How to Get Backlinks: Helpful Strategies in 2021

There are so many factors to consider when you’re driving greater traffic to your site. Great UI, smooth UX, engaging content, and blazing fast site load speeds — these are all equally important.

But one strategy that’s considered one of the major foundations when it comes to greater traffic generation is building backlinks. 

But what are backlinks? And most importantly, how can you use them to grow your website? Let’s find out.

What is a Backlink?

In simple terms, backlinks are links from one website to another. Search engines consider backlinks as ranking signals because it could point to the trustworthiness of the content. 

Backlinks also build authority. When a website links to your website, it tells Google that you’re an authority in that specific industry. After all, getting other websites can help establish your site as a trusted source of info.

And this bodes well for your business because greater brand authority means you’ll climb higher on the SERPs. Once you’ve made it to those coveted top spots on the first page of the search results, you can drive greater awareness for your brand.

How to Get Backlinks

At this point, you may be asking, “how do I get backlinks?” Here are some strategies for you to consider.

Publish High-Value, Longform Content 

Comprehensive content like pillar pages, evergreen content, white papers, e-books, and in-depth guides are a great way to attract more backlinks. Since they’re all counted as longform content, you can explore topics in greater depth. 

It all boils down to overwhelming your readers with value. 

But don’t get too caught up trying to hit a prescribed word count. Some experts share that longform blogs should be within 2,000 to 5,000 words. Just make sure that your content is free of fluff that dilutes the overall nutritional value of your content. Conduct thorough research and back your data up with hard facts and evidence.

Other content formats you can take inspiration from to attract more backlinks from other sites include listicles, infographics, how-to’s, instructional content, and videos. 

Claim Unlinked Brand Mentions

Unlinked brand mentions happen when someone mentions you or your site but doesn’t link back. Make sure you claim these brand mentions because they’re bursting with opportunity.

In fact, it could be one of the easiest backlink strategies because the author is already familiar with your site so you could easily get them to link back to you because they already recognize your authority.

You can use Google Alert to inform you of unlinked brand mentions across the web. Other tools include BuzzSumo, Mention, or Ahrefs Content Explorer. 

Once you’ve tracked down these unlinked mentions, the next thing to do is to reach out to the author asking them for a backlink. 

Send Outreach Emails Industry Experts

The whole point of reaching out to an industry expert is for them to offer valuable insights on a topic they’re well-versed in.

For example, you can get fresh insights by reaching out to a managing director or CEO and asking for their insights about something you plan to write about.

Let’s say you have a client that offers procrastination coaching services. Getting in touch with an industry leader can help shed light on the work-from-home system, and how it has contributed to stress, anxiety, and procrastination. This means you can save time on research and create a high-value piece. 

Once you’ve written the post, you can conduct outreach and request for a high-quality backlink.  

Broken Link Building

Just as the name suggests, broken link building involves helping websites linking to another site that’s no longer operational. When you reach out to the site owner, you can offer a link to your site they can replace the dead link with. 

A simple way to find broken links is to use Check My Links, a free Google Chrome extension.

To increase your likelihood of locating these broken links, single out pages with multiple internal links. TUse these search strings to narrow down your list:

• “Keyword” + inurl:resources
• “Keyword” + intitle:links
• “Keyword” + “helpful resources”
• “Keyword” + “useful resources”

Once you find these pages, run the Check My Link tool on the page to find backlink opportunities. 

Get Started with Your Backlink Strategy

Backlinks are important to SEO because it gives you a “vote of confidence” from another website. So it’s a fundamental way of building your brand rep and online visibility. 

Some backlinks are inherently more valuable than others, though. And to make your backlink strategy work, you’ll need to partner with the experts for show-stopping results. Get in touch with the Growth Rocket team today.