keywords in your article, but don’t overdo it or Google will ignore you.

Use an image every 300 words. Use videos and other media, not just text.

Use an intriguing title with extreme words like “best,” “most effective,” “must try,” “can’t unsee.” These phrases make people “need” to click by promising better, more unique information than they’ll find elsewhere.

A good title also piques curiosity as if saying, “I know something you don’t know.” It puts a question in the reader’s mind they can’t answer without clicking. Keep your title short, 9 words or less.

Use statistics. People love them, people want them and they make you look smart. They also get shared a lot, and that’s the point of this whole link building thing.

Aside from that, don’t produce only one type of content. There are articles, videos, meme galleries, podcasts, facebook quizzes, etc. Branch out!

Irresistible content gets more clicks. Shareable content gets more backlinks. You do the math.

Write Listicles

List-style articles are easily the most irresistible. People cannot get enough of them. Case in point: you’re reading one now.

For one thing, the intriguing title that promises the best content is built right into the format! No matter what your listicle is about, it’s already the “Top 10” or the “5 Most” and presumably ends with “You Won’t Believe You Never Noticed” or “Every Business Owner Must Know.”

All you have to do is pick some keywords and follow the formula and they pretty much write themselves. Then they click themselves and backlink themselves. Easy-peasy.

Make Infographics

As much as people love listicles, they love infographics even more. Infographics take the best information from a listicle and make it prettier, less time-consuming to read and easier to share.

As for link building, infographics are one of the most popular sources cited in articles, especially for statistics. I know because I do it all the time, like this:

Adding infographics to your website increases traffic by 12%!

Get a YouTube Channel

This is one way to build your own backlinks. And it comes with all sorts of bonus benefits, too. Most notably, it lets you promote your business to 1 billion users a month for free.

I know it’s more known for cat videos and Angry Video Game Nerd, but YouTube is literally made to be a marketing platform. (Their slogan is “Broadcast Yourself.”)

Use it to unbox your products, talk about your company, show off your services in how-to videos, etc. Or, just be really entertaining and put in a link to your website. None of these cost any money, by the way, only time.

Oh yeah, to use it for link building, link back to your website in the description of each video, on your YouTube channel homepage, and with interactive buttons in the actual videos.

But wait, there’s more! People love sharing YouTube videos. And YouTube makes it easy: there’s a button for it. There’s also a button for subscribing.

And the more people share and subscribe the more people view. And the more people view, the more people visit your website. And the more people visit your website, the more likely they are to link to it.

Everyone wins! …Unless you forget to ask, that is.

CLICK. TO. SUBSCRIBE.

Tell your audience to subscribe! It’s so easy and so effective! Why would you not do this?

And don’t ask, command. Asking gets you an answer. Commanding gets you an action. Not doing anything gets you nothing.

If building links is your current goal for your company, make subscribing your one call-to-action in all forms of content. That means you should have a subscribe button on your website and send out a newsletter.

Yes, I said, “newsletter.” Even though newsletters are literally as old as the written language, the technology is still relevant in today’s marketing world.

As we have mentioned, having subscribers increases views/visits, which makes you more likely to get backlinks. Plus, you can use digital marketing software to send targeted newsletters to different demographics. Getting relevant info to the right people will make it even more likely to get backlinks.

Repurpose Content

The best part of branching out to the different mediums listed above is that it becomes way easier to crank out content. Repurposing content means taking content you’ve already made and remaking it on other media.

Repurpose your articles into infographics and videos and your videos into articles and Facebook quizzes. Isolate the audio from your video and you’ve got a podcast.

With a small team of people–one writer, one video editor, one infographic artist–your content production will increase dramatically. Each can create their own content while easily repurposing the content of the others.

With more content and more variety, you extend your digital reach. This takes all the link building strategies above and supersizes their effectiveness.

Broken Link Method

This one is a bit different. Search for websites with content similar to content you’ve posted. Check the page for source links that don’t work anymore.

If you have content that can be used as a source instead, contact the site owner. Let them know they have broken links and that they can use you as a source. Then say, “Thank you.”

Get Professional Help If You Need It

We hope all these tips have helped make link building easier for you to do on your own. But if it all still seems too overwhelming, it’s not a bad thing to hire a professional SEO company.

Or, it may not be worth your time to do your own link building if you have other valuable things to do. If you don’t have time and you don’t have help, hire the help!

There are many experienced, non-sketchy SEO companies to choose from that will do an amazing job building links for you. Bourbon Interactive is a great example. They use only legitimate, white-hat SEO strategies and have been in the game for over 20 years!

Only you know if you need help, but if you do, don’t be shy about asking for it!