This article will answer the common question many bloggers ask: “How To Build Backlinks To Your Blog?” with the absolute best strategies on the web! The list includes strategic methods for building high quality backlinks to your blog.
Learning how to build high quality backlinks to your blog is one of the most important tools you can use to climb the ladder in search engine optimization. Studies show that websites ranked number one in Google have thousands of backlinks. In order to compete, you will need to take your backlink game to the next level.
This list of top high quality backlink strategies should put you on the right path and hopefully help you increase your search engine presence!
1. Ask For A Link
First on the list of “How To Build Backlinks To Your Blog” is the good old fashioned method of simply finding a website in your niche and asking for a link. Start by asking people you know such as friends or acquaintances, then go from there. You will want to find blogs or websites, preferably in the arena of your blog topic, that have a link or resource page. You will also want to focus on websites that have a high domain authority score.
Note: I would build up your blog a little first so that they can see that you have at least some authority in your niche. That being said everyone has to start somewhere and you will need backlinks to establish your domain authority. Don’t be afraid to reach out to some smaller blogs in the beginning.
How to ask for backlinks?
- Find relevant blogs with authority resource pages. They can be hard to find due to the fact that they normally don’t use the term resource page on their website. Search for terms such as “additional, helpful or useful resources.” You would enter this in the search box: “additional resources” (your niche keyword). This should bring up a list of relevant resource pages that you can explore. You can also use Neil Patel’s Uber Suggest Keyword Research Tool to find some good backlink sources.
- Contact the owner of the website and ask kindly for a link. Make sure to check if they have any broken links first. Bringing that to their attention, could increase your chances of a backlink. Write a personal email letter and make sure to compliment them on their website.
Email example
Hello [Name],
I was reading some articles today about [Your Topic] and happened to notice your [Resource Page Title]. It is nice.
I noticed that your resource page has a section about [Your Topic]. I just published a new complete guide on the same topic and I think it would make a great addition to your page.
Thank you and have a wonderful day!
Regards,
[Your First Name]
2. Build Relationships
Building long lasting relationships is a good way to procure some backlinks later on down the road. The links won’t come overnight but if you are patient and take the time to talk to people about your niche, eventually you will score some backlinks out of sheer generosity.
Here are some good ways to build relationships
- Answer questions in your industry on some of the popular Q&A platforms such as Quora and other niche forums. People love to hear answers to their problems and this is a quick way to get some instant feedback.
- Share other peoples content on your blog post or social media accounts. Most of the time they will notice and might decide to return the favor.
- Talk to people on social media. Comment on other bloggers posts and add value to the conversation. Tell them about your new blog and about yourself. Join some groups on Facebook in your niche and spend some time talking with people.
Note: This is probably the most important aspect of “How To Build Backlinks To Your Blog!” Relationships are fundamental to building your brand in your niche or industry. Take the time to talk to people and share knowledge. You never know what types of opportunities will present themselves based on those friendships including some stellar high quality backlinks in the process!
3. Case Studies
This is another fun way on the list of “How To Build Backlinks To Your Blog.” Develop and initiate your own case study. This is the type of content that other bloggers love to share because it proves that something does or doesn’t work.
How to develop a Case Study?
- Find a technique or strategy that someone has developed and implement it on your own blog. An example would be testing out one of the backlink building methods listed in this blog post.
- Explain how you plan to perform the study with a detailed outline and description in your blog post. Write out exactly how you plan on using the strategy or technique to build backlinks to your blog.
- Update the blog post with your results and proof that the strategy worked. Use charts, data and graphs to visually map out how many backlinks you acquired and where they came from.
4. Comment on other blogs
Most blog comments will incorporate the nofollow attribute which means that Google won’t follow the link. This was due to the fact, that blogs were getting spammed with thousands of comments from people that were only looking for the backlink. But that doesn’t mean that those links don’t have any effect on your search rankings.
Neil Patel did a study on the impact of NoFollow Links from blog comments and found that they were beneficial to your search engine ranking.
That being said, don’t leave blog comments for the sole purpose of getting a backlink. Most blog owners can tell if you are just there to spam their comments. Instead leave meaningful comments that add value to their article. They will appreciate this and possibly link back to you in the future. It is a good way to get recognized in your area of expertise.
5. Complete Guides
One example of this is my “How To Start A WordPress Blog?” Complete Guide Part One.” It is an excellent way to get quality backlinks to your blog. New bloggers love a step by step guide that can take them from beginning to end when setting up their new blog or website.
Complete guides can stand the test of time and bring in high quality backlinks and traffic for several years if written properly. Long form blog content consistently outperforms shorter content in Google.
Blog posts in the number one position on search engines such as google, normally have a word count that is around the 2000 mark and a lot of times higher even up to 4000. Take this into consideration when writing your next blog post.
