Backlinks are one of the biggest driving forces of SEO for your website. One of Google’s senior search quality strategists, Andrew Lipattsev explained that high-quality content and link building are the two biggest signals used by Google to rank a website.
This means that understanding how to get SEO backlinks for your site has never been more important. The more quality backlinks pointing to your site, the better your SEO results will be.
But there’s a problem. Most people don’t know how to get started with getting other sites to link to them. It’s hard enough to get a low-authority site to link to your content so how do you ever stand a chance of competing against the big competitors?
To help you figure out how to get SEO backlinks to your website we’ve put together this ultimate guide.
Why You Should Focus on High-Authority Links
You might think that the key to getting higher rankings in Google is to have as many links pointing to your site as possible. While in theory, this makes sense, it doesn’t actually help you as much as you think.
More often than not, if you have a lot of low-quality sites pointing towards your content, Google could see this as a risky piece of content. Why?
Because many Blackhat SEO agencies build links from low authority sites for you, and Google is smart enough to notice them. Blackhat SEO tactics link your website to a variety of different low-quality domains that are primarily spammy, completely inactive or just generally low quality.
While it may be tempting to pay one of these agencies, in the long run, it doesn’t help your website’s SEO.
Instead, focusing on how to get SEO backlinks from quality websites is a much better long-term strategy.
How to get SEO Backlinks to Your Site
To help guide you through the process of how to get SEO backlinks to your website, we’ve put together this list of our favorite ways to build good-quality links to your site.
Let’s get started.
1. Build Relationships
One of the best ways to get backlinks to your domain is through building quality relationships. When you connect with other bloggers and influencers in your space you are building a connection that can help both of you grow in the long-term.
When people don’t know you, there isn’t much chance of them linking to your content. Instead, by integrating yourself into your niche and your communities, you’ll be able to grow valuable contacts who you can use in the future.
Becoming active on social media is one of the easiest ways to begin growing connections and building relationships in your niche. Putting yourself out into your community with your personality intact and helping and contributing is one of the strongest ways to build a strong connection with other people in your niche.
2. Write Better Content Than Your Competition
One of the biggest things you’ll notice is that great quality content often gets linked to a lot. It’s not because that person is building a lot of relationships or asking lots of people. The content is simply that valuable that people are wanting to link to it through their content.
It’s one of the best ways of how to get SEO backlinks. When you are looking at your niche and researching your competition, it’s important to look at what content they are producing and try and build something better.
If you make high-quality content, Google looks on that favorably. We did a deep dive into the optimum blog word count that you can check out as well.
As well as Google ranking you better, you are more likely to get people to share that piece of content on their own blogs, building you those valuable external backlinks.
3. Create a Case Study
Another great way of how to get SEO backlinks is to create a unique case study. You see case studies online all the time.
Many people don’t want to create their own, after all, you aren’t a scientist (apologies if you are). You don’t know how to gather all that information and turn it into results that people will find useful.
In actual fact, it’s not that difficult at all to build a powerful case study. You can use free tools available like Google forms which will allow you to create a simple survey.
By conducting surveys with people within your niche and making the case study specific to answering a question people are asking, they can link back to their content to your results.
Before starting your case study you should look hard for areas within your niche that people are looking for answers and not finding great information. If you look for out of date or old information, or information that doesn’t exist altogether, you are more likely to get some great results.
4. Build an Infographic
Some of the most linked to content online are infographics. You see websites like Mashable create infographics in their content all the time. This is because they know this type of content often gets linked too. It’s another great way of how to get SEO backlinks for your website.
Make sure when selecting your infographic to choose wisely. Each infographic should include a unique or interesting story for your chosen niche.
You can make your selection by following new trends and seeing what people are looking for. By creating an infographic using statistical data you can help gather research information for people all in one place.
You can create good quality infographics yourself or if you’re not the most creative you can hire someone external to create the infographic for you. Sometimes people think that infographics are expensive.
In reality, if an average infographic sets you back $150-$300 and you gain 10 external backlinks from the infographic you’ve paid $15 per backlink. That’s a great way of how to get SEO backlinks.
Pro-Tip: Canva has hundreds of free infographic templates at your disposal. Get those creative juices flowing and create shareable infographics of your own!
5. Guest Posting
Guest posting can be a great way to get your content in front of new audiences. In the past, one of the best ways how to get SEO backlinks was to use guest posts.
By offering to produce a piece of content for a high-authority site you can earn a very valuable link but also at the same time gain access to their audience. If you can provide real value you’ll not only help out that customer but also begin the process of starting a relationship with that audience.
One of the best ways to get featured regularly is to find influencers doing collaboration articles. These articles reach out to a number of different influencers in your chosen niche.
On average you’ll usually contribute 100-150 words to these articles and in turn, they’ll give you a backlink to your blog or site.
6. Promote Your Content
Amazing content alone won’t build your SEO. How to get SEO backlinks also involves knowing how to promote your content in the right way. You have a much higher chance of getting your content linked too if your content is well promoted.
A great strategy for this is to contact bloggers or websites who run weekly or monthly roundup posts. You can use Google to search for these by searching for ‘your keyword + roundup’.
You can adjust your search results to filter by the past week or the past month to see more recent content. By contacting the owner of the site and giving them an introduction to you and your site, you can begin to build a relationship that may see your content shared on their roundup posts.
Make sure to go in soft and contact a bunch of different site owners so that your relationship is not simply one way with you asking for something from them.
7. Write Testimonials
A very easy method of how to get SEO backlinks is simply to contact sites who you’ve purchased products for and write testimonials for them. They feature these testimonials on their site along with a small bio, a picture and a link back to your website.
By listing all the tools you use and reaching out to them you have a good chance of them featuring you on their website along with a link.
8. Get Interviewed
Another effective method of gaining an external backlink for your site is to get interviewed. This is a super hot way right now to get featured on someone’s website.
These style interviews give your audience an intimate look into behind the scenes of you, your background and what you are up to right now. They also give you a chance to promote your latest content and gain an important backlink for your site at the same time.
Learn How to Get SEO Backlinks Easily With These Top Tips
Blogging for SEO is one of the most effective ways of building backlinks. Now that you’ve got a better understanding of how to build more external backlinks for your blog, it’s time to put these tips into practice.
By introducing a bigger focus on optimizing your content for high-quality sites, you’ll not only improve the quality of your content but also the likelihood of a high-authority site linking to your work.