Creating An Effective Link Building Strategy: The Complete Guide

You are probably aware that a backlink is among the top factors Google and other search engines use to rank websites. Websites with a healthy backlink profile stand a better chance of ranking highly in SERPs than sites with fewer or lower quality links. Your best bet for creating a healthy backlink profile is a robust link building strategy for your website.

What Is An Effective Link Building Strategy?

An effective link building strategy increases the quality and quantity of inbound links to your website. The main goal of creating a link building strategy is to enhance your website’s position in SERPs for your target keywords by getting relevant links from authoritative websites. Not only that, but once you start getting links from authoritative websites, you increase your business’s overall reputation (brand awareness), and you have a higher chance of getting more leads.

While the majority of backlinks you build can benefit your site, not all links will transfer SEO juice or value to your website. Here are some things to keep in mind when evaluating the quality of a link:

• Page Authority: Links emanating from pages considered authoritative have a higher potential of improving your PageRank than non-authoritative website pages.

• Website Authority: Websites considered an authority in your industry will transfer the most SEO juice to your website compared to a new website that is little known.

• Link Placement: You will get little or no benefit from links on sidebars, page footers, and other similar page sections.

• Website Relevance: Strive to get links from websites relevant to your niche. For example, if you run a fitness website, get links from sites in the health and fitness niche, not a sales blog.

• NoFollow and Dofollow links: To achieve a healthy backlink profile, you need both DoFollow and NoFollow links. 

With that, let’s dive in and look at expert tips on creating an effective link building strategy for your business.

1. Start By Publishing Link-Worthy Content

Start by creating top-quality content that other people want to link to when writing their articles. This kind of content should be at the top of your marketing funnel and have a broad appeal to get the much-needed attention.

The rule of thumb is that editors only link to website pages that are relevant to their audience. The higher the relevance of the content on a page, the higher the chance of attracting links from authority websites. 

Concisely, link-worthy content is not only informational but also educational-based. It solves common problems, and answers frequently asked questions from the audience. 

Here are some ideas to point your content creation plan in the right direction:

• How-to articles
• Inspirational content
• Research/case studies that are relevant to the industry
• Entertainment content
• Educational content 
• Evergreen content/timeless content

Audit your existing content to identify gaps, then create fresh content based on the above list. 

2. Apply Strategic Guest Blogging Strategies

Guest blogging is still one of the most effective ways of building links to and from authority sites. Unlike before, when SEOs would get away with posting articles on random websites that were not necessarily relevant to the niche of the primary website, today, you have to put into consideration relevance.

Search engine bots are smarter than ever before and can tell whether a link is from a website related to your site. Thus, create a guest posting strategy that is authentic and strategic. Only target websites that are relevant to your niche and with high domain authority.

More importantly, the guest posts you distribute to the selected authority websites should be unique and packed with valuable content such as infographics and recent case studies.

3. Work On Your Brand

Branding enhances your appeal online to get more recognition from search engines and industry leaders.

The more people know about your brand and its offers, the more likely they will link to your articles. Natural links that are editorially earned and organic provide more SEO value compared to paid links.

An authentic brand that offers content with real value for the audience will increase the potential of getting natural links. Remember, your content is your brand and represents you in the competitive digital world. 

Consistent blog posting gets more attention. And the more people know about your brand, the more inbound links you will get from multiple authority websites related to your niche. Note that companies with a robust blogging strategy get 97% more links than those without a blogging strategy. 

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 Concisely, work smart to improve your brand continuously. One sure way of achieving this goal is by consistently posting highly valuable content that matches the audience’s needs. 

4. Do Competitor Backlinks Analysis

Failing to monitor what your competitors are doing to get backlinks is equivalent to shooting in the dark and expecting to hit the target. 

A comprehensive competitor backlinks analysis will pinpoint exactly what they are doing to get more links than you and the link sources. You will also get insights on keywords for which Google and other search engines rank higher than you.

Ubersuggest is the best tool for doing this form of competitor analysis. All you have to do is visit the website and type in the website URL of the competitor in the search bar. 

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The tool will, in seconds, generate a detailed report, but your main focus should be on their links, so click on the backlinks option.

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By doing so, you will see a list of all the sites they are getting links from, their domain authority, and page authority.

Armed with this information, you have won half the battle. Start reaching out to these websites for links by submitting quality guest posts. Look at their blog page for an idea of the type of content they publish for insights on what wows the editors.

5. Apply The Broken Links Strategy

Did you know that 42.5% of websites have broken links? Creating a broken link strategy is your best bet if you are on a tight schedule and rarely get time to write fresh content for your blog or guest posts.

In fact, lack of enough time to create content is one of the primary reasons why B2C companies find it difficult to consistently churn out stellar content that spurs engagement with existing and new customers. 

A broken link building strategy is pretty simple as it entails locating website pages with broken or dead links that no longer work. Such links often lead the audience to a 404 page. 

Reach out to the web admin with a suggestion to replace the broken link with a similar link to an article posted on your website that contains similar or even better content.

6. Be More Active On Social Media

Social media is a marketing powerhouse due to the huge number of active users. Companies with robust social media marketing strategies often find it easier to connect with customers than companies that are not active on social platforms.

In the context of link building, Ahrefs recently got hundreds of links from five states, yet they hadn’t included them in their outreach plan. Their active social media efforts worked magic for them, proving that these platforms are not only marketing powerhouses but also backlink goldmines. 

The secret to getting the most results from social media platforms is by first doing audience research to know their location, interest, age, and type of content they engage with the most on the different platforms. 

After that, create content matching their interests and expectations when they visit your page. Note that the human brain processes visuals faster and more efficiently than blocks of text. Thus, share more visuals, such as infographics and photos, instead of text-only posts. 

Monitor the engagement levels that each type of content achieves to know what you should create more of and what you should stop sharing. For instance, if you get more likes and comments when you share videos than infographics, then focus on creating better videos and improving the infographics.

7. Leverage Resource Links From Trusted Websites

Most highly authoritative websites such as Huffington Post, Forbes, Social Media Examiner, and Copyblogger have dedicated resource pages. They post resource articles on different topics and industries to save their audience time that they would have spent scouring the web for the same information.

For example, if you offer digital marketing services, you can write resource articles such as:

• Top 25 Digital Marketing Tools that You Must Have
• 30 Email Marketing Hacks Used By Top Performing Brands
• 50 Copywriting Content Marketing Tools for Busy Marketers

Ensure that your list is as accurate as possible and that you link to the cited resources. Confirm that the links are functional and lead the readers to the right pages. 

Once you publish the resource articles, rest assured that the mentioned brands will reach out and reciprocate by giving you a free backlink from their respective websites. Email them informing them of the article and possible anchor text soon after it goes live to get maximum results.

Final Thoughts

An effective link building strategy is what you need to play in the big league in your industry. Continuously monitor your link profile using reputable tools such as Ahrefs and SEMRush to ensure no toxic or spam sites are linking to your website. 

You could also free up your schedule by outsourcing this task to a reputable digital marketing agency. Please feel free to share more link building strategies in the comment section.