How to write a complete guide?
- Find a good niche topic that the whole world hasn’t already written about. It will be super hard to compete with some of the well established blogs on certain topics. Try to find a topic that isn’t over saturated with blog posts. Search google and find a topic that doesn’t already have a complete guide.
- Write the outline for your complete guide using your main topic and subtopics in a nice, easy to understand format.
- Write your complete guide and cover anything and everything that you think is relevant to the topic. You want your complete guide to stand out as the authority on the topic you are writing about.
This is an absolute must on the list of “How To Build Backlinks To Your Blog” for two reasons. Number one, it should secure you some great high quality backlinks! Number two, it should consistently drive a good amount of traffic to your blog for many years to come!
6. Contact the people that you mention in your post
One great way to get backlinks is to contact the people that you mention in your post. For instance, if my post is “Must Have Plugins For WordPress,” then I would email the owners of each of the plugins listed in my article. Let them know, in a non spammy way, that you are going to mention them in your article. They may end up sharing your post on social media.
Not only will this method secure you some backlinks, it will also hopefully establish some connections with other bloggers and website owners.
7. Create amazing industry standard content
Don’t just be another cookie cutter blog on “How to make money blogging?”. Do something new and unique. Do something that is going to rock the industry. Get creative and look for new ways to help people or new solutions to people’s problems.
Make sure that when you create content for your blog, that it is top notch, industry standard content that other bloggers will want to link to. If you create new and exciting content, people will link to it.
Here are some good ways to create amazing content
- Find what you are good at and dominate that specific niche. Become the best blogger in your field and set the standard for your niche. If you are the authority on your topic, people will link to your content.
- Help other bloggers grow. If you take the time to help other new bloggers take their blog to the next level or grow their traffic, it will help you in the long run. They will want to help you in return which could mean high quality backlinks and more.
- Solve a problem that bloggers face. This could be in the form of an ebook, guide or even a plugin. Think about the problems you have faced when setting up and building your blog. Create a tool or resource that will actually help people solve that problem.
8. Create an infographic
Get creative and create your own infographic. People love the visual aspect of infographics. They are a quick way to visually translate an idea and easy for people to share.
You can use a free service such as Canva to create your own professional infographic. Canva has templates specifically for creating infographics. Simply select your template and add your elements and text. When you are finished, download your graphic and upload it to your blog. Then you can share it with other blogs in your niche.
When another website uses your infographic they have to link back to your blog.
9. Develop your own branded strategy
Develop a unique strategy or technique that other people can use on their blogs or websites. Then brand it with a unique phrase or term that people will remember. There are several examples of this all over the blogging world. I discuss one of these strategies right here in this blog post: “Moving Man Method.”
How to develop your own branded strategy?
- Come up with a new method or technique that people can use to advance their blogging goals. You don’t have to start from scratch as long as the overall idea or technique is different and unique. Backlinks and traffic are a couple of good areas to focus on. These are two things that bloggers definitely need.
- Name your new strategy something catchy that will stand out and people will remember. Make sure it is relevant to your technique and describes in a nutshell what your strategy accomplishes. Method, Blueprint or System are some good keywords to use in your strategy’s name.
- Experiment with your own strategy and show people the proof that it actually is effective and works. You can do this by revealing your new strategy or technique in a blog post. If people can see the results of your branded strategy working, they are much more likely to backlink or share it with the world.
10. Help A Reporter Out
Help A Reporter Out, or “HARO” for short, is a free service that connects journalists and sources through their online database.
Simply put, HARO connects you (the blogger with the information) to the journalist who is looking for a specific type of information for their news website.
News websites are always looking for fresh new up to date information on a plethora of topics. HARO makes it easy for them to find just that.
How does it work?
- Go to their website helpareporter.com and sign up as a source for a free or paid plan. Create your profile.
- Wait. They will send you three emails daily with specific requests on certain topics from different media outlets and reporters all over the globe.
- Find a topic that matches your content and put together a short sales pitch. Include compatible answers pertaining to their questions along with your contact info and a brief bio. Don’t include any attachments.
With over 75,000 Bloggers/Journalists and one million sources, HARO is an excellent way to get backlinks from authority news websites.
Some of the major news outlets that use HARO:
- abc
- Chicago Tribune
- FoxNews.com
- Mashable
- Refinery29
- Reuters
- The Globe And Mail
- TIME
- WSJ
11. High Link Generating Content Formats
Studies prove that specific types of blog content perform better than others when it comes to getting backlinks. Just check out BuzzSumo’s study of one million articles and blog posts! The shocking aspect of this study was the discovery that 75% of the content received zero links or shares from other websites.
This means that a very small percentage of articles or blog posts will actually get the majority of backlinks.
They also discovered however, that different kinds of content performed on a much higher level than some of the other content formats.
Content formats listed in order of the average referring domain links:
- List post (average 6.19 backlinks)
List post such as a “top 10” or “top 100” are extremely popular and easy for the reader to follow and understand. - Why post (average 5.66 backlinks)
One of the main reasons people use search engines is to ask a question and a lot of the times it is in the form of a “Why” question. This is a great way to write posts. Think of what your audience might ask to find the answers they are looking for on a particular topic. - How to post (average 4.41 backlinks)
Similar to the “Why” post, this also is another popular way that people like to ask the question on a topic that they are looking for. “How to” post are a staple for bloggers looking to drive traffic. - Video (average 4.13 backlinks)
Readers love to see step by step videos on a blog post. It makes the content very easy to understand and usually provides a quicker method of explaining a difficult task. - Infographic (average 3.67 backlinks)
Infographics are a great way to communicate visually to your readers. People like to see how things work and an infographic gives them a quick visual representation of your thoughts and ideas usually in the form of an outline with the main topics of your blog post. - Quiz (average 1.6 backlinks)
Readers like to participate and a quiz keeps them engaged with your blog and content. You can use quizzes to learn more about your readers and therefore produce more content related to the topics they are interested in.
Of course you will want to mix things up and post a variety of content on your blog but these formats are proven and a good place to start. List posts also had a whopping average of 10,734 shares.
12. “Moving Man Method”
This method, also coined by Brian Dean at BackLinkO.com, takes advantage of old broken or expired links and is a great way to get some high quality backlinks to your blog. It simultaneously adds value to the owner of the newly acquired broken link while at the same time giving you that much needed backlink.
How does it work?
- Find websites in your niche that have changed their name, moved to a different URL, discontinued offering a service or updating one of their resources, or shut down completely.
- Find websites that are still linking to the former URL. Do this by checking the URL with a backlink checking tool such as Site Explorer by ahrefs. Now you can see all of the websites still linking to the old URL. Focus on websites with a high Domain Authority score.
- Contact the owners of the websites still linking to the out of date resource and let them know that their link is broken. Let them know in a kind manner, that they can update the link with your resource.
If your content adds value to their website, they should have no problem updating the link to point to your resource. This is a great way to find some nice backlinks that others may have missed or not thought about.
13. “Skyscraper” Blog Posts
Writing “Skyscraper” Blog Posts is a great way to get some high quality authoritative backlinks. Content is still “King” in the blogging world and long quality skyscraper blog posts are going to get noticed and shared if they stand out from the rest of the pack.
What exactly is a “Skyscraper” Blog Post?
Coined the “Skyscraper Technique” in 2015 by Brian Dean of BackLinkO.com, this technique is based on the idea that people will always be drawn to the tallest skyscraper in the city, not the second, third or fourth. You need to find the best and longest blog post and make yours better with more information.
This backlink building method involves three steps.
- Search and find the best blog post for your topic with a ton of backlinks. You can do this by searching for your topic in Google and then looking at the number one result.
- Create a blog post of your own that is better than that post with more information and added resources. If the authority blog post on the topic has 100 tips, make yours 150 tips.
- Promote your skyscraper blog post everywhere you can. One great way to do this is to contact the people that you mention in your post as we discussed earlier in this article.
14. Write testimonials for other blogs
Last on the list of “How To Build Backlinks To Your Blog” is a pretty easy method. This is another way to build backlinks while at the same time adding some value to another blogger’s product or service. A well written testimonial may not drive a lot of traffic to your site but it will help increase your domain authority.
There are several types of different testimonials you can write for people. Here is a list of “14 Testimonial Page Examples You’ll Want to Copy.”
Find some relevant products in your niche and write a good testimonial. Just make sure that there is a spot for a backlink which is usually right after your name.
It shouldn’t take a lot of time to write a nice short little testimonial and the reward should greatly outweigh the time it takes to write and submit it.
In Closing
I hope this list of “How To Build Backlinks To Your Blog” has given you enough ideas to hopefully acquire a generous amount of high quality backlinks to your blog. I covered most of the methods used to build backlinks in your niche:
Ask For A Link, Build Relationships, Case Studies, Comment on other blogs, Complete Guides, Contact the people that you mention in your post, Create amazing industry standard content, Create an infographic, Develop your own branded strategy, Help A Reporter Out, High Link Generating Formats, “Moving Man Method,” “Skyscraper Blog Posts,” Write testimonials for other blogs.
Some methods will work better than others and generate more high quality links. Experiment and find out what works for you.
Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think!
Do you have a good backlink building technique or strategy that has worked for you? I would love to hear it and may possibly add it to the “How To Build Backlinks To Your Blog” list in the future